High Country Page 4

  “I’m here,” she said as she tied on Trish Spencer’s short black apron with its many pockets. “Nicky and Cricket are right behind me,” she added to save herself from a spirited recitation of what would be done to her roommates should they fail to report for duty. “A wedding party?” she asked to distract Tiny from fussing further.

  “That’s right. Thirty-two. Last minute. The bride must be eight and half months along to be doing this kind of thing at the last minute. Hah!” Tiny finished, the one word serving as personal shorthand to save her the bother of actually laughing.

  She came and stood too close for Anna’s comfort. Tiny was always infringing on one’s personal space, standing so close it was hard to focus on her pointy little face.

  “You smell like an ashtray,” she snapped. “If you want to kill yourself with cigarettes have the decency to shower before you show up where people are trying to eat. If Chef Wither gets a whiff of you, you’ll be—”

  “Looking for another job,” Anna finished for her.

  “Don’t be impertinent. You’re not paid to be impertinent. You’re paid to serve food and not stink up the place.”

  Tiny couldn’t have been more than ten years Anna’s senior, and some of her waitstaff were older than that, but she spoke to them all as if they were slightly retarded preteens.

  “Where do you want to put them?” Anna asked. “The wedding party?”

  Tiny strode away without replying. At least on a larger woman it would have been striding. Having too much energy for such a small frame Tiny Bigalo moved from place to place at a dogtrot.

  Dutifully Anna followed and dutifully she stopped while the headwaitress surveyed the dining room with the air of a general planning troop deployments before battle.

  “The alcove,” she decreed. “They don’t deserve it but it’s dark, so they won’t see much anyway. They’ll be out of the way there.”

  Since the vast room had nearly emptied and the alcove was a significant hike from the kitchens, Anna could have wished she’d put the party closer, but it would have been more than her life was worth to suggest the change.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Put tables together for thirty-two. Set up chairs. Count them. I don’t want it turning out there’s only thirty or thirty-one and us looking like idiots. Put out the cloths—clean, mind you. I don’t care if the bride’s the whore of Babylon, in my dining room she getswhite. Then do the place settings and come get me to check it.”

  Anna survived the condescending list of details and began shoving tables together. The usual night shift was cleaning up. She wondered why none of them had opted to stay for the extra money. At least a fifteen percent tip was guaranteed. Big parties—oddly enough this included wedding parties, which one would think to be the cheeriest and most generous of customers—were notorious for stiffing waitresses. Like most other restaurants, the Ahwahnee automatically added the gratuity to the bill. Enlightened self-interest: it reduced the odds a hostile waitress would punch out a stingy bride in the parking lot.

  Nicky and Cricket arrived. They were so stoned Anna had to redo their place settings more often than not. Periodically, fits of giggles dragged them into a far corner of the alcove where they could recover without attracting the wrath of the headwaitress. Anna considered killing them herself or at least knocking their empty heads together but, remembering her own misspent youth, satisfied herself with huffing and rolling her eyes.

  Finally, the table was set. Tiny trotted down the long room to check it.

  “Straighten it. God! It looks like it was laid by Hottentots,” she declared, and trotted away.

  “Must be some bigwig,” Nicky whispered as they set about straightening the already straight and tidying the already tidy.

  “Probably a movie star. Tiny’s got major hots for Johnny Depp. Maybe she hopes he’ll take one look at how beautifully the table is laid and get a stiffy for her.”

  “Oh gross,” Nicky cried. Giggles descended once more.

  “Get a grip,” Anna snarled. There wasn’t much use in yelling at the stoned, but she hoped to at least frighten them into being less irritating.

  Mercifully, the giggling stopped. Anna turned her back to keep from thinking evil thoughts about their dewy little sheep’s faces and soggy little sheep’s brains.

  An exaggerated gasp of horror-movie quality grated across her nerves. To calm herself she straightened two steak knives. Nicky laughed, then squeaked.

  “Cricket’s having a heart attack.”

  Anna gritted her teeth, moved the dish of butter pats a fraction of an inch.

  “She’s not breathing. Oh God.”

