I thought you might enjoy this new draft chapter for my novel, which is—as you can probably tell—autofiction. And in draft form.
One night the following year, Louise—still too young for a driver’s license—took her father to the ER again. He was complaining of severe chest pain, refused an ambulance, refused Virginia and Eddie’s pleas to drive him, so it was left to Louise again. She secretly liked being chosen. It made her feel important and needed. She knew it irked her brother, especially since he was older and did have his license already, and irking him was like a national pastime for Louise. Sure, his Christmas stocking might have been a millimeter larger, but she was the one chosen to drive Daddy to the hospital.
As they sped toward the hospital, it was just Louise and her dad. Virginia and Eddie were packing a hospital bag for Daddy and would come later in Eddie’s car, a beat-up Ford. Louise felt like a queen of the Nile, driving her Daddy who was writhing in the back seat, with the top of his head barely visible. She felt sure he would survive, though, of course, there was no proof of that hypothesis.
Up ahead, near the town clock, she saw a police car. “Well,” she thought to herself, “they’ll just have to chase me and arrest me, but I won’t stop until we get to the hospital.” She straightened up in her seat so her head would be more visible to the policeman as she passed. She was doing around 50 mph in a 35 mph zone, she figured. Nothing was going to slow her down, not even the threat of (she thought) imprisonment.
Before she reached the town clock, though, the police car pulled out in front of her about half a block ahead of where she was and started racing in the direction she was going. Then it turned on its blue light but not its siren. At first, she wondered what kind of call it had gotten, but soon, she realized it was there for her, leading her to the hospital.
She remembered her father telling her mom at the time that one of the barbers from the shop had left a year before to become a policeman. It must be Leon, she thought, and he knows why I would be driving fast through downtown this time of night.
Sure enough, Leon had recognized the car and knew immediately what was happening, so he became her escort all the way from the town clock to the hospital’s ER entrance. When they got there, Leon jumped out of his car, started screaming for help, and commandeered a wheelchair to the car before the nurses could get there.
Louise was 13 and a half. It was her Daddy’s second heart attack. He would have one more heart attack before she was old enough for a learner’s permit, one while she had her learner’s permit, and two after she got her license. She drove him for each one, and Leon accompanied her on two more rides. For the last one, the one that killed him, she was away at college. She has never shaken the idea that if she had driven him to the hospital, he might still be alive, even though she knew that it just doesn’t work that way.