Ambulance Girl Read Free Page A

stale and sickening, and the level of noise from people making happy conversation became shrieking and painful to my ears.
    The night before the bus ride we went to Sally’s house for dinner. I wanted to cry. I wanted her life. She was thin and athletic and pregnant with her second baby. Her first child was gorgeous and sweet and the house she and her husband, Tom, lived in was perfect. Every object was aesthetically lovely, her garden bright and blooming with herbs and flowers, the food she served a bounty of homegrown vegetables and delicious homemade breads. It was also perfectly casual; Sally wore her trademark bright red sneakers and seemed to host the dinner party effortlessly. I wanted her life—but what the hell would I do with it? The flowers and fruits would all wilt and rot as I sat in my green chair and watched the
Ricki Lake Show.
I was nauseous from the good health and calm that radiated from this happy household.
    But the next morning I managed to pull myself together enough to resemble the bright chatty person people heard on the radio. These listeners were paying a hundred bucks apiece to meet Michael and me, so I felt it was the least I could do to wash my face. When Michael and I got to the bus in which we were going to spend the next six hours, I panicked. It looked like a car-rental bus and I didn’t like the driver’s looks. He looked like the type of person who would not stop the bus if I asked him to.
    “I can’t do this,” I whispered to Michael. I could see the look of frustration on his face. “I’m sorry,” I said, wishing I could give him money or a gift to make up for my shortcomings as a wife and partner.
    “I can’t do this,” I said to Sally, who was blessedly cool about it.
    “Yeah, you said you would rather ride in the car with me,” she said.
    I felt like a big baby. I thought about all the field trips in grade school that I missed because I was afraid to be on a bus, or away from home. My phobias and separation anxieties went way back to my childhood. “I’ll talk to the listeners when we get to the restaurant,” I said, trying to make it better. I felt like an asshole as I got in the front seat of her car.
    At the end of a long day, the bus trip was over. Michael had been charming enough for both of us; our listeners seemed happy. They liked the NPR tote bags that were given to them and they had liked the restaurant we had traveled so many miles to eat at.
    I was glad, but I was still complaining. “I don’t know why we couldn’t have just eaten somewhere in Minneapolis,” I said to Michael as we sat waiting for the plane. “There are plenty of great places to eat there.”
    Michael looked at me. I could tell he was tired and pissed off. “They live in Minneapolis. The point was to go on an adventure, go somewhere new,” he said.
    I got defensive. “I think it is stupid. There are many good places to eat in town that we wouldn’t have to take a bus to.” Michael chose not to answer. He took out his laptop computer and started to work, staring at the small screen so he could block me out.
    We were not going home. We were headed for Chicago, a fifty-five-minute flight from Minneapolis. We had been asked to give a lecture the next day at a Chicago-based think tank. They wanted to know what we had observed about other people’s eating habits: what they ate, what aisles they shopped in the supermarket, what food magazines appealed to what demographics. They were putting us up at the Four Seasons in a lavish suite and paying us well. It was exciting and I was looking forward to it.
    With the long bus ride behind me, I never imagined that the true nightmare was just about to begin. We boarded the plane and taxied away from the gate. Then a strange thing happened. We headed off the main runway onto a smaller one, then taxied all the way to the farthest outskirts of the airport. There the plane stopped and shut off its engines.
    My fear of flying had little to do with