Anne Marie parked across the street, well away from the emergency vehicles. Purposefully she trudged over to the house.
The instant Ellen saw her, she bolted down the porch steps, then raced across the yard and threw her arms around Anne Marie’s waist.
“What’s going on?” Anne Marie asked, placing her hands on the child’s shoulders.
“These men are taking Grandma to the hospital,” Ellen sobbed, clinging to Anne Marie.
“But they’re going to help her. Isn’t that what we want?” she asked softly.
“N-o-o! She-e-e mi-gh-t d-i-e,” the girl wailed.
“Let me talk to them,” she said and gently loosened the child’s arms. She walked Ellen back to the porch and left her sitting on the bottom step, still sobbing.
“Are you Anne Marie Roche?” an emergency medical technician asked as he stepped out of the house.
“Yes.”
“Good. The grandmother refused medical treatment until you got here.”
“Why me?”
“You’ll have to ask her that yourself.”
“Then let me talk to her.”
He shook his head. “I’d prefer if you did that at the hospital.”
“I only need a minute,” she insisted stubbornly.
“The grandmother told us you’d be taking the child,” the paramedic said as he started into the house.
“I’m her Lunch Buddy.” She wanted to explain that her entire role in this child’s life was to have lunch with her once a week. She’d met her exactly four times, if you included the brief orientation the previous month.
Lunch. That was supposed to be the full extent of her commitment.
No one had said anything about taking Ellen home with her. That was probably against the rules, anyway, and there seemed to be a lot of those.
“Isn’t there someone else?” she asked, following the EMT into the house.
“Apparently not.” He hurried to a bedroom in the back, Anne Marie directly behind him.
She discovered Dolores Falk on a stretcher. The woman’s complexion was sickly and gray, and every rasping breath seemed to cause her pain. Her hand rested on her heart, her eyes tightly shut. Ellen had said her grandmother was over fifty; in Anne Marie’s observation, she had to be in her mid-sixties but looked older.
“Wheel her out,” the EMT instructed the other two.
The woman’s eyes flew open. “Wait.”
“I’m here,” Anne Marie rushed to tell her.
Dolores reached out and grabbed Anne Marie’s hand in a grip that was shockingly strong. “Don’t let them put Ellen in a foster home. I’ll lose her if they do.”
“But, Mrs. Falk… Where do you want me to take her?”
The woman’s eyes closed again. “Home. Take her home with you.”
“With me? I can’t—”
“You have to…”
The EMT came in then and they rolled the stretcher down the hallway and out of the house. Anne Marie trailed behind, watching helplessly as the emergency crew loaded Ellen’s grandmother into the aid car and drove off, sirens screaming.
With her hands covering her face, Ellen sobbed as she huddled on the steps, her shoulders trembling. Her pitiful cries were drowned out by the screeching aid car.
Anne Marie crouched so they were at eye level. “Your grandmother’s going to see the doctors and they’re going to make her well again.” She prayed with all her heart that this was true.
Ellen nodded tearfully. “When will Grandma be back?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart.” She was so far out of her element here that she was breaking into a cold sweat.
“Where will I go?” Ellen asked.
“For tonight,” Anne Marie said, mustering as much enthusiasm as she could, “you get to come home with me.”
Ellen dropped her hands long enough to look up at Anne Marie. “With you?”
“Yes, that’s why your grandmother called me.”
“Is Baxter there?”
Anne Marie nodded. She should’ve thought of that sooner. Ellen loved Baxter and he’d help take the child’s mind off what was happening to her grandmother.
“Baxter’s waiting for us to get back to my apartment so he can see you. Didn’t you say you wanted to teach him to roll over?”
“Yes-s-s.” For the first time since Anne Marie had arrived, the eight-year-old stopped weeping. She bit her lip and managed to control her sobs.
“We should pack a few things for you.”
“I have my backpack,” Ellen said, looking small and lost and terrified.
“Good idea. We’ll put what you need in there.” Taking the child by the hand, Anne Marie went into the house. It was an older single-story home, probably built soon after the Second World War. The floors were linoleum and the furniture shabby and dated. The hallway led to three bedrooms.
Ellen’s room was the farthest down the hall on the right-hand side.
It was furnished with a single bed, a dresser and a child-size desk and chair. The closet was narrow but more than big enough for Ellen’s few clothes.
“Just get what you’ll need for school tomorrow,” Anne Marie said. In the morning she’d drive Ellen to Woodrow Wilson Elementary, then she’d talk to Ms. Mayer and find out what could be done for the child.
“I brushed my teeth already,” Ellen said. Kneeling down on the braided rug next to her bed, she stuffed a pair of neatly ironed jeans and a pink sweater into her backpack.
“Don’t forget your shoes and socks,” Anne Marie told her. Ellen was wearing bedroom slippers and well-worn pajamas over which she’d pulled a sweatshirt. “Did you have any homework?”
Ellen nodded and hurried to the kitchen, returning with a small binder. “It’s math,” she explained as she added that to the pouch, along with her tennis shoes and a pair of socks.
“This is way past your bedtime,” Anne Marie said.
“Grandma said she wasn’t feeling well when I got home from school,” Ellen told her. “She said I could have cornflakes for dinner.”
“Did you?”
