by Gina Ardito
“Here,” he said, taking my cup. “You’ve got the little guy.”
My reaction to him addled my brain, but I managed to smile. “Thanks.” Walking ahead, I found an empty bistro table beside the magazine rack and sat in one of the two chairs. Luke nodded off on my shoulder, so I propped him up against my neck to make us both more comfortable.
“This is great,” Ambrose Chase said, taking the seat across from Luke and me. “I won’t keep you long, promise. I can see you’ve got your hands full. How old is he?”
I nuzzled my son’s head, inhaling his unique toddler smell of baby shampoo and arrowroot cookies. “Eighteen months.”
“Sweet. What’s his name?”
“Luke.”
“Luke. And do you and Luke have a last name?”
“Handler.”
“Emily Handler.” After a sip from his cup, he remarked, “Good name. Strong. Perfect for a fictional character who’s about to save the city from a vicious killer.”
I smiled again. How could I not? I, Emily Handler, was about to be immortalized in fiction. A chill zipped down my spine. What if the book sucked? My chest tightened at the thought.
Ambrose Chase pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and gathered a handful of napkins. “Sorry I don’t have any paper with me. I wasn’t exactly prepared to run into a 911 dispatcher today.”
I shrugged. “I wasn’t expecting to meet an author, so we’re even.” I reached for my coffee, but the smell rocked my stomach. I put the cup down, pushing it far away. Nausea suddenly overwhelmed me. My hands jerked, and the cup tipped, spilling its contents all over the table. “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” I exclaimed as I shot to my feet, shielding Luke from the spreading lake of hot coffee.
“It’s okay. No big deal.” Ambrose Chase stood as well and began mopping up the mess with the napkins he’d planned to use for notes. “See? At least we were prepared.”
That familiar heaviness crushed my ribs, and my limbs went numb. My little guy was growing faster than I realized, getting too heavy to stay in my hold like this for long periods of time. His weight had cut off my circulation. I would have to start making him walk more often. I had to…take a second. Had to...
…breathe.
I couldn’t breathe. A cold sweat broke out over my flesh as I struggled to pull air into my lungs. The room darkened around the edges of my vision, and my arms, though they felt like lead, tightened on Luke. My son woke up suddenly, screaming in my ear, but I couldn’t even see him. Everything in my vision blurred to globs of color.
Oh, God, what was happening to me? Something was very wrong. I felt myself falling, falling down a spiral, and I clutched Luke even tighter to my chest as the world tilted.
“Emily?” A man’s urgent tone came to me as if from underwater. “What’s wrong? Emily? Can you hear me? Are you okay?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but no sound emitted from my throat. Air. I needed air. I was going to suffocate here in this black hole that had sprung up in the library. And I was taking my son with me. “Help me,” I eked out.
I heard someone yell, “Call 911!”
My last conscious thought was, Who was manning the calls today? Rowena or Jake? And which EMTs would come to the scene?
Before I could find out the answer, I descended into blissful nothing.
****
Hands gripped my shoulders, lifting me onto something soft. I couldn’t argue—couldn’t speak, could barely hear over the roar of a siren from somewhere outside. Whatever was happening sounded serious. And too close for comfort. God, I hoped nobody died.
Meanwhile, invisible, dry water surrounded me, dulling all my senses. The ground underneath me seemed to move in a bumpy, unsteady manner. Fuzz framed the edges of my vision, as if I watched everything through a furry mask. Despite this muzzy haze, I managed to recognize the rugged features of the man who fussed over me.
“Hey, Bruce.” The greeting didn’t travel far. Something hard and plastic muffled the sound of my voice.
“Don’t talk, Emmie,” he ordered. Years of captaining a ferry had given Bruce Dunham an air of command no one dared ignore. Even me.
The ferry crossed the Long Island Sound, linking Snug Harbor visitors with either Block Island or Connecticut. But I didn’t remember boarding the ferry. The last time Roy and I had crossed the Sound was to take the kids to the aquarium in Mystic, at least five years and two kids ago. So why did I wake up in some enclosed space with no one around but Bruce Dunham? I mean, I’d fallen asleep in some weird places lately, but I’d always known where I was within seconds of waking up. Except, this time, I had no clue. Why couldn’t I remember? Had I been sleepwalking? Or considering Bruce’s appearance in my newest nightmare, had I been sleep-sailing?
No. Ridiculous.
What other explanation was there? Bruce also served as a volunteer emergency medical technician. Did that mean I was in an ambulance? That would explain the incessant wailing of the siren overhead, the plastic cone over my face—an oxygen mask, and Bruce’s presence.
I stared up past Bruce’s Yankees baseball cap to the ceiling where high intensity bulbs gleamed from recessed lighting fixtures. Behind him, stainless steel storage shelves with clear windows displayed bandages, drugs, and other medical supplies. A defibrillator, monitors, and various gauges were mounted to the wall on my right. An ambulance. I was definitely in an ambulance. How on earth did I wind up here?
Oh, my God! Luke! Where was Luke? I struggled to sit up, but Bruce’s hand slammed me down on the stretcher again.
“Don’t fight, Em. Just relax. Breathe.”
Breathe? Why? Who cared about breathing right now? I had to find my son. “Luke.” Jeez, through the plastic cup with the whooshing ventilator, I sounded like Darth Vader. Luke, I am your father…
Somehow, though, Bruce understood what I said. Nodding, he squeezed my fingers. “Your son is fine. He’s with Miss Lydia.”
Miss Lydia? The librarian? Miss Lydia had been a fixture at Snug Harbor Library, probably since my grandmother was a kid. No one called her by her last name, Koziekiewicz, because…well, really, who could pronounce that, much less spell it?
The bigger question at the moment was why was Luke with Miss Lydia? I tried to think back to what might have happened. The day’s events came to me in flashes—like someone had given Roy free rein with the remote control of my life. Click! Storytime at the library: Billy and the Dragon. Click! Coffee in the downstairs café. Click! A strange man’s concerned face looming too close to me. Click! Luke yanking on my hair, shooting darts of pain through my scalp. Click! Me, falling, my knees slamming into the thin carpet that covered the concrete floor. A shout from someone to call 911. And then…nothing.
“Keep breathing, Em,” Bruce said. “We’ll be at the hospital any minute now.”
The hospital? No. I couldn’t go to the hospital. I had to drop Luke off at daycare, then be at work by twelve o’clock. I didn’t have time for the hospital.
“We already paged Roy,” he added. “He’ll meet us in the E.R.”
Great. Just what I didn’t need. I waved a hand in Bruce’s face, hoping to get him to change his mind. To un-page Roy, tell him it was a false alarm. I was fine. Really. I just fell asleep. It happened a lot these days. No big deal.
“Almost there,” he said.
I waved harder, but an I.V. tube taped to the inside of my elbow snapped against my skin, spraying pain through my nerves.
“Be still, Em. Just breathe. Everything’s okay.”
Ha. That’s what he thought. We had a three hundred dollar deductible for emergency room services without an admission. I already owed Dr. Herrera both my kidneys to cover the vet bill for Freckles. What’d I have left for a three hundred dollar hospital bill? And this ride, which would also fall into the deductible category. Tally in the bills for each of the seventeen doctors who’d pop their heads into my E.R. suite to ask how I was feeling, then charge a thousand dollars for a “consultation” and I would probably
lose our house.
The jostling suddenly stