Escape Velocity

by Robin Stevenson

  I guess you have to respect her for that.

  Two

  Now that I’m back in school, I work three evenings a week plus Saturdays at the WBD: the World’s Biggest Dinosaur. In the summer, I worked full-time. Tourist season.

  You can see the World’s Biggest Dinosaur from a long way off. It’s a T. rex, supersized and made of fiberglass and steel. Its head towers over the buildings and the trees, and it looks like it could walk right across the parking lot and crunch the cars beneath its feet. Except, of course, that its feet are firmly anchored to the ground and a staircase leads through its insides, winding up and up, right through its empty head and into its gaping sharp-toothed jaws. So this T. rex isn’t going anywhere. It’s stuck here, just like me.

  Dana Leigh greets me with a wave and a grin and a long breathless spiel about how hot it is and how busy she has been and how much her feet hurt.

  “You heading out then?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Over to the Dino Shack. Emmy called in sick for her shift tonight, so I’m on.” She applies a fresh coat of dark lipstick. She has a leather lipstick case that looks like a bullet and has a mirror inside it that is about the size of my little finger. She squints into it, checking her teeth. “All I want to do is kick back with a beer, you know?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She snaps the compact shut. “How’s your dad?”

  “He’s okay.” Dana Leigh used to be Dad’s girlfriend. She’s the reason we moved to Drumheller. Things didn’t work out for them, but Dana Leigh still looks out for me and from time to time asks how my dad’s doing. She’s got this new boyfriend now, a big guy, a biker with about a hundred tattoos.

  A sharp look. “Yeah? And you? School okay?”

  I nod. “Yeah, it’s fine.”

  “All right then.” She hands me the keys. “You okay to close up on your own tonight? Carly’s in the gift shop, but I told her she could leave early. Her kid’s sick.”

  “Daniel? What’s wrong with him?” Carly’s kid is a manic three-year-old with stick limbs and a mop of red hair. He looks like a small bush fire.

  “Just a cold.” Dana Leigh steps out from behind the counter and slips her bare feet into spike-heel sandals, wincing. Her toenails are painted red. “She wants to be home for tuck-in, that’s all.”

  “Can’t the sitter do that?”

  Dana Leigh gives me a look that I can’t read.

  I shrug. “Whatever. Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll close up.” I take her place behind the counter. A group of tourists is heading our way, so I wave goodbye to Dana Leigh and get my welcoming smile ready. It’s the hardest part of this job, having to be friendly for hours at a time. Otherwise all I have to do is say, “Three dollars each please, kids five and under are free, go on up,” over and over again. Which is monotonous but not exactly difficult.

  Tourists always say the same things. These are nice people, families on their holidays having a good time, and the more I listen to them, the more irritated I feel. I don’t want to be like them. But what choices are there? I could feel superior to them, like I am somehow different and wouldn’t say such stupid things myself. That’s my mother’s approach. Or I could feel like we’re all the same, all connected, all human, which is Dad’s world view, no doubt accurate but also depressing.

  Maybe I’m burned out after the summer’s flood of tourists. Anyway, it’s slow enough tonight. I spend my time watching the second hand and the minute hand tick around the face of the clock.

  “How much is it to go up there?” A man, a woman, a horde of children.

  “Three dollars each. Kids five and under are free.”

  One of the kids leans toward the counter. “Do we go inside him?”

  People always say he. “Actually,” I say, “it’s a female dinosaur. Anatomically.” The kids stare at me, and the parents frown as if I have said something dirty. I shrug.

  “Yeah, you can go inside. There’s steps up to the mouth.”

  “Cool!” The kids are scurrying through the door. Their dad hands over six dollars, all in change, without looking at me.

  “I didn’t know they were this big,” his wife says to him as they follow the children.

  People always say that too. I don’t know why, but I feel like picking up one of the plastic dinosaurs on the countertop and whipping it across the room at them. It’s so stupid, the way people assume that fake things are real. If the WBD was life-size, she wouldn’t be the world’s biggest dinosaur. “She’s four times bigger than a real T. rex,” I say to the empty air.

  I sound like an idiot. Sometimes I really hate myself.

