"Take Us to the Hospital"

[Ruggahissy]

((Tirzah Foss memories start))

Showgirls played on the television upside down. Tirzah was hanging off the couch with her feet where her head should have been and her head a few inches from the floor, watching the VH1 censored version of the film. Poorly rendered bras had been pasted onto the chests of the girls with what looked like MS paint. It was raining outside. Tirzah picked at a bag of Funions which had been her dinner and sometimes sipped ginger ale from a crazy straw that looped around in elaborate neon-colored hearts.

She was 13 and she was alone for the night. It wasn’t unusual, but tonight her parents were at an award event for local publications. Her brother was going too, but she hadn’t been invited. She suspected that they had forgotten about her in the planning for the night, but by the time she caught wind of it she wasn’t offended. Tirzah wouldn’t have wanted to go anyway. It sounded boring.

“You’re a whore, darlin’” said Crystal Conners, nominal villain, but not to Tirzah.

“No I’m not.”

“We all are. We take the cash, we cash the check,” said Conners.

Are they taking cash and then cashing checks? wondered Tirzah.

A loud thud from upstairs made her contract her abdomen so that she could sit up from her awkward position. The garish colors of the movie continued to flicker in the mostly darkened living room as she looked towards the stairs. Tirzah fumbled her way right-side up and took a deep breath before calmly walking across the room and up the stairs to investigate.

On the floor she saw her dog, Stephen. Confused, she walked up to give him a pet. Her fingers made contact with his shaggy coat and he whined pitifully. His breathing was shallow and labored.

“Steph, Steph stop playing,” she urged. She pushed back the fur and saw pain in his eyes.

Tirzah ran back down the stairs and frantically started tapping out a message to her parents.

Tirzah wrote:

Mom, Dad! Something is wrong with Steph! You have to come home so we can take him to the emergency vet, he’s not moving and he looks sick!


Tirzah chewed on her nail and put the phone down. Five minutes. She picked up the phone. No response. Tirzah frantically looked side to side in the living room. Could she call a cab? She didn’t have any money. She took her phone and went back up the stairs and sat next to her dog, knees pulled up to her chest. She stared at the back of her phone, patting her dog now and then, though it didn’t seem to help much.

Time passed. She looked at the phone again.

MESSAGE READ

Her fingers gripped the phone so hard it shook. She scrolled through the contacts until she saw her brother’s name. He was with them, she knew he had gone to the dinner too. She hit the option to call and waited.

One ring and voicemail.


“Asshole!” she yelped, and threw the phone against a wall where it was pristinely protected by its hard case.

Tirzah could feel the panic start to rise, despite her best attempts to push it back down. She tried to stroke Steph for comfort, to clam her nerves, but this time he didn’t make noise.






Mrs. Vivienne Butler had come home from a nice night out with girlfriends and was flipping through Netflix on her living room couch. Her husband had gone up to bed, wanting to get up early for a meeting. It had been a good dinner, and it was great to see the girls from high school again and enjoy some soul food.

The waiter at the restaurant had been mildly harassed by the group, but they left a good tip for his troubles. He’d recommended the show The Great British Bakeoff. She was starting to drift off to the sound of polite baking when her doorbell rang. It rang over and over and over.

Irritated she got up, and answered the door, prepared to turn the sprinklers on anyone trying to sell anything at this time of night.

On her doorstep was the small neighbor girl in hysterical tears, clutching an unresponsive beagle.


“P-Pl-Please....” she sobbed.

((Tirzah Foss continued elsewhere))