Hazel Helps Out

Chapter One: Almost There
"Hazel? Are you awake?” Mom’s voice startles me, and my eyes blink open.
“Yes,” I say, shifting in the back seat.
I wasn’t sleeping. I was telling myself a story inside my head. It’s about a girl and her dog. They go on a long car ride to visit the girl’s grandma. When they get there, the grandma has freshly baked cookies waiting for them . . . and they have a nice visit . . . and they all live happily ever after.
Spot looks at me like that would never happen.
He’s right. But how does he even know what I’m thinking? Can he read my mind?
Maybe.
He’s a dog, and dogs might have special powers. It would be fun to write a story about that sometime.
“We’re almost there,” Mom says in a tired voice. She always sounds tired when we’re getting close to Grandma’s house. It’s a long drive, and my grandma is—well, never mind. Mom and I are both trying not to say or think bad things about Grandma right now because Grandma had a little heart attack yesterday.
That’s what she called it. A little heart attack.
“I’m fine, Jory,” she told my mom when we talked to her on the phone. “You don’t have to come.”
But of course we have to come when Grandma’s in the hospital.
Whether we want to or not.
I lean forward and my seat belt tightens. “Mom? Are we going to go see Grandma in the hospital tonight?”
The last time I asked that question, we were still in Illinois and Mom said she didn’t know. She said it would depend on what time we got to Grandma’s house.
I don’t know what time it is, but the sun is setting. It looks like a campfire that’s going out in the sky. If the sun is setting, it must be late. Right? Too late to visit someone in the hospital?
“I think we’ll wait until tomorrow,” Mom says.
Yes!
The truth is, I’m sort of scared to visit Grandma. I’ve never visited anyone in a hospital before. And I’ve never been around someone who just had a heart attack. I don’t know what to expect.
It’s possible that having a heart attack
will make Grandma nicer. I know—that probably counts as a bad thought about Grandma. But I read a book once about a girl who wasn’t very nice to people and then she almost died and she got a whole lot nicer.
Last night, I drew a picture of Grandma’s heart holding a hammer and bonking her on the head with it. Like, I’m warning you, Annie Lundberg. You shape up or else! At least I drew it in my supersecret, positively private notebook where no one will ever see it.
I lean forward again. “How long will Grandma be in the hospital?”
“I don’t know, honey,” Mom says. “Probably a week.”
“Do you know yet how long we’re going to stay?”
Mom sighs. I’ve asked that question even more than I’ve asked if we’re going to visit Grandma tonight. I can’t help it. I really want to know!
“As long as we need to.” That’s what she always says.
“More than a week?” A week is twice as long as we normally stay.
“Could be a month,” Mom says.
A month?!
“Grandma’s going to need a lot of help when she gets out of the hospital. And, well,” Mom says with a sad shrug, “I’ve got the time to help right now.”
She’s got time because she’s a teacher and our school year ended last week. Which means we could be here all summer.
Ugh.
If we’re still here the third week of July, I’ll miss my creative writing camp. I won’t be happy if that happens.
“Spending some extra time here could be good for all of us. It’s not too late to have a better relationship with Grandma,” Mom says.
If you say so, I think.
Out loud I ask, “So, what will we do to help Grandma?” I hope we don’t have to help with bathroom stuff.
“Cooking, cleaning, whatever needs to be done,” Mom replies. “But the main thing is we’ll want to make sure she rests when she comes home from the hospital.”
I snort. “How are we supposed to do that?” Grandma thinks rest is a bad thing.
Mom smiles a little bit. “It won’t be easy, will it?” she says. “But she doesn’t have a choice.”
None of us has a choice. About any of this.
“I guess I could help with Dog Days,” I say, trying to make the best of it. Dog Days is Grandma’s doggy day care.
Mom nods. “I’m sure Colin would be happy to have some extra help,” she says.
Colin is the main person who works for Grandma. He wasn’t there when Grandma had her little heart attack yesterday. But Mom’s friend Mallory was.
Mallory was at Dog Days to teach an agility class, which she just started doing on Sundays last month. Good thing too. Dog Days is closed on the weekends, so Colin wouldn’t have found her until today.
I’m glad I didn’t find her. That would’ve been scary.
Mom slows down and turns at the faded Dog Days sign.
Gravel crunches beneath our tires as we follow the one-lane road back to Grandma’s house.
I take a deep breath, and Spot lifts his head. His nose twitches.
“You remember this place, don’t you, Spot?” I lean over and give him a hug. “You got to run and play with all the other dogs.”
Mom glances at us in the rearview mirror. “He may not be able to do that this time,” she says.