  I decide to close early and go home. It’s dead tonight anyway. Dana Leigh won’t care.

  Three

  I find him in the kitchen. On the floor, sitting slumped against the cupboards. His face is pale and beaded with sweat. I drop my bag and run to him. “Dad! What’s wrong? Is it your back?”

  He shakes his head. “Dunno. Thought so. Different.” His words come out in gasps.

  I crouch beside him on the floor. “Pain?”

  “Um. Yeah. My back. My chest. Heartburn.” He rubs his left shoulder with his right hand, squeezes it. “Feel like crap.”

  I have to ask. “Have you taken too much medication, do you think? For the pain?”

  “Took a couple pills. Dammit.” He pushes his hand against his chest. “I think I might throw up.”

  “Maybe you should go to the hospital.”

  He makes a face. “Useless.”

  Dad’s kind of burned out when it comes to medical care. He’s seen doctors, physiotherapists, chiropractors, you name it. None of it was cheap and none of it helped. Plus Dad lost it and just about hauled off and punched a naturopath who wanted him to join some kind of chronic-pain support group. This was back in Vancouver. “You haff to learn to liff with the pain,” Dad repeated, telling me the story, talking in this fake German accent. “You know, zey say laughter is zee best medicine.” He snorted. “Idiot. Would’ve served the fucker right if I’d decked him.”

  After that Dad decided that the best medicine was the kind that came in childproof bottles. He doesn’t have much use for doctors unless they’re writing him a new prescription.

  Dad pushes his fists against his chest, and I am struck with a sudden fear. “Dad. Do you think you could be having a heart attack?”

  He shakes his head. “Nah. It’s heartburn. Been on and off all evening.” Gasp. “And it isn’t getting any worse.” Gasp. “I think I’d know.”

  I’m running through symptoms in my head, thinking about a first-aid course we had to do at school: chest pain, sweating, nausea, shortness of breath. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

  He looks irritated. “No, Lou. Dammit. The new meds, that’s all. Giving me heartburn.”

  “All right,” I say. My own heart is hammering. I wish I knew what to do. He’ll be furious if I call an ambulance. I walk into the living room, pick up the phone and call Dana Leigh.

  “Dino Shack.”

  “Dana Leigh? It’s Lou. I’m sorry to bother you.”

  “What’s up, honey? Everything okay over there?”

  “I closed up early.” Not bothering to explain, I rush on, my voice low so Dad won’t hear me. “I’m at home. Dad’s really sick.” I take a deep breath. “I think he’s having a heart attack. Maybe. I might be overreacting.”

  “Call an ambulance,” she says. “Call right now. I’m on my way over, but if you’re already gone, I’ll meet you at the hospital.”

  “He’ll be really pissed off,” I say.

  “Tough. Tell him I told you to.”

  “What if he won’t go?”

  “He’ll go,” she says. “We’ll make him go.”

  I make the call, quickly describe Dad’s symptoms and give our address. Then I head back into the kitchen. “Any better?”

  “Not really.” He shifts his position. There’s a dark V-shaped patch where he’s sweated right through the front of his T-shirt.

&
nbsp; “You want me to get you a drink or something?” I wonder whether Dana Leigh will get here before the ambulance does and what Dad will say when she walks in the door. If he’s not having a heart attack, he’s going to kill me.

  “Nah. I should get up.”

  “Don’t.” I can feel my chin starting to tremble, feel the sobs gathering in my chest. “Take it easy,” I tell him. “Wait a bit.”

  “Yeah.” He wipes the sweat from his face with his sleeve. “Jesus.”

  I sit down beside him on the floor. If I tell him about my phone calls, he’ll get angry, and I’m worried that might make things worse. Might make him stand up and move about. I can’t remember what to do if someone has a heart attack. CPR, but that’s only if someone is unconscious. Aspirin? Or is that something to avoid? Heart attacks are because of blood clots, and aspirin thins the blood. I think. Or is that a stroke? I’m not sure, not sure enough to risk it, and besides, I doubt we have anything as mild as aspirin in the house.

