Outside I saw flashing lights down the hill. I couldn’t see the vehicles, but I heard the gate creak open and then firefighters were coming up the path, dressed in heavy-booted firefighting gear. I was still holding my phone to my ear, and the operator told me I could hang up now, so I did, and I led the firefighters into the house and up to the kitchen. Analemma was barking frantically from my room.

As the firefighters examined my grandmother, they asked me what had happened, and I told them everything I had told the operator. “Is she okay?” I asked.

“She’s had a stroke,” one of the firefighters said. “When did you notice it beginning?”

More sirens sounded in the distance. “When she dropped the tomatoes,” I said.

“When was that?”

I thought back. “Right before I called 911.” I looked at my phone and the time stamp on my last call. “A little after six.”

The sirens cut off, and I heard footsteps pounding up the porch steps. I went back into the living room to see paramedics carrying a gurney into the house. They rushed past me into the kitchen, where the firefighters moved away from Joan. The paramedics knelt beside her on the tomato-streaked floor and tried to talk to her. She was moving her head groggily but still couldn’t speak clearly. The paramedics—a man and a woman—asked me what had happened, and once more I explained while they shone lights into Joan’s eyes and fitted her with an oxygen mask.

“Who are you?” asked the female paramedic, looking up at me. She had a dark brown ponytail and was wearing a blue uniform with medical patches on the short sleeves. Her name tag read ORTIZ.

“Aria West. Her granddaughter.”

“Do you live with her?”

“Only for this summer.”

Ortiz and her partner, an Asian man with short dark hair, lifted Joan in one motion onto the stretcher.

“Are you taking her to the hospital?” I asked.

“Yes,” the man said. His name tag read WON. “We need her medical information and her identification. Do you have that?”

“No, I—wait,” I said, and ran down to the front closet, where Joan kept her purse.

The paramedics came down the stairs behind me, and Won asked me to get out of the way. I moved aside, and they carried Joan out of the house and down the path toward the street. I hurried after them, and the curving path seemed ridiculous now, a Chutes-and-Ladders kind of obstacle in the way of saving Joan’s life. Through the gate I saw a red fire truck and an ambulance, all their lights flashing. At the rear of the ambulance the paramedics lifted the gurney, and it unfolded and refolded, the wheels sliding with a clatter into the back. Ortiz jumped inside, and Won turned to me. “How old are you?” he asked.

“Eighteen.”