I rest my head against his. “Why not?”
“Because he’s getting old.”
“Shh!” I say, covering his ears. “Don’t tell him that.”
“I think he knows,” Mom says.
He probably does. Spot used to be my dad’s dog, and my dad died when I was a baby. That’s how old Spot is. If you count in dog years, he’s probably even older than Grandma.
“But he likes to play with other dogs,” I say. And he hardly ever gets to do that at home. There aren’t any other dogs in our building. He doesn’t go to day care because it’s too expensive. And Mom never has time to take him to the dog park.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Mom says. She parks in front of the tree with all the different colored rocks around the trunk.
Every dog that’s ever come to Dog Days has a rock with their name on it. Grandma even let me paint some of the rocks last summer. But she wouldn’t let me write the dogs’ names because she does that in magic marker and she doesn’t think my handwriting is nice enough.
I unbuckle my seat belt and slide into my flip-flops. I won’t say I’m glad Grandma’s not here. That would definitely count as a bad thought. But at least I’m not dreading getting out of the car this time like I normally am. I reach for the door handle, and that’s when I notice lights on in Grandma’s living room and kitchen.
A dark shadow drifts past the kitchen window.
“Uh . . . I thought Grandma was in the hospital,” I say.
“She is,” Mom says as she pokes around in her purse.
“Then who’s walking around inside her house?” I ask.
Mom bites her lip. “Wait here,” she says. “I’ll go check it out.” She gets out of the car and walks slowly toward the house.
Spot puts one paw on my lap and whines at the window. He doesn’t like waiting in the car.
Neither do I. But what if that’s a burglar in Grandma’s house?
Spot whines again.
If it is a burglar, my dog will protect me. I’m pretty sure.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s see what’s going on.” I clip Spot’s leash to his collar and open my door. He half jumps, half falls out of the car. But instead of racing for the porch, he trots stiffly over to a bush and lifts his leg. It doesn’t go as high as it used to, which makes me sad. It’s another sign that he’s getting old.
A mosquito buzzes around my ear. I swat it away. The sun has almost totally disappeared behind the trees, but the air is still warm and humid. It smells like manure. Not because Grandma has cows or horses. She doesn’t. It just always smells like that around here.
Up on the porch, Mom pulls on the screen door.
Locked.
Two seconds later, the porch light flips on. The door opens, and Grandma pokes her head out.
“What are you doing here?” Mom and Grandma say at the exact same time. It would be funny if . . . well, if my grandma was a different person.
“I live here,” Grandma says. She pulls her robe tight around her. “What are you doing here?”
“I told you we were coming,” Mom says.
“And I told you not to,” Grandma says. She looks and sounds normal.
“Why aren’t you in the hospital?” Mom asks.
“They said I could go home.”
“Really?”
Grandma shrugs. “I told you it was a little heart attack. Barely a heart attack at all.” Then she notices me standing on the bottom of the stairs. “Hello, Hazel,” she says in a voice that’s not friendly or unfriendly.
“Hi,” I say as I slap another mosquito on my arm. It leaves a blob of blood. Yuck.
“When?” Mom pushes. “When were you released? How
long have you been home? How did you even get home? Please tell me you didn’t drive yourself.”
“Of course I didn’t drive myself,” Grandma says. “How could I do that when I didn’t have my car? I don’t know why Mallory had to go and call nine-one-one.”
Mom sighs. “It was the right thing to do,” she says.
“Pfft,” Grandma replies.
“So how did you get home?” Mom asks again.
“I took a cab. Just got home a little while ago.”
Mom turns away from Grandma. I bet she’s counting to ten inside her head. But instead of seven, eight, nine, ten, she says, “Let’s go get our things, honey.”
Still holding Spot’s leash, I follow her to the car. A thousand mosquitoes swarm around us, and I wave them away. Why are there so many more mosquitoes in Minnesota than there are in Chicago?
Mom opens the trunk and pulls out all our stuff. She hands me my backpack.
Grandma watches us from the porch. “How long are you two planning to stay?” she asks.
Yeah, Mom. How long are we planning to stay?
“I don’t know yet,” Mom says.
“Three days,” Grandma says like this is just a normal trip. “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”
Same old Grandma.
Mom returns to the porch with a suitcase in one hand and Spot’s folded-up kennel in the other. “We’re not guests, Mother. We’re family,” she says. “And isn’t this still my home?”
Grandma doesn’t say anything, but I can tell she’s not happy we’re here.
We’re not happy to be here either. So maybe we should just go home tomorrow? Then everyone will be happy.