Shooting Stars 01 Cinnamon Read Online Free Page B

into labor. You'd better call the doctor, call an ambulance, call your father." she cried.
She released a chilling scream that shook my very bones. "Hurry!"
I didn't know what to do. I ran from the room. Grandmother Beverly was already at the top of the stairway.
"What is it?" she asked, her hand on her breast, her face whiter than ever.
"She thinks she's in labor. I think she really is in pain!"
"Oh dear. dear. We'll have to call the doctor. I was hoping you could calm her down. Get her to sleep and be sane." she said. Another scream from Mammy spun her around and sent her fleeing down the stairway.
Mommy continued to moan.
I glanced at my watch. Daddy had to be at his desk. Why did Grandmother Beverly say before that she certainly couldn't reach him? He should be easy to reach.
I rushed to my room and tapped out the number for his office quickly. It rang and rang until his secretary finally picked up and announced his company.
"I need to speak to my father immediately." I practically screamed.
Mommy was crying out even louder now, her shouts of pain echoing down the hallway and through the house.
"He's not here at the moment," the secretary said. "But he has to be. The market is still open."
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Where is he?"
"He didn't leave a number." she said.
"It's an emergency," I continued.
"Let me see if he answers his page," she relented. Why hadn't she said that first? I wondered. I held on, my heart pounding a drum in my ears.
"I'm sorry," she said. "He's not responding."
"Keep trying and if you get him, tell him my mother is being taken to the hospital."
"The hospital? Oh. dear. Oh," she said. "Yes. I'll keep trying."
I hung up just as Grandmother Beverly came up the stairs, looking more her age.
"The doctor has called the ambulance," she said. She swallowed and continued. "It's no use. She has to return to the hospital. When I told him what she had done, he said he'd have her brought to the mental ward."
"Mental ward?"
"Of course. Look at her behavior. That's exactly where she belongs," she added with that damnable look of self-satisfaction I hated so much.
She put her hands over her ears, but Mommy's heart-wrenching scream drove Grandmother Beverly back down the stairs to wait.
I was hoping it would drive her out of our lives.

2 Escape to Dreams
    Apparently. Daddy's secretary was unable to each him before the ambulance arrived. I returned to Mommy's bedroom and held her hand while she went through her imaginary labor pains. I guess I shouldn't say imaginary. The doctor would emphasize later that she actually felt the pain.
    "Psychosomatic pain is not contrived," he explained to Daddy when Daddy and I met with him in the corridor of the hospital. "The patient feels it: it's just caused by something psychological as compared to something physical." He looked at me and added. "We shouldn't get angry at her."
    "I'm not angry at her," I snapped back at him. "I'm upset."
I almost added. I'm frightened, too, but he got me so angry I didn't want to confide in him.
Afterward. Daddy and I sat in the hospital cafeteria having a cup of coffee. Daddy said he hadn't had a chance to eat anything so he nibbled on a Danish pastry.
"When my secretary reached me. I was on my way home." he told me. "I stopped at the train station and called and Grandmother answered and told me what was happening so I came back as quickly as I could and took a cab here. Lucky Grandmother was still in the house."
"It wasn't luck. Grandmother didn't want to come along. I drove myself and followed the ambulance. I'm sure she was afraid she might be seen by one of her society friends." I muttered.
"That's not fair. Cinnamon. Your grandmother was never very good in hospitals. It makes her sick."
"So? What better place to be sick if you have to be sick?" I countered,
One thing Daddy wouldn't ever get from me was sympathy for Grandmother Beverly. I never saw her shed a real tear, not even at Grandfather Carlson's funeral. although I have seen her cry