My sister's best friend

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When I went up to Tennessee last summer, I met my sister's best friend, AM. We went over a couple of times, looked at her craft stuff - she makes me look like an amateur crafter. And then we swam in her heated swimming pool. Her husband was off with his daughter and grand kids who were in the States from where they were living in southeast Asia. In February, so I would be there over Viv, my wife's, death, we went to see AM in the hospital. I had taken some beading stuff up because she had expressed an interest in trying beading - one of the few crafts she hadn't tried. On another visit, she was too tired after having PT, so she was messing around with her computer and she said something that prompted me to sing the Danger Man theme. Wow! I now know why she was my sister's best friend, she was a lot like me. She said something about liking the star in another show. I said: "The Prisoner." She got even more excited saying she had loved the show when it was on and how the ending was weird - it was. She told me her mother didn't understand why she liked it. I also didn't understand the show and didn't much like it when it was on, but have enjoyed when I've seen it later. However, that prompted me then to tell her about Archive Of Our Own or AO3. At first she didn't understand it. I told her I had written some stories and they were posted. I asked if she liked The Wizard of Oz, she did. However, she didn't know about the other books... wow, granted, I grew up with almost all of the Baum written stories and some of the other ones. I told her I had written an Oz story. At first she thought I was taking stuff out of the books. I told her that I had only used the setting and the people, the story was all my own. I got out my phone and checked to see if there was any Prisoner stories. Unsurprisingly, there are, only 85, but the show really didn't have a lot of places to put a story in. It was at the hospital that I also finally met the mystery husband... Then there came the day that the hospital sent her home. This was so stupid, honestly, because she couldn't keep food down, what was the idea? Well, most likely the idea was the insurance demanded it. My sister and I went over to try and get things together for her coming home. She arrived home in an ambulance. After transferring her to a wheelchair, we brought her inside. She wanted to go to her craft room. Now, my sister and I had gone over earlier in the week and went through all the packages she had ordered while in the hospital. So we were going through this stuff, and my sister was going through other boxes she had around the room. Then she started throwing up. This wasn't new, but she couldn't even keep water down... After we had been working for a few hours, and AM kept throwing up, she saw some brown stuff. Now, remember, she wasn't even able to keep water down... My sister and I told her she needed to call 911. She balked at this, she wanted to be home so badly. After a couple of more times with more brown stuff, I said that it was blood and she really needed to go back to the hospital. I told her we'd wait until EMS came and got her. "Oh, no, you go on home, it took them hours to get me last time," she told us. I told her: "Not if you tell them you are throwing up blood." Well, she called 911. By now, she was getting a little incoherent. But I didn't know the address and was kind of stuck on the other side of the table anyway. She was talking to the 911 operator and saying she needed to go to the hospital. The operator, unsurprisingly, asked what was going on. AM said she couldn't stop throwing up. From across the table I said, probably loud enough for the operator to hear, "Tell her you are throwing up blood!" She did, finally. After the operator was assured she wasn't going to be alone, she hung up. "Well, now we wait a few hours," AM said. "No we won't," I assured her. By now I was trying to move the boxes I had been breaking down and making sure the stuff I had been sorting was moved away from the edge of the table. (It was a huge fabric type cutting table, it could easily sit a dozen or 2 people cutting fabric at the same time.) The fire department got there in less than 10 minutes. EMS was only about 10 minutes behind them. AM was really surprised how right I was about how long they'd take. I had to remind AM, again, to tell them she was throwing up blood. Within an hour, after the fire department and the EMTs were sure she was stable enough to transport, she was on her way back to the ER. By now, her husband had arrived, so he went off after the ambulance. My sister was also surprised how I knew what would happen. I pointed out to her that I had just done these things with Viv the last year. And I had done them before with Connie (Maggiepie.) Sadly, AM died about a month after I came home. My sister said the day we were beading in the hospital was the last really happy day she had. That made me feel a little better.