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2 Bridges Review
all the hot and tropical places we’d lived over the years. Perfumes and colognes were forbidden in our family; there was his orange bee-sting allergy ID tag around his neck — always. And always the EpiPen. Brett began yelling at the guests now to figure out whose cars were the most accessible. The long curved driveway was clotted with SUVs and Volvos and Jaguars. “The EpiPen’s in his other bag!” my mother shrieked. “Or he forgot it! I don’t know! We have to try to get the sting out!” But she was shaking so hard she couldn’t do it. I tried. My father’s head, turning red, then purple, lay in my mother’s lap. And I did the only thing I knew how— I used my freshly-polished fingernails to gouge out the stinger. I knew the longer it stayed inside his body the more venom would be injected into his bloodstream. I dug; I scratched at his swollen skin while my mother wailed and still cried out for the missing EpiPen. My father’s wheezing slowed down. His breaths became shallow. When his chest began to steady, I didn’t know if this was a good thing or a bad thing. I thought I had gotten out the stinger, but I couldn’t be sure. He was by this point unconscious. “Benadryl!” my mother called out. “Someone at least grab some Benadryl from the upstairs medicine cabinet!” At least twenty people fumbled toward the house at the same time. “Oh God, help us,” my mother cried. Finally, we heard sirens in the distance. Within minutes, a white stretcher was flying across the lawn at breakneck speed. A policeman arrived to gather information and to calm us. My father was still breathing. As they loaded him into the ambulance, the policeman said to me, gesturing at my dress, “Some wedding, huh?” He shook his head, hands on hips. “I’ll get you to the hospital fast. Follow me.” As we rode in back of the cruiser, I remembered my father’s first bee sting. We’d been eating lunch at a French restaurant in Saigon, celebrating my mother’s fortieth birthday in the open-air courtyard with steak salads and a bottle of red wine and a beautiful bouquet of red ginger flowers. The bees had taken to the ginger blossoms with a vengeance and swarmed persistently around our table. My father tried to swat them away, but one stung him angrily in the crook of his arm. We’d raced him, wheezing and pulling on his chest, to a clinic down the street. You must never, the Australian doctor ordered, never, ever leave the house without an EpiPen. ***