In Case of Emergency, Break Heart

What to remember and what to forget

Things to remember during an emergency:

• Remember to panic instantly when you get scooped and scraped and peeled out of unconsciousness by sharp knocks on your bedroom door, opening sticky eyes in the pitch black, your sleep-deprived brain begging you for five more minutes, promising and pleading that it’s just a bad dream, but knowing it’s not, knowing there will be no more sleep tonight. Or ever.

• Remember to put on a bra while stumbling around in your closet, so you’re decent when you answer the door for the paramedics.

• Remember turning on the porchlight, then open the front door, step out, and wave at dark figures casting flashlight beams over the front yard until they land on your frozen face.

• Remember to take a drink of water out of a smudged glass standing over the sink, because you can’t answer any questions with this cotton mouth, this croaky throat, these lips pressed so hard into a line, they’d look white in the mirror.

• Remember worrying about the ambulance sirens and lights in th…