Can't Wait to Get to Heaven Read Free

because her client Beverly Cortwright was coming in for a dye job today, and she needed to get to the shop a little early and do some mixing. As she walked by Elner Shimfissle’s house, she just happened to look up, in time to see her neighbor topple backward off an eight-foot ladder, with what looked like a hundred wasps buzzing all around her and following her right down to the ground. After poor Elner landed with a thud, Tot yelled at her, “Don’t move, Elner!” and ran up her other neighbor’s front porch steps, screaming at the top of her lungs, “Ruby! Ruby! Get out here quick! Elner’s fallen out of the tree again!” Ruby Robinson, a diminutive woman of about five-foot-one, in clear bifocals that made her eyes look twice as big, was having her breakfast, but the instant she heard Tot, she jumped up, grabbed her small black leather doctor’s bag from the hall table, and ran as fast as she could. By the time the two of them reached the side yard, about twenty angry and upset wasps were still flying all around the tree, and Elner Shimfissle was lying on the ground, unconscious. Ruby immediately reached in her bag, pulled out the smelling salts, and snapped it under Elner’s nose, while Tot relayed what she had just witnessed to the other neighbors, who had started to come out of their houses and gather around the fig tree. “I was headed off to work,” she said, “when I heard this loud buzzing noise…buzz…buzz…buzzzzz, so I looked up, and saw Elner hurl herself backward off the top of the ladder, and then…Whamo! Bang! She hit the ground, and it’s a good thing she’s so bottom heavy, because when she fell, she didn’t flip or anything; just went straight down like a ton of bricks.” Ruby quickly popped another smelling salts under Elner’s nose, but still she did not come around. Never taking her eyes off of her patient for a second, Ruby suddenly started barking orders. “Somebody call an ambulance! Merle, bring me a couple of blankets. Tot, go call Norma and tell her what’s happened.” Ruby, who at one time had been head nurse at a major hospital, knew how to give orders, and everybody scattered and did exactly what she said.

Norma Hits the Road

    8:33 AM
    T he second she hung up with Macky, Norma ran to the kitchen again and threw cold water in her face, then flew through the house frantically gathering up her purse, Aunt Elner’s insurance papers and Medicaid information, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and anything else she thought her aunt would need for the hospital. Norma had been waiting for years for something like this to happen, and now that it had, she was glad she’d had the foresight to plan for it. Ten years ago she had prepared a file marked HOSPITAL EMERGENCY, AUNT ELNER.
    She also had an earthquake kit in the garage, where she kept bottled water, matches, six cans of Del Monte chili, a small supply of her hormones, thyroid medicine, aspirin, a jar of Merle Norman cold cream, and fingernail polish remover and an extra pair of earrings. Although it was not very likely that an earthquake would hit Elmwood Springs, Missouri, she felt it was better to be safe than sorry.
    After Norma had gathered all the things for Aunt Elner, she ran out of the house and yelled to a woman in the yard next door, “I’m on my way to the hospital, my aunt’s fallen out of a tree again,” and jumped in the car and took off. The woman, who did not know Norma very well, stood there and watched her leave, wondering what in the world Norma’s aunt was doing up in a tree. After Norma rounded the steep corner and steered out of the complex, she drove across town as fast as she possibly could without breaking the law. The last time Aunt Elner had fallen and Norma had rushed over, she had been pulled over by the highway patrol and given a speeding ticket, the first one in her life, and to make matters worse, when she had driven away, she had backed up over the officer’s foot. Thank God he had been a