Escape Velocity Read Online Free

times, including with my mother, and like he says, he always ends up getting the girl. Though only for a little while, obviously.
    Anyway, Dana Leigh extended her visit and stayed in Vancouver for a few weeks. She and Dad seemed crazy about each other. She was at our place every night, sitting around with Dad and his friends, drinking beer and watching the guys playing guitar. Sometimes she sang along. Dana Leigh has a great voice. I thought she was the best thing that had happened to us in a long time.
    When she decided to head back to Drumheller, she talked Dad into going out there too. We were supposed to leave a couple of months after her, but then the accident happened and it ended up being almost a year before we saw her again. What with his back injury and his meds, Dad wasn’t in great shape when we arrived, and things never quite worked out for him and Dana Leigh. A few months after we got here, she started seeing the biker guy.

    Dana Leigh drives me to the hospital.
    â€œYou can drop me off,” I say. “I mean, I know you're supposed to be working.”
    â€œGet serious,” she says. “As if I’d leave you here.”
    Dad is in intensive care. We are taken to a small waiting area. No one else is sitting there, but I feel like I have to whisper. “Intensive care,” I say. “That’s bad, right? That means it’s serious.”
    She shakes her head. “It’s good. It means they’re taking it seriously. You know, getting help fast is the most important thing when someone is having a heart attack.”
    â€œIs that right?” Dana Leigh’s sister is a nurse, so she always knows stuff like this.
    â€œAbsolutely. The longer you wait, the more damage gets done.”
    I think about Dad saying he’d been feeling bad all evening and wrap my arms tightly around myself. “What do you think they’re doing?”
    â€œTests,” she says. “ Like, maybe blood tests or X-rays. Or those, what are they called, ECGs? That kind of thing.” She tries to put an arm around me, but I pull away, jump up. If I have to sit here for another second, I’ll start screaming.
    â€œI have to go walk around,” I say. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
    â€œDon’t go far,” she says.
    I walk up and down the hallway about a dozen times, as fast as I can without actually running. I can’t believe this is happening. I have this awful feeling—an intense nauseating dread—and it’s like I’m trying to walk away from it, walk away from my own body or something. Escape velocity, I think again. I wish…
    And then Dana Leigh is calling my name.

Four
    The doctor is about my dad’s age, dark-skinned, with a neatly trimmed beard and a white coat. His name tag is twisted around so that I can’t read it, and he shakes my hand and Dana Leigh’s but doesn’t introduce himself.
    â€œSo, you are here with Garland Hendricks?”
    â€œHe’s my father. Is he…?”
    He looks at Dana Leigh instead of me when he answers. “We’ve given him some clot-busting medication and we’re running tests. He’s had what we call a myocardial infarction—a heart attack. He’s stable now, but we’ll keep him here for a couple of days to be sure. We’ll refer him to the cardiac folks at Foothills, in Calgary, for some tests. See what kind of shape his heart’s in, look at some follow-up care. There’s no urgency though.”
    â€œSo he’s okay then? Can I see him?”
    â€œMake it a short visit, okay? For now, the best thing he can do is get a little rest.” He smiles. “You and your mom could use some too, I imagine.”
    I stare at him for a few seconds before I realize that he means Dana Leigh.
    She is shaking her head. “I’m just a friend.”
    The doctor turns to me. “Is your mother around?”
    â€œIn Victoria.”
    â€œAh.