IMPULSE

The morning I was leaving for college, Mom fainted. She had been playing solitaire at the kitchen table and had stood up too fast.

I was washing the car with Dad, who'd gone inside for matches, then came back out and said, "She's down."

I dropped the hose. Water pooled in the crevices where weeds grew, ran down the driveway and out into the street. "Did you call Dr. Wykoff ?" I followed Dad into the kitchen.

"Now, how'm I going to do that, Mandy?"

Of course. The phone had been cut off. We hadn't paid the bill.

The cards were scattered over the table. Mom lay on the kitchen floor, her pilly pink robe half buttoned and wrinkled around her fleshy splayed legs, slippers still on her feet. Her blue eyes bulged and blinked. "It took you long enough," she said as we bent over to help.

She twisted my forearms in a vise grip while Dad, wheezing, cigarette hanging from between his clenched lips, hoisted her up from behind. "Be careful, for God's sake," she said. "You know how easily I bruise."

"Can you make it to the car?" he asked. "We'll drive you to Ransomville General."

"I'm not going to the hospital looking like this! It's just a meegrain. The dizziness will pass. Help me to bed."

"They're called migraines, Mom." I took one side and Dad took the other.

"Would you listen to smarty-pants!" Mom was short but wide, and solid, still a dead weight after her faint. Her robe smelled of trapped sweat.

"Are you sure you don't want to go to the hospital?" I asked.

"Didn't I just say no? Don't treat me l...