Twenty minutes afterward, the paramedics were crouching beside me on the gleaming floor of Rosemont Grill, breaking through the tense silence my parents had worked so hard to preserve.
My mother, Evelyn Pierce, remained motionless with her napkin still neatly resting across her lap. My father, Richard Pierce, seemed annoyed, not scared. Annoyed. As though my collapsing next to the table had been another attention-seeking performance from the daughter who had “always made things difficult.”
“Ma’am, can you hear me?” one paramedic asked.
I attempted to respond, but every breath scraped through me like shattered glass.
Around the room, diners watched from candlelit tables. The manager, a broad-shouldered man called Luis, stood by the hostess station with the phone still clutched in his hand. He had disregarded my father’s demand to “stay out of family business” and called 911 regardless.
“She’s dramatic,” Dad said coldly. “She’s had anxiety since college.”
The other paramedic faced him. “Sir, please step back.”
“She does this,” Mom added, sounding quiet and em.bar.ras.sed. “She gets overwhelmed.”
I wanted to scre:am. I wanted to remind them I had avoided speaking to them for three years because of exactly this—their talent for transforming someone’s pa!n into inconvenience.
Then the paramedic picked up the small bottle sitting beside my plate.
“Did she take this?” he asked.
Dad’s expression shifted.
Just for a moment.
But I noticed it.
It was my heart medication. The same medicine I had kept inside my purse for years following my diagnosis. Except I had never put it on the table. I had not opened it throughout dinner. I had not touched it since that morning.
