She sees the resemblance.
“Yes, dear?” Cat asks.
“Can I… use a phone?”
“Of course. You’re feeling a bit better?”
“Definitely. Not a hundred per cent, but way better than when Ty found me in that ditch. Thank you. Thank you so much. I’ll get better, for sure?”
“For sure. And my pleasure. We need to see where things are at when that bag is empty, but don’t worry, just rest. Be right back.”
Cat leaves.
“You look like her,” Ivy whispers.
“I know. She’s my mother.”
“Yeah,” Ivy breathes. “Thank you for pulling me out of that ditch.”
“You should not have been there,” I hiss.
She bites her lip. “But…”
Cat’s back and Ivy stops speaking. She’s passed a phone and she immediately punches on the keys. I watch from her bedside listening to the noises coming from the thing. I’m familiar with the gadgets but I’ve never used one. I don’t know who she’s calling.
“Becks? It’s Ivy. Yeah, hi. I have a little problem. You’re not gonna believe this. I got bit by a poisonous snake and… no, I lost my phone and haven’t had a chance to check my email either, what’s up?”
Ivy listens and her face goes shocked, concerned and then her eyes land on me and I see something I can’t measure.
Ivy’s eyes go wide and then she swallows. “Oh. Wow. That’s just… wild. No one got hurt, right?” She pauses, looking concerned and as relief spreads across her face, I feel it inside my belly. I’m growing more and more connected with her by the day, it seems.
She continues to talk. “Good. Good. Thank goodness. Well, yeah, I’m in a kind of rural clinic right now, hooked up to an IV and I have no idea what happens from here, so how about if I just call you in, say… two or three days and we talk then? I’ll shoot you an e-mail as soon as I’m connected again.”
She waits patiently as the person on the other end is obviously talking before wrapping up her call with a smile in her voice. “Yeah, no, it’s fine. The doctor says I’ll be good. No idea what kind but a rattler of some sort. Yeah… Oh, lonnnng story. We got separated and I had a car problem, phone problem too, but, oh… gotta go. The doc needs to, um, do something here. Okay then… will do. Thanks so much. Bye.”
She punches buttons on the phone and with her free hand she crosses her middle and pointer fingers and whispers, “Don’t answer, don’t answer, don’t answer…”
I frown as I notice her face has paled again.
She blows out a long breath and shifts her body a bit in the bed. I look at her ankle and it appears as if the swelling has receded some more. Progress, but my Ivy isn’t fully recovered yet.
“Hi Mom?” Ivy says cheerily, “It’s me. I’m still out of town. I got bit by a snake; can you believe it? I was, um, hiking and I …, I did say by a snake, but I’m fine. I’m gonna be good, but I lost my phone and I’m guessing I’m gonna be here in this, um hospital overnight, so I will call you soon. I’m totally fine. I had a problem with my car, but I’ll figure all that out and… yeah. I love you and I’ll talk to you later. Don’t worry, okay? Even if it takes me a few days to get back to you. Things are, um..” she looks at me. “Complicated for a few reasons, but I have the work thing covered, and I’m guessing you already know about that since you watch the news every night, so not a problem there for me to be off for a bit. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
She punches a button on the phone, lets out a big breath and then she lifts the phone again and looks at it before she puts it down on the bed beside her and closes her eyes. She swallows.
There were no pauses among all those words. She waited for no replies so unlike her first call, that second one wasn’t a two-way conversation. The amount of ‘um’ uses says a lot about the conversation and her relationship with her mother. She said ‘um’ to me when she lied about the boyfriend when we first met. I stare at her, waiting for an explanation. I don’t get one. She’s making an effort to avoid my face right now. It’s pissing me off and I don’t need to be angrier than I already am.
Cat returns and uses medical instruments to check Ivy’s forehead, her wrist, and wraps something around her bicep and it tightens and registers numbers on a machine.
Cat writes down some things and then pulls a wheeled stool over beside the bed and begins to ask questions. I learn Ivy’s twenty-seven, learn her date of birth, her blood type, that she has no known allergies, and that she’s had her appendix and tonsils removed. Cat asks about her last tetanus shot and then tells her she’ll need to administer one. I don’t know what a tetanus shot is, but I know what an appendix is, and I know what tonsils are.