“On second thought, maybe I need to sit down for a minute.” She sank to the curb and rubbed her forehead.
“Did you ever go to the doctor?” I asked.
“This’ll go away. It always does,” she said, waving away my question. “Honey, I need some Tylenol.”
“I’ll go find some,” Violet said, and Noah volunteered to go with her. We weren’t far from the Best Western. I gave them the 3,000 colones I found in my pocket, and they took off down the wide palm tree-lined driveway toward the resort’s gift shop.
Florida and I waited under the hot midday sun. Even though I felt like yelling at her for not going to the doctor, I couldn’t. Number one? I never yell. And number two? One look at her and I knew she felt as sick as a dog.
Violet and Noah returned with the Tylenol and a bottle of water. I offered her two pills. She insisted on three.
“We should just go back to the inn. Can you walk OK?” I asked.
“What do you think?” Florida snapped. “Do I look like I can walk?” She moaned and dropped her head into her hands.
See what I mean about those headaches making her crabby? Whenever she was nasty like that I wanted to hide, but I knew she needed help.
It was Noah who came to the rescue. “I’ve been running cross-country all year. I’m on it.” He took off like a shot back to La Posada Encantada.
He was super fast because not more than fifteen minutes later, he and Thomas pulled up in the red pick-up. They helped my grandmother into the front seat. Noah hopped in the back of the truck with Violet and me.
“She’ll be OK,” he said.
I hoped Noah could predict the future.
Back at the inn, we led Florida into the lobby. Sofia was behind the desk, so Rosalie Claire devoted her full attention to my grandmother. Her eyebrows scrunched up with worry. “Florida, you’re still ill, aren’t you?”
“I wish you would all stop your fussing. It’s just a case of the come-and-go flu. I’ve had it on and off for months. I’ll be better soon.” She slumped onto the sofa. “My goodness, could somebody turn down the air conditioning? What are you people doing? Trying to turn this place into the North Pole?”
The North Pole? Even with the fans spinning full blast, it had to be at least eighty degrees in the lobby.
Rosalie Claire felt my grandmother’s forehead and took her pulse. She told her she suspected this was no flu.
While Violet, Noah, and Leroy hung out by the swimming pool, Rosalie Claire and I led Florida back to Room Four. She fell into bed and I covered her with blankets.
Rosalie Claire unzipped her fanny pack, but all she found was a cool wet washcloth and her cell phone that she always kept in there. “How odd,” she said under her breath. She shrugged and spread the cold cloth on Florida’s forehead.
Whenever someone was sick, Rosalie Claire’s fanny pack usually delivered vials of tinctures and small pouches of healing herbs. Was a wet washcloth all Florida needed to get better?
My grandmother pulled the covers over her head and groaned.
“I’m calling the doctor,” Rosalie Claire whispered to me.
An hour later, when Dr. Morán knocked on Florida’s door, I let him in. His bushy dark beard and chubby cheeks made him look like a short, round Santa whose hair hadn’t yet turned white. He carried a beat-up black leather bag stuffed with supplies. I hoped something in there would contain a cure.
I went back to the lobby and hung out with my friends and Leroy while Rosalie Claire stayed with Florida and the doctor. It seemed as if he was in there forever. When we finally heard the click-click-click of his leather shoes on the tile floor, my breath caught in my throat. I jumped up from the sofa and felt the pounding of my heart.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.
“I suspect it’s malaria. She has most of the symptoms. Rosalie Claire told me that you and your grandma were in the Amazon jungle last summer.”
I nodded.
“Sometimes malaria doesn’t show up for a while,” Dr. Morán told us. “All it takes is one bite from an infected mosquito.”
On Stranded in the Amazon, zillions of bugs had chomped on us like we were a five-star gourmet buffet. When we got back to Truth or Consequences, we’d both taken medicine so we wouldn’t get the disease, and that’s what I told Dr. Morán.
“If you forget to take all the pills, the symptoms can show up months later,” he told me.
I took all my medicine. Had Florida stopped taking hers?
“Will she be OK?” My voice was barely a whisper, probably because I was afraid of his answer.
“The pills I gave her should kill the parasites. I would expect her to improve a little each day.”
By early the next morning, Florida was worse. We awoke to her shouts bouncing through the lobby, across the courtyard, and through our open bedroom window in the yellow bungalow.
The three of us scooted in our pajamas toward her room, with Leroy trotting at our heels. The newlywed lovebirds, the Lady in White, and the two surfer guys had already gathered in the breezeway, watching Rosalie Claire as she tried the locked door.
“Florida, please let me in!” She jammed the master key into the lock, but she didn’t even have time to turn it.
The door burst wide open. My grandmother charged out like a thundering bull chased by its worst nightmare.
“I’m under attack! Giant tarantulas! Move it, people!”
What was going on?
We scurried out of her way so we wouldn’t get bowled over. Leroy barked from all the excitement.
Florida took one look at Leroy and her eyes nearly popped from her head.
“Ack! A man-eating T-Rex!” She made a beeline for the lobby.
Leroy took after her, playing a rowdy chasing game.
Rosalie Claire bolted after them both.
“Dude, that lady has some gnarly imagination! Totally radical!” Riptide high-fived Wingnut like this was some kind of circus show.
“That lady is my grandmother and she’s super sick.”
“Oh, man. Sorry to hear that, dude.” At least he sounded as if he meant it.
By the time my friends and I got to the lobby, Rosalie Claire had corralled Florida. They sat on the sofa, Rosalie Claire’s arm draped around my grandmother’s shoulders. Leroy had stopped impersonating a T-Rex and was stretched out peacefully on the white tile floor.
When she saw me, Florida’s eyes opened wide. “Angela, honey. What are you doing here?”
Whoa. How weird was that? Now I knew something was super-wrong with her. Angela was my mom and if she’d still been alive she would have been thirty-four years old. I was twelve.
“She must be hallucinating,” Rosalie Claire whispered. “I’m wondering if those pills didn’t agree with her.”
Noah asked to see them. They were teeny-tiny, half-blue, and half-red. He got on the lobby computer and did a Google search. Apparently those pills could be bad news.
“It says here the medicine can also cause bizarre behavior, confusion, hallucinations, and mood changes. Particularly if someone is mentally unstable to begin with.”
Unstable? That’s practically my grandmother’s middle name.
Just then, Florida began scratching her skin as if fire ants were gobbling her alive. Seconds later she erupted from head