  Then I hear sirens. I stand up, run to the door, throw it open and dart outside. There is something so surreal about seeing an ambulance in front of your own house; it’s like suddenly being inside a movie or a TV show. For a second I feel like I might start to laugh even though I’m still scared, and it would obviously be totally inappropriate. I bite my lip, hard. “Over here!” I yell. “Please hurry.” A man and a woman get out of the ambulance and follow me as I run into the house.

  “Dad…”

  He looks up. “Ah, Lou. Dammit.”

  They move toward him, all business. “We understand you aren’t feeling well, Mr. Summers.”

  “Not Summers,” he says. “Garland Hendricks.” He holds out a hand to shake like they’re meeting at a party, and I know he’s going to co-operate after all. I know that has to mean he is scared too, and suddenly everything seems terribly serious and frightening. When Dana Leigh arrives about two minutes later, I pretty much fall into her arms and start bawling my eyes out.

  Dad lets the paramedics help him into the ambulance. Dana Leigh tells him she’ll bring me to the hospital. Then she stands in my kitchen with her arms around me and lets me cry. She smells like French-fry grease and Body Shop White Musk perfume. I rest my head on her shoulder and focus on the white strap of her bra, which is peeking out from beneath the black tank top and leaving a red-edged indentation in her pale, freckled skin.

  I was thirteen when Dad met Dana Leigh. One of the guards was getting married, and Dana Leigh was the bride’s sister. She came out from Alberta for the wedding, and Dad said it was love at first sight. That’s happened to him a few times, including with my mother, and like he says, he always ends up getting the girl. Though only for a little while, obviously.

  Anyway, Dana Leigh extended her visit and stayed in Vancouver for a few weeks. She and Dad seemed crazy about each other. She was at our place every night, sitting around with Dad and his friends, drinking beer and watching the guys playing guitar. Sometimes she sang along. Dana Leigh has a great voice. I thought she was the best thing that had happened to us in a long time.

  When she decided to head back to Drumheller, she talked Dad into going out there too. We were supposed to leave a couple of months after her, but then the accident happened and it ended up being almost a year before we saw her again. What with his back injury and his meds, Dad wasn’t in great shape when we arrived, and things never quite worked out for him and Dana Leigh. A few months after we got here, she started seeing the biker guy.

  Dana Leigh drives me to the hospital.

  “You can drop me off,” I say. “I mean, I know you're supposed to be working.”

  “Get serious,” she says. “As if I’d leave you here.”

  Dad is in intensive care. We are taken to a small waiting area. No one else is sitting there, but I feel like I have to whisper. “Intensive care,” I say. “That’s bad, right? That means it’s serious.”

  She shakes her head. “It’s good. It means they’re taking it seriously. You know, getting help fast is the most important thing when someone is having a heart attack.”

  “Is that right?” Dana Leigh’s sister is a nurse, so she always knows stuff like this.

  “Absolutely. The longer you wait, the more damage gets done.”

  I think about Dad saying he’d been feeling bad all evening and wrap my arms tightly around myself. “What do you think they’re doing?”

  “Tests,” she says. “ Like, maybe blood tests or X-rays. Or those, what are they called, ECGs? That kind of thing.” She tries to put an arm around me, but I pull away, jump up. If I have to sit here for another second, I’ll start screaming.

  “I have to go walk around,” I say. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Don’t go far,” she says.

  I walk up and down the hallway about a dozen times, as fast as I can without actually running. I can’t believe this is happening. I have this awful feeling—an intense nauseating dread—and it’s like I’m trying to walk away from it, walk away from my own body or something. Escape velocity, I think again. I wish…

  And then Dana Leigh is calling my name.

  Four

  The doctor is about my dad’s age, dark-skinned, with a neatly trimmed beard and a white coat. His name tag is twisted around so that I can’t read it, and he shakes my hand and Dana Leigh’s but doesn’t introduce himself.

  “So, you are here with Garland Hendricks?”

  “He’s my father. Is he…?”

  He looks at Dana Leigh instead of me when he answers. “We’ve given him some clot-busting medication and we’re running tests. He’s had what we call a myocardial infarction—a heart attack. He’s stable now, but we’ll keep him here for a couple of days to be sure. We’ll refer him to the cardiac folks at Foothills, in Calgary, for some tests. See what kind of shape his heart’s in, look at some follow-up care. There’s no urgency though.”

