Hark! The Herald Angel Screamed: An Augusta Goodnight Mystery (with Heavenly Recipes) by Mignon F. Ballard Page B

great loping strides. But I could only shake my head. I was too frightened to speak.
    “Idonia Mae, I want you to look at me,” he said, kneeling beside her chair. “Look at me and tell me where you are.”
    Idonia’s eyelids fluttered and her head rolled to one side. “Don’t feel so good … leave me ‘lone.” She sounded more like herself in spite of the slurred words.
    “Have you had anything to eat or drink tonight?” the doctor persisted, examining her more closely. Idonia slumped forward until her head rested on the desktop. She didn’t answer.
    “She drank a lot of that spiced cider,” I told him, gesturing toward the cup.
    “Is this it?” He picked it up and sniffed it. “You-all didn’t slip any vodka in there, did you?” He directed the question at Genevieve without so much as a flicker of a smile.
    “Certainly not!” she answered, looking from one to the other of us. I could tell she wasn’t quite sure about the rest of us.
    “I can’t do anything for her here,” he told us, taking a cell phone from his pocket. “She needs to go to the ER, but first we’ll have to get her out of that chair before she slides onto the floor.”
    “It’ll take them about five or ten minutes to get here,” Dr. Smiley said, after making his phone call. “Meanwhile, let’s get her over on that bed so the EMTs can take a look at her.”
    I heard somebody gasp behind me and turned to find Genevieve with a fist rammed into her mouth. “That bed’s almost two hundred years old,” she said. I honestly thought she was going to faint.
    “Then it oughta hold up a few minutes longer,” the good doctor said. “And we don’t need all of you in here, either,” he added. “At least one of you can go outside and watch for the ambulance.”
    “I—I will! I’ll wait for them out front.” Jo Nell’s voice trembled. “Only I’ll need to borrow a flashlight. I don’t—can’t remember where I put mine.”
    “Take mine. I left it by the front door,” I said. I could tell she was about a sniff and a swallow away from crying.
    “And somebody needs to find Ellis,” Jo Nell said. “Oh, Lordy! What if something’s happened to Ellis, too?”
    “Nothing has happened to Ellis. She’s probably still straightening up out in the kitchen,” Nettie assured her. “Don’t worry, JoNell, we’ll find her.” And giving Genevieve’s arm a jerk, she propelled the startled woman from the room.
    Zee and I stayed to help Glen Smiley move Idonia to the bed, and I must say she didn’t cooperate one bit.
    “Like picking up a big sack of chicken feed,” Zee said.
    I couldn’t imagine where that analogy came from because as far as I know Zee St. Clair has never lifted a sack of chicken feed in her life.
    “You better hope and pray Idonia didn’t hear you say that,” I told her.
    The doctor frowned as he took her pulse. “Does anybody know how to get in touch with Nathan?”
    Idonia’s only son lives somewhere in Georgia but I couldn’t remember the city. “Is it that serious?” I asked him. “What’s the matter with her, Glen?”
    “I’ll know more about that when we get her to the hospital and have whatever’s in that punch analyzed. Are you sure Idonia’s not on any medication? Has she been having trouble sleeping lately? Look in her purse—see if you can find anything in there.”
    “She came with me. I don’t even know if she brought a purse,” Zee said.
    “Yes, she did! I saw her take it upstairs,” I said, “so it should be somewhere in here.”
    Zee found Idonia’s gray leather handbag in one of the bureau drawers but there was no medication in there, only a comb, a package of tissues, and a tube of her favorite shade of lipstick, tawny rose.
    “Is there anything you can do to help her?” Zee asked, kneeling by the bed.
    “To be on the safe side, they’ll probably have to do a gastric lavage,” the doctor said.
    I’ve watched enough medical shows on television to know that meant