  “For Chrissake,” Anna turned on them. Cricket was on the floor, her face slack and already turning pale around the mouth. Nicky, her mouth a perfect “O,” was staring at Anna with desperately wide eyes.

  “Holy shit,” Anna muttered. Kneeling, she gently nudged Nicky aside. “Nicky, you call nine-one-one,” she said firmly.

  The girl nodded but didn’t move.

  “What are you going to do?” Anna asked.

  “Call nine-one-one?”

  “That’s right. Go now. Call nine-one-one and come right back here to me. Go.”

  Nicky stumbled to her feet and began to run.

  Ear positioned above Cricket’s nose so she might hear or feel any stirring of breath, Anna slid her fingers onto the girl’s carotid artery. She’d forgotten how soft the skin of the young could be. Cricket was a girl encased in supple velvet.

  A heartbeat: weak and too fast. No breath.

  Anna began rescue breathing. In all her years as an emergency medical technician she’d never seen a case of respiratory arrest caused by anything other than drugs or choking. As she counted twelve even breaths blown into Cricket’s lungs and watched the reassuring rise and fall of her chest, she wracked her brain for causes. All she came up with was either the girl suffered a bizarre allergy or she’d been poisoned.

  Lest in her zealousness she actually occlude the flow of blood to the brain, Anna moved her fingers from the carotid in Cricket’s neck to her wrist. As oxygen was forced into the girl’s lungs her pulse slowed, grew stronger.

  “Hallelujah,” Anna whispered.

  After what seemed an excessively long time but, by breath counts, was under two minutes, there came the sound of people running the length of the dining room. With waitstaff in rubber-soled shoes and floors of polished concrete, there was no clatter, just the hushed pad-padding as of a horde of ghosts.

  “The rangers are coming. The rangers are coming,” Nicky shouted like a modern-day Paul Revere. Anna didn’t look up.

  “Good.” Anna breathed for Cricket.Two. Three. Four. Five.

  “What’s the matter with her?” Tiny Bigalo.Breathe.

  “Respiratory arrest.”Three. Four. Five. Breathe.

  “Oh,” Tiny said as if that meant anything.

  Others had come. They crowded too close, began to babble. “Back to work,” Tiny ordered sharply. But for Nicky, the horde shuffled away.

  “Let me stay,” Anna heard her beg.

  Tiny didn’t reply. Apparently that was as close as she could bring herself to giving a “yes” answer to an employee request.

  Nicky knelt on Cricket’s other side and took her friend’s hand in hers. “Is this okay?” she asked. Her voice had become that of a very little girl; she was abdicating responsibility for herself to the nearest adult. Anna hoped she wasn’t going to require something in the way of care anytime soon.

  “Okay.”Breathe. Two. Three.

  “Can I do anything?” Nicky asked.

  “No.” Anna kept breathing, counting, feeling the pulse.

  “Is she going to die?” The voice had lost a few more years, edging toward baby talk.

  Shock, maybe,Anna thought, but there was nothing she could do about it.

  The reassuring sound of boots and ranger voices finally came down the vast hall.’Bout damn time, Anna thought uncharitably. Eighty-four
times she’d breathed for Cricket. Seven minutes. Not a bad response time.

  Three rangers Anna didn’t know by sight edged her to one side. Cricket was efficiently intubated, and one of the EMTs began squeezing the football-shaped plastic bellows that pumped air into her lungs. The other two lifted her onto a gurney, asking Anna questions as they worked. They were wheeling Cricket out when the chief ranger walked into the dining room.

  “Who helped her?” she asked, looking at Anna.

  “She did. The older lady,” replied an EMT whom Anna had liked till that moment.

  “Could you come to the clinic with us?” Lorraine Knight asked.

  Anna looked to Tiny. Amazingly the head waitress nodded assent.

  “Please,” Nicky whispered, catching Anna’s hand as she turned to go. “You’ve got to take me with you.” Her face had lost color, and though her friend was in good hands, none of the terror had left her eyes.

  “See if Tiny will let you go home. You need to lie down, get something hot to drink. Do you know Mary Bates? She’s just down the hall. Tell her I said she was to keep you company, make you tea.”

