“Uh oh, Uncle Cash got a owey,” Nemi whispered, and I turned to see her watching it all with a smile on her face from the top of the stairs.
“Stay there, baby. Don’t move, okay?”
The last thing I wanted was for her to do the same thing and end up getting hurt by the debris from Cash’s fall. There was so much drywall and shards of whatever else he’d hit scattered around that I felt it getting stuck in my socks as I moved down next to Cash’s head.
“Are you all right?”
The way he’d landed was with one leg through the wall and the other one at a forty-five degree angle up what was left of it. His ass was resting in the hole it’d made, while the rest of his body was supported across three different steps.
“Do I look all right?” he hissed, dropping his head back on his shoulders and groaning. “I think my leg’s stuck.”
Carefully making my way down the narrowest part of the stairs where they curved and doing my best not to kick him in the head and just add insult to injury, I walked quickly through the doorway to the living room and had a look to see what the damage was like on this side.
Not thinking, I tickled his toes. I’d had a no shoes in the house policy ever since Nemi was born, so he’d only been wearing his socks—something he’d lost on the foot that I was touching.
“Ach,” he yelled. “Stop it.”
I swear the devil came over me because I dragged my finger up the arch instead of doing as he’d asked. When he bellowed my name, I bent over to see how big the hole was. Unfortunately, karma found me quickly, because I came face-to-face with his crotch where it was wedged in the hole on the other side.
Shuddering, I walked back around and stopped next to him, tapping my tooth with my fingernail while I tried to figure out how to fix the issue. As much as I liked to be independent and deal with shit on my own, I couldn’t with this situation.
Then a bright idea hit me.
“Cole and Ebru Townsend’s son went through their wall when he was skidding down a mattress on the stairs. Do you want me to call them and see what—”
“No,” he clipped, interrupting me, and glaring at me like I was the devil. “I do not want you to call any of the Townsends. What I want you to do is to call the fire department, who aren’t allowed to tell anyone what happened after they cut me out of this thing.”
“You’re being unreasonable.”
“Unreasonable? Cole Townsend got high as a kite after having his shoulder popped back in and re-injured it. That’s on the bottom of the stupid bullshit he’s done list, by the way, and it doesn’t even come close to what the rest of the family have done.
“If you called them in to help, I’d either end up paralyzed, or they’d demolish your house in the process of getting me out—and I’d still be stuck. All that’d be left for the fire department when they got here would be me with my leg stuck in a wall on top of a pile of fucking rubble.” He had a point there. “And know what else?”
I knew it was a rhetorical question, but I still shook my head.
“It would be blasted all over social media regardless. I’m not living that life, Heidi, so call 911.”
Sighing, I pulled my phone out and made the call. When the dispatcher asked what the problem was and I outlined it for her, she paused. “Is this a Townsend callout?”
“No, ma’am. It’s my brother, not a Townsend.”
There was frantic tapping, but she mumbled as she typed, “Not a Townsend, got it, I’ve let them know. What’s your last name, honey?”
“Du Plessis.”
“Aw,” she cooed as she typed even more instructions out for whoever would be attending. “That’s a pretty name. Y’all French?”
“South African.”
“Wait, are you Antonis and Angelique’s kids?”
I turned my back on Cash, who was glaring at me with his arms crossed over his chest, a feat I thought was quite remarkable considering his current position lying across three steps.
“Yeah, that’s our parents.”
“I go to church with them,” she crowed. “Get out of town. What a small world.”
I bit my tongue against saying it was a small town… that might be why she knew them. Instead, I asked, “They go to church?”
“Really?” Cash growled, and when I glanced back at him, he jerked his hand to indicate his predicament again.
“Did you know Mom and Dad go to church?”
Given that he could only look at me upside down without straining his neck and adding to his issues, Cash’s frown was pretty obvious. “They do? Since when?”
“Wait,” the lady squealed, making me jerk the phone away from my head. “Are you the cake maker?”