He stares me down for several seconds, panting heavily. Finally, he slides his feet off the bed then turns and trots to my closet. He brings back one tennis shoe, drops it on the floor beside the bed and barks again.
“It’s too early to walk,” I tell him, flopping back down on my pillow. I hear his toenails on the hardwoods and a few seconds later the thonk of another shoe hitting the floor. Another bark. “Einstein, I said no!”
Another scrape from a big paw has me up and out of the bed. Angrily, I grab his collar and tow him toward the door. That’s when I hear the sound of a loud engine pulling up in front of the house.
I stop and listen. Einstein is absolutely still as he watches me. He’s a very smart dog and this behavior isn’t like him. A little thread of alarm snakes its way down my spine.
I hear the engine shut off. Then a door slam. Then another. And then someone is shouting, “He’s in orchard. This way.” The voice is heavily accented and unfamiliar, making me think it’s one of the pickers.
But if someone is hurt out in the orchard, why is a picker at the house doing the talking rather than my father?
Apprehension brings me fully awake. I reason to myself that it’s probably because Daddy is still in the orchard. He’s not the type of person to leave someone who’s hurt. He’d send someone else for help. He probably called 911 from his cell phone and then told one of the pickers to go wait for the paramedics to arrive.
Jumping out of bed and rushing to the window, I pull back the pale pink sheer curtain and peek through the slats of my blinds.
There’s an ambulance in my driveway. I catch the departure of a dark-haired guy, dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt (obviously the picker) leading two uniform-clad emergency workers through the gate and into the orchard. Something is obviously very wrong; they’re wasting no time as they disappear into the trees, carrying the supply-laden stretcher between them.
Again, Einstein barks at me, urging me toward the door. His persistence is making me more nervous than anything, so I hurry downstairs to the kitchen and grab the walkie talkie from the counter. It stays in the same spot at all times. Everyone knows never to move it.
I press the button and speak into it. “Daddy? Is everything okay?”
I hear a crackle of static followed by silence. I wait several seconds for a response. When I get none, I call again. “Cris Theopolis, what’s your twenty?”
Using truck driver speak always, always, always makes me laugh. It always has, since I was a little girl.
Always.
Except for today. Today it’s not funny. And the reason is because my father always, always, always answers right away.
Always.
Except for today.
Like I’ve swallowed a lump of lead, the pit of my stomach feels heavy with dread. Something is terribly wrong. I can feel it like cold breath on the nape of my neck. The skin on my arms pebbles with chills.
“Daddy?” I call again. I know there’s anxiety in my voice and that I probably don’t sound very much like myself. It’s hard to speak past the fingers of fear that are squeezing my throat.
Finally another crackle of static is followed by a voice, but it’s not my father’s. “Who this?” the man asks, his English broken.
Fear erupts into terror. “This is Jenna Theopolis. My father owns this property. I need to speak with him please.”
“The men just now get here. They take him to hospital. Can’t talk right now.”
The line goes dead again.
And panic sets in.
I’m alone. I have little information and a nearly unbearable weight on my chest. And my father is out in the orchard. Somewhere. Hurt.
My heart is hammering against my ribs, threatening to break them into tiny pieces if I don’t find out what’s going on. Taking the stairs two at a time, I race to my room and throw on some clothes. Less than five minutes later, I grab the walkie that never moves and I hit the front door, fully dressed and ready to scour every inch of the orchard for my father if need be.
Something tells me I should wait, that going out isn’t the best thing to do, but I ignore that voice. I’m not a “wait” kind of person; I’m an “act” kind of person. For better or worse, to make a move or to move on, I act. And now, I’m acting. I’m going in search of my father.
Einstein and I stop at the fence. I squat and grab his face in my hands, looking directly into his somber, intelligent brown eyes. “Take me to Daddy, Einstein. Take me to him.”
With a bark, Einie takes off running East. I’m hot on his heels, oblivious to the tears streaming down my face and the ache in my legs as I dodge trunks and branches to pursue the dog as he runs through the trees rather than up the lanes between them.
Another bark and Einstein abruptly cuts left down a row. I hurry to catch him. When I step out into the opening, I see a picker leading the two paramedics toward me, back in the direction of the house. Between the emergency workers is the stretcher. Atop it is my father.
“Daddy!” I yell, my voice cracking with emotion.
Three pairs of eyes are watching me as I race toward them. My father doesn’t move.
When I reach them, they don’t stop. They are walking briskly. They don’t even slow down long enough to let me talk to my father.
I walk alongside the stretcher. My dad is lying prone, covered in a white sheet and strapped in so that he can’t move or fall off. An oxygen mask is covering the lower part of his face, a face that’s unusually ashen. His eyes are closed and, when I reach out to touch the top of the arm closest to me, the lids don’t even flicker.
“Daddy?” He doesn’t respond. His eyelashes don’t flutter. He doesn’t turn his head. He doesn’t move a muscle.
Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!
“What happened?” I ask in general, speaking to anyone who will answer me.
One of the EMTs answers. I can tell by his kind expression that he’s trying to be gentle, which upsets me all the more. What is he hiding?
“We can’t be sure, ma’am, but considering what this man has said, it sounds like he fell off a ladder and hit his head. We won’t know anything for sure until we get him to the hospital. He’s been unresponsive up to this point.”
The picker falls back to walk closer to me. “He fall off ladder. Doesn’t wake up. We call emergency.”
In my head, I can picture it. The first pick of the season is done by my father. It’s something he and my mother apparently used to do together, every single year without fail. And they always used the same ladder, the ladder that had been used by my mother’s family for generations. That damn rickety, old, wooden ladder.