  “No. Please. I’ve got to see the doctor.”

  Anna looked at her more closely. She didn’t appear to be having trouble breathing. If anything, she was in danger of hyperventilating.

  “Ah.” Anna got it then. Whatever Cricket was on, Nicky’d taken, smoked, dropped or shot up the same stuff.

  “Anna!” Lorraine called.

  “In a minute,” Anna said curtly then turned her attention to Nicky. “Where did you get it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Anna Pigeon. Come on.” Lorraine again.

  Anna would get no more from Nicky. Anyway, she was pretty sure the girl was telling the truth, part of it anyway.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Pretty impressive.”

  The voice, so close, startled her. Scott Wooldrich, the assistant chef, stood in the shadows not six feet from them. With half his face catching the light, he looked different, menacing.

  “You’re a real take-charge kind of gal, aren’t you?” The menace had leeched into his voice. Then he smiled and was himself again. “I like that in a woman. You seemed to have everything under control. I just hung around in case you needed any heavy lifting.”

  “Thanks,” Anna said and meant it. Having him close was both comforting and exhilarating. Maybe because he ran interference for her when Wither was on a rampage. Maybe because of the sheer unremitting maleness of him.

  “Hey! Get a move on,” the chief ranger called again, and Anna was rescued from having to think about it.

  “Ranger Knight, Nicky’s having a little respiratory distress as well,” she said to keep the girl near her.

  “Bring her.” Lorraine left the dining room.

  Anna and Nicky looked to Tiny. Lorraine might be chief ranger but Tiny Bigalo was empress of the dining hall.

  In the second miracle of the evening, she said: “Go, then.” Anna thought Tiny would have expected employees to die on the job out of loyalty to the company.

  “Respiratory problems,” Lorraine said to the waiting EMTs. One of the rangers dropped back to look at Nicky. “We’ll put you in the ambulance. Do you . . . ?” Before she could ask any of the diagnostic questions, Nicky was backing away.

  “No. No. I’ll come in my own car. I’m okay. I just. . . I might . . . I might need to see a doctor.”

  “You want me to come with you?” Anna asked, remembering the panic in the Nicky’s eyes.

  “No. You go. Please. Please. I’ll get my car. I’ll be right behind you.” This last was delivered over her shoulder as she hurried from the dining room.

  Since the busgirl wasn’t to be carried out feet first after all, Anna thought Tiny might make her finish out her shift, but the headwaitress had already retreated into the kitchen, no doubt calling back the shift that had just clocked out. Anna glanced at her watch. The wedding party was late. Tiny hated that. Anna was glad she wasn’t going to be around to collect the fallout.

  “She going to be okay?” the EMT asked of Nicky.

  Anna had seen no signs of difficulty breathing, disorientation, sweating or any other symptoms. “I guess so,” she said. “I think she’s mostly scared. Still, she’ll need to be checked out.”

  “Yeah. They do that at the clinic.”

  Anna heard the huff in the ranger’s voice and wondered at it till she realized she’d spoken not like a middle-aged, divorced, down-and-out waitress but as if she were the woman’s district ranger. America’s caste system was not immutable or state-sanctioned, but one did exist. Waitresses were frowned upon if they spoke with force or confidence regarding anything but the daily special. Inadvertently Anna had behaved as an equal, and the ranger was offended.

  “Let’s go,” Lorraine ordered. “It’ll be tight in the ambulance. You ride with me,” she said to Anna. This time conscious of her place in the pecking order, Anna humbly followed the chief ranger, walking a half step behind as befitted her reduced circumstances. There was some satisfaction in knowing she’d earned this lesson in humility. Unthinkingly, she’d perpetrated the same subtle form of snobbery more times than she was comfortable remembering.

  The clinic was small but well equipped. The staff was comprised of men and women who’d chosen this remote outpost in which to practice medicine not because they couldn’t compete for jobs in the open market, but because they preferred the glories of Yosemite to the monetary rewards of the cities. Cricket was put on oxygen and the doctor was called from his home. By the time he arrived, Cricket was resting more easily and seemed out of immediate danger.

