How We Do It, Part XVIII in a series

We're driving back from the physical therapist's office, where Sophie has just been cast for orthotics to help correct or at least ameliorate her increasingly awkward gait that is causing callouses, blisters and stiff ankles. They will cost nearly $1500, and I anticipate the wrangling with the insurance company, the telephone calls and call-backs, the forms to fill, the justifications. Sophie has been drooling excessively the last few days, soaking through more handkerchiefs than we have and also keeps a steady humming droney moan up the entire time we're at the therapist's as well as the drive home. When I crank up the classical music to drown out the sound, it manages to rise above it and wrap itself around my neck, insistent tendrils curling round into my ear, a hand to hand combat with any empathy left standing. I remember to breathe and do so, deeply, despite my own stuffed nose and congested head. I raise my voice perhaps too much and say Sophie, STOP. Please. But it doesn't stop, and we continue down Olympic Boulevard, heading east to pick up The Brothers, baroque instruments, Sophie's steady humming, adagio, piccolo, what would be the Italian musical term -- perhaps acceso (ignited, on fire), agitato (agitated), my own thoughts acciaccatura (broken down, crushed). When the seizure starts, I pull over to the side of the road and park in a red zone, jump out of the car and sit with Sophie in the back seat until it's over. When I climb back into the front, I lay my head back and close my eyes. Sophie isn't humming anymore. A couple of minutes later, I open my eyes and respond to tapping on my window and a voice con forto (with force) shouts,  You're in the red! I say angstlich (agitated, German), My daughter just had a seizure. I will move in a moment. The traffic lady repeated affrettando (hurrying, pressing onwards) Well then, just move! and she whipped out her handheld ticket machine and began to tap into it. I repeated myself, adagissimo (very slowly), My daughter just had a seizure, but I know how these things work so I pulled out of the red and into the street and then circled the block and found an empty spot with a meter. I carefully placed the handicapped placard on the rear-view mirror, opened my door and walked toward the meter maid, Not Lovely Rita, who was busy tapping into her machine. Excuse me, I said, amabile (easy, pleasant). You know, my daughter had an epileptic seizure and I had to pull over to help her. I really don't like the tone you used with me. Not Lovely Rita looked up at me, squinting against the sun. You shouldn't have parked in a red zone, she repeated, dumpf (dull). I repeated that I hoped she would be kinder, the tears running down my cheeks were not contrived. It's not my job, she said, and I cried dolente (sorrowfully, plaintively), Not your job? Not your job to be a human being? and when she turned her back and walked away, I raised my hand and grew a baton that I waved in the air and called on the accompaniments, the sacred and the profane, and I threw my head around, crescendo (growing, progressively louder), the baton slipped from my hand, sailed through the air and right through the stocky back of Not Lovely Rita who slumped to the ground, morendo, dying away.