A Long September Day Brittany Smith-Holden One day a little girl was coming home from school, as she opened the door she noticed no one was home. Usually her daddy would be there but sometimes he’d be at work so she went on with her regular routine; putting her book bag and books down and taking her dogs out but still something didn’t sit right with her about him not being there. After coming back in with her dogs the she called her mother and asked her where he might be, her mother said he should be at the house. At this point the girl was getting nervous, her dad leaving without telling anyone where he was going was not normal behavior. She went to the garage to see if his car was there, it was, with her mother still on the phone, she told her that his car was there as she ran up to her parents’ bedroom. The girl was not ready for what was going to happen next. She saw her father lying in the bed sleeping, dead to the world, and that made her feel better. “ Asleep “, her mother said, “ Well wake him up it’s too late for him to be sleeping.” The girl looked at the clock; 3:20 so the girl went to wake him up. The girl quickly walked to the bed but was slow to wake him up seeing that her father always woke up “ frighten”. But for some reason this time he didn’t, this time he didn’t wake up at all. So the girl began to shake him hard and harder and harder until finally he woke up and then closed his eyes again. She told her mother that he wouldn’t stay awake as she continued to wake him over and over again and when he woke she would try to talk to him but his words would slur or he wouldn’t be able to answer her or her mother’s questions. His body was limp as if he were already dead and his eyes looked tried and yellow. After a while her mother told her to call 911 and her grandmother (just so that someone would be with her until her mother left early from work). As she hung up the phone the girl became scared, her stomach became real tight and she felt as if she were going to vomit. She never called 911, if her father ever got sick her mother was the one who called and she couldn’t believe that the situation was so serious that she needed to call 911. When the EMT got there they asked her father all kinds of questions; in his eyes he looked confused, he didn’t know what day it was, who the president was, and he didn’t know why he had slept for so long. Then the girl’s grandmother came and became loud, rude, and ignorant, she interrupted the EMTS when they would ask a question and she continued to yell at the girl’s father, after the EMTS asked her not to. Even though this was her son all of her dramatic antics were unnecessary. After all of the EMT’s questions and her grandmother’s yelling her mother arrived and the EMT took her father away on a stretcher, then he began to push and hit to get off the stretcher but finally they got him in the ambulance. They decided to let her grandmother ride over with her daddy and her and her mother would stay behind and some clothes for him and they would be on their way. Sitting in the waiting room the girl heard doctors telling her mother that her husband would be okay but they didn’t know what was wrong with him “exactly”. Hearing that made the girl feel worse because it could happen again, this whole story could repeat it self only with a different ending. The girl felt confused, alone, and guilty, she started to think what would have happened if she didn’t come home. Somewhere along the way to the hospital her grandmother had called every family member under the sun and they were all consoling her, comforting her, the girl wanted to say, “I found him, what about me!” Her mother came and sat next to her and hugged her and said, “ Thanks, thank you, your daddy’s little hero.”