“Well, something’s loose.” The noise seemed to be coming from the back. I turned and shrieked just as the biggest rattlesnake I had ever seen in my life struck where my arm had been and where Sister’s hand was now.

Sister centered the Packards’ mailbox and the airbags deployed. It was a nightmare that I would live over and over again for months, being engulfed in an airbag with my last view being that of a huge poisonous snake latched on to my sister’s hand.

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter
Eighteen

“So y’all are handlers. You told me the other day you didn’t handle snakes.”

We were traveling down the mountain to Oneonta in the same ambulance that Luke had traveled in to the hospital. The same two young women had picked up all two hundred fifty pounds of Sister and slid her easily into the back of the ambulance. The same driver. The same paramedic, Tammy, sitting across from me.

Sister was strapped on the gurney, the hand the snake had bitten encased in what looked like Styrofoam. Her eyes were closed and she was deathly pale, but every few minutes she managed to say, “This is all your fault, Patricia Anne.”

And, believe it or not, I’d say, “I know. I’m sorry.”

Had I suggested that Sister accompany me to Chandler Mountain? Ever? Had I put the snake in the car? The only thing I was guilty of was moving my arm just as the snake struck, allowing it to hit Sister’s hand. Nevertheless, I felt guilty as hell and kept agreeing that it was, indeed, my fault.

“We’re not handlers,” I assured Tammy. “We’re just having a streak of bad luck.”

“God’s truth,” from the gurney.

“God’s truth,” Tammy agreed. “You feeling okay?” She was asking me.

Actually I felt like I’d been in a boxing match with Mohammed Ali. No, Cassius Clay before he was Mohammed Ali. When he was still slinging those twenty-year-old punches in every direction and winning the Olympics. Air bags save lives; I’m all for them. But my tiny body is no match for them. It hurt to take a deep breath, and my face felt like the top layer of skin was gone.

“You may have to help me out of the ambulance,” I said. “I’m getting stiffer by the minute.”

“This is all your fault, Patricia Anne,” came from the gurney.

“Are you hurting bad?” I asked Sister.

“Of course I’m hurting. And I’m feeling dizzy and nauseated, and I’ve wrecked my car.”

“She’s going to be fine,” Tammy assured me. “We got to her in plenty of time.” Then to Sister, “You haven’t been drinking strychnine, have you?”

Sister opened one eye and looked at Tammy. “Of course not. Why would I drink strychnine?”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re not a handler. Some of them drink it.”

“Strychnine? Like the poison?”