Then the pressure overwhelmed her imagination and all she could come up with were random nouns. “Celery, Oboe, Loofah,” she muttered. “Garamond, Decanter, Frizzante, Pilates. Rolex, Evian, Dasani, Perriella.”
The plane began its descent, which was steep. It dipped forwards. It wobbled to the left and the right. Angie used both of her hands to clutch the armrest as she became convinced that they were all going to die a horrible fiery death.
Then she looked at her forearm and she instantly knew what had to be done. Unfastening her seat belt Angie stepped into the aisle.
“Sit down!” yelled a flight attendant.
“I’m saving us all!” Angie yelled back.
The overhead compartment squeaked as Angie opened it. Pushing back a suitcase that started to fall out, she grabbed her purse, sat back down and fished her phone out. Then Angie dialed the number that she hadn’t been able to wash away.
The plane jumped. The phone on the other end began to ring. The runway came into view. “Hold my hand!” she said to the man beside her. He opened his eyes and looked at Angie, blankly. “I’m pregnant and alone and frightened and you will hold my goddamn hand!”
Angie held her hand out. Her seatmate took it. He squeezed, tightly. The phone rang for a fourth time. The plane tilted to the right. Several passengers screamed. The phone rang again and then it was answered.
“I’ll do it!” Angie yelled. “I’ll get them. I’ll get all of them. I’ll bring them to you!”
The back tires hit the runway. The plane slowed. The front wheels touched down and the passengers applauded. Angie breathed out. She realized how tightly she was holding both the phone and the hand of the man in the seat beside her.
“I knew you’d come around,” Grandmother Weird said.
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Before we commit to anything …”
“I’d start with Lucy.”
“Well,” Angie said. She looked out the window and then she looked at her hand, which was still engulfed by the meaty palm of her seatmate, “I am in Winnipeg.”
ANGIE WEIRD REALLY WAS BORN in a hallway, and this is how it happened. On May 4, 1987, when her mother, Nicola, went into labour her father, Besnard, drove them to the hospital in his beloved 1947 maroon Maserati. Besnard had purchased the two-seater seventy-two hours before Angie’s birth. It wasn’t suited for city driving. Besnard wasn’t used to driving it. He stalled six times on the way to the hospital.
His sixth stall happened at the southeast corner of College and University in downtown Toronto. They were close enough to the hospital that Nicola could see it. She sat in the passenger seat, staring at it longingly. She stared at Mount Sinai Hospital in a way she hadn’t stared at her husband in quite some time.
Besnard sat in the driver’s seat, trying to restart the engine. The car behind him began to honk. He sighed, deeply. The impending birth of his fourth child failed to excite him. He’d begun to see his children as some kind of venereal disease, direct results of copulation. At home he already had three children, all under the age of five. He loved all of them. He knew he would love this child too. This was the problem. As he continued trying to restart the engine, his wife opened the passenger door.
Nicola got out of the Maserati and walked the last two hundred yards on her own. The doors to emergency slid open automatically. The admitting nurse dropped her paperwork and rushed over. Nicola was put on a gurney and wheeled through the swinging doors before Besnard had a chance to park. Nicola screamed as she felt Angie’s head start to crown. It was her fourth birthing experience and she knew that the worst was, or at least soon would be, over. They had almost reached the delivery room when a doctor ran up and stopped the gurney, examining Nicola right in the corridor.
“Do not push anymore! Stop!” he said.
“What are you talking about?” Nicola yelled.
“Stop pushing right now!” the doctor said, firmly. He looked into her eyes and held her hand, gestures that Nicola never forgot. She stopped pushing. She breathed as deeply as she could. She concentrated on these things, which is why she didn’t notice how quiet everyone had become.
“Can I push now?”
“You cannot,” the doctor replied. “The cord’s around the baby’s neck.”
Nicola gritted her teeth. She did not push. So much pressure built up inside her that her nose started to bleed.
“Almost got it,” the doctor said.
“My goddamn head is going to goddamn explode!”
“Got it!”
“Now?”
“Now!”
The cord unwound, Nicola pushed and Angelika Weird, quite literally, popped into the world.
Angie never doubted that any part of this story was true. The question she asked herself was: did it really have the deep character-forming significance that her grandmother claimed it had? Angie didn’t believe it had any greater impact on her personality than the fact that she was born in early May, making her a Taurus. She would, however, admit that she had never been able to wear necklaces or turtlenecks. Nor had she ever been able to make herself do up the top button on any shirt.
It was with a nosebleed that Grandmother Weird got herself admitted into Vancouver and District General Hospital, eight days before she wrote her phone number on Angie’s forearm. She finished her lunch and washed her dishes and then she took a taxi to the emergency room. It was 2:30 p.m. when she stepped into the line. Fifteen minutes later, when she got to the front of it, Annie told the triage nurse that she was terminally ill.
“Could you be more specific?” the nurse asked.
“My death will occur at 7:39 p.m. on April 20.”
“That is very specific.”
“Twenty-one days from today.”
“Maybe you could come back on the nineteenth?”
“Maybe you should watch your tone.”
“Maybe you should take a seat.”
The nurse looked down at her paperwork. She did not look back up. Annie took a seat beside a woman whose skin had taken on a yellowish hue. She folded her hands in her lap. She stared straight ahead. She set herself an impossible task: she would not move until her name was called.
A parade of broken limbs, troubling coughs and exaggerated parental fears came and went. Just after 4:30 in the morning, after sitting still for fourteen hours, Annie was alone in the waiting room for the first time.
“Angela Weirs?” a nurse called.
“Close enough,” Annie said. She stood. Her joints were stiff. She took small jerky steps. The nurse led her into a room with curtains for walls. The thin brown paper crinkled as Annie sat on it. Her feet were a long way from the floor. She swung them. She waited for quite some time and then a doctor arrived. He was yawning, stubbled, and a third her age.
“So. You are dying?” he asked. He looked at her and then down at his clipboard. “Slowly.”
The doctor put in the earpieces of his stethoscope. He placed the chestpiece on Annie’s chest. He listened to her heart. He took the instrument off her skin and blew into it. Then he put it back on her chest and listened again.
“That is the loudest heartbeat I’ve ever heard.”
“I have a very large heart.”
“It does, however, sound like it’s working perfectly.”
“I’m