  The rangers who’d responded to the 911 call told the doctor what they could of the incident. Anna once again chafed on the sidelines. When she could stand it no more, she bulled her way into the conversation to tell them she believed Cricket had been using an inhalant, probably marijuana or crack, and had suffered an adverse reaction either to the drug or to some additive of the drug. Her news was listened to politely but only taken seriously by Lorraine Knight.

  Because of the life-threatening nature of any ailment that compromised breathing, it was decided Cricket would be transported to the hospital in Merced, an hour and a half southwest of the park.

  What with one thing and another, forty-five minutes passed before Anna noticed Nicky had never arrived at the clinic.

  CHAPTER

  4

  There were plenty of reasons Nicky might have stayed at the dorm: sloth, addiction, aversion to doctors. The only one that concerned Anna was collapse from respiratory arrest. She looked around for Lorraine. Through the windowed half-wall between the waiting area and the “No Unauthorized Persons Allowed” zone of the clinic, Anna saw her talking with the doctor.

  In her present guise Anna couldn’t very well barge in and report. One of Lorraine’s law enforcement rangers chose that moment to walk past. Anna grabbed her.

  “Nicky, my roommate, never showed up. She said she was coming. Whatever Cricket was into, Nicky did the same stuff.”

  For the briefest instant the ranger looked blank, and Anna feared the NPS was going downhill. The information jelled, the woman’s eyes focused and she said, “I’ll give you a lift.”

  It wasn’t waitresses whom emergency-response people looked down on; it was anybody who wasn’t them and/or wasn’t in need of them, tunnel vision born of seven parts necessity and three parts arrogance. One on one, the caste differences disappeared.

  The ranger’s name was Diane, but that was all Anna learned during their short ride to the employee dorms. She talked a blue streak. A listener by training and inclination, Anna was uncomfortable doing all the talking. An indefinable power was lost. When one opened one’s mouth, learning, seeing—the kind of seeing Anna was good at, seeing behind faces to the gears within that drive human emotion and action—was lost. Still, she persevered, telling Diane of the out of control hilarity, loss of balance, confused spatial relatio
ns, the sudden wedding party—every detail she could remember. It was her hope the ranger would repeat the information to Lorraine. What good it would do, she didn’t know. There was nothing in it relating to the four missing kids, but it might help in diagnosing Cricket or, if they were unbelievably lucky, in finding the source of whatever it was Cricket and Nicky were using.

  The door to the room she shared with Cricket and Nicky was closed. To Diane it meant nothing. In Anna tiny alarms went off. To her unending annoyance, the girls never closed the door. They were party animals who craved the incessant noise and constant comings and goings of their fellows.

  Anna pushed the door open. The lights were off.

  “Nicky?”

  A squeak came from the darkness on Cricket and Nicky’s side of the room. Nicky—or something—was alive and awake.

  “It’s Anna. I’m going to turn on the light, okay?” Without waiting for an answer, she flipped the switch by the door. For reasons she’d never been able to fathom, institutional light came in only two forms: dim and creepy like the leavings of a brownout, or harsh and glaring. The overhead lighting in the Ahwahnee dorm was of the former variety. The dirty wash of feeble illumination gave the room the look of a tenement building in a Eugene O’Neill play.

  Nicky was on her bed in her waitress uniform, down to the small black apron she’d apparently forgotten to take off. The ticket book was sticking out of the pocket. She leaned against the wall, hands loose at her sides like a broken doll, face simultaneously blank and afraid. Anna wondered if she’d slipped into a drug nightmare and couldn’t tell whether the demons she battled were from within or without.

  Followed by Diane, Anna entered the room but didn’t crowd too close to Nicky. “It’s me, Anna,” she said again soothingly. “This is Diane. She’s one of the EMTs who came when you called. You never showed up at the clinic and we got worried.”

  “Is Cricket okay?” Nicky asked.

  Anna relaxed, shoulders she’d not realized she’d tensed dropping, the small bones in her neck cracking softly. Nicky was in and of this world and able to think of someone beside herself. Good indicators of health and sanity.