  “So he’s okay then? Can I see him?”

  “Make it a short visit, okay? For now, the best thing he can do is get a little rest.” He smiles. “You and your mom could use some too, I imagine.”

  I stare at him for a few seconds before I realize that he means Dana Leigh.

  She is shaking her head. “I’m just a friend.”

  The doctor turns to me. “Is your mother around?”

  “In Victoria.”

  “Ah. How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Yes.” He looks at me. “Believe it or not, most folks are back home within a few days after this sort of thing.”

  Dana Leigh crosses her legs, bounces one foot up and down, sandal dangling from her toes. “Lou can stay with me tonight.”

  “I’m okay on my own,” I say.

  The doctor stands up. “I’ll let the two of you sort that out.”

  I avoid looking at Dana Leigh as we walk toward the ICU. I know she is being kind, but her place is small. I’d have to sleep on the living-room couch, and I don’t feel like listening to her boyfriend’s jokes, don’t want their massive Rottweilers’ wet snuffling noses pushed up against me, don’t want the constant blast of heavy-metal music. I’d rather be alone.

  Dad is lying on a narrow bed in a room full of machines. Tubes and wires snake from beneath his green sheets, from the back of his hand, from electrodes and from needles. A plastic bag filled with mystery fluid hangs from a pole beside him. He looks like a cyborg, or else a human abducted by aliens. I try to think if I have ever visited someone in hospital before. I don’t think I have. It looks exactly like it does on TV.

  “Lou.” He looks tired, but the grayness in his face has gone.

  “You sure scared me.” If I say anything else, I’m going to start crying.

  “Sorry about that, kiddo.” He looks past me, over my shoulder to where Dana Leigh is hanging back in the doorway. “Dana Leigh. Thanks for looking out for her.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Dana Leigh’s voice is reassuringly normal. “Course. How are you feeling, Garland?”

>   “Like hell,” he says. He closes his eyes, and I feel another wave of fear. My dad’s fifty, but he’s never seemed old to me. Up until the accident, he always hung out with younger people—musicians, mostly, or the guys he worked construction with. Now he doesn’t hang out so much with anyone, but he still jokes that his developmental age is stuck at nineteen.

  Now, though, with his eyes shut and all those tubes and wires everywhere, he looks every day of fifty. I remember that his father died from a heart attack before I was born. I wonder how old he was. I haven’t ever asked.

  It never seemed relevant before.

  Dana Leigh and I don’t stay long. Dad looks like he needs to sleep, and besides, a nurse came in and told us to keep it short. Dana Leigh drives with her right hand on the wheel and her left hand hanging out the window with a cigarette burning between her fingers. She goes through almost a pack a day, but she tries not to take too many drags. Sometimes she lets a whole cigarette burn down without putting it to her lips more than a couple of times.

  After a few minutes she turns and looks at me. “You want me to stay with you at your house tonight?”

  I shake my head. “I’ll be okay. Thanks though.” I think about how the doctor assumed Dana Leigh was my mother, and I get this ache in my throat like I might start to cry.

  “Sure,” Dana Leigh says, and I can hear the relief in her voice.

  Dana Leigh drops me off at home. The house is silent and empty. Dad and I have lived here for over a year, and I could probably count the number of times I’ve been alone in the house on the fingers of one hand. Dad hardly ever goes out anymore.

  I put on the album Dad has left on the record player— Lou Reed’s Transformer. Dad is more up on current music than most kids my age, but he also collects vinyl from the seventies: Velvet Underground, Bowie, Genesis, King Crimson, Pink Floyd. I lie down on Dad’s couch and listen. This is the album with that goofy song Dad used to sing to me when I was younger. If I could be anything in the world that flew, I would be a bat and come swooping after you. It makes me cry a bit, and in a funny way, I feel better. But then the next song is “Perfect Day,” and I think about how Dad always says this song is so sad. I’ve never understood why, because it should be a happy song, a song about spending a perfect day with someone; only now I think maybe I do understand, because how could one perfect day ever be enough? It would just be a taste of something you couldn’t keep. Like those lunches out with my mother.