Read Eating Heaven for Free Online Page A

address?”
    I give it to her and ask, “Are you going to send someone, or . . . I don’t know, should I try to bring him in?” All I can think of is the snow piling higher around my car, covering the windows, the tire tracks.
    “An ambulance has been dispatched, but it might take a few extra minutes with the weather, okay? Stay with me on the line, though, until they get there. What’s your name?”
    “Ellie,” I say, then correct myself. “Eleanor. Eleanor Samuels.”
    “Okay, Ellie,” she says, “and how about your uncle’s name?”
    She’s nice. She asks me question after question, things I can answer, things I can’t, until finally blue and red lights flash through the front window.
    Through it all, Benny has fallen asleep.
     
    It takes forever to get my car unstuck, rocking back and forth with tires spinning and screaming, but one of Benny’s neighbors finally comes out with a bag of kitty litter. She throws some under my tires and enlists her stout son to help push me free.
    The ambulance is long gone, Benny warmly bundled in the back,and a female paramedic at his side, which makes me feel better about not riding with him. If I leave my car here, it will be days before I can get it out.
    The drive to the hospital is eerie, the twilight deepened by low cloud cover and the omnipresent snow. It’s falling in triplicate, gangs of flakes clinging together, covering the windshield as my skinny wipers struggle to keep up. I stretch my eyes wide, wondering if I’m stuck in a nightmare. There’s no way this is all really happening. The snow, the ambulance. Benny’s yellow skin and hollow eyes.
    A battered pickup truck slides sideways through the intersection in front of me, my car skidding slightly before the tires grab at the crunchy slush. An inch-thick layer of accumulated snow slides from my roof and veils the windshield. For a moment I’m afraid I’ll suffocate. I can’t see, I don’t know what’s out there, what’s coming at me. I jump from the car to brush off the snow with my coat sleeve, looking out behind for approaching traffic. There’s no one out on the road but me and the truck’s driver, a swarthy-looking man who is cursing and gunning his engine, spinning his tires as he careens sideways down Boones Ferry into the darkness.
     
    It feels like hours until I get to the ER. I hurry in and look around, then head for the only sign of life: a beehived woman reading a newspaper at the reception desk.
    “They just brought in Benny Sloan,” I say. “I’m his niece. Where can I find him?”
    She checks a log, then makes an indecipherable page; it sounds like she’s calling for Dr. Scary. The lobby is empty except for me, a surprise given the road conditions. I stand at the desk, trying not to tap my foot, my fingers, trying to relax to the strains of unidentifiable Muzak from somewhere overhead.
    After a few moments, a kid who looks like a college student in a lab coat walks up and introduces himself as Dr. Terry. His breath smells of Altoids. I shake his hand, although it seems idiotic in an emergency. “I’m Benny Sloan’s niece,” I say. “How is he? What’s going on?”
    “He was complaining of severe stomach pain, so we’ve sent him fora scan that should give us a better look at what’s happening in his belly.”
    “He was coherent?” I ask. “He was completely out of it at home.”
    He nods. “Yeah, I noticed some confusion. Could be any number of things either associated with the other symptoms or not.”
    He’s entirely too young, with ski-jump hair and chewed-to-the-quick fingernails, but he seems to be in charge, even though he’s holding a clipboard that has a S HRED TO LIVE , M AX R USH S NOWBOARDS sticker on the back.
    “How long has your uncle been jaundiced?”
    “I think I first noticed it a couple of days ago, but I didn’t know what it was. Do you think he has hepatitis?”
    “And the time you saw him before that?” He looks up at me.
    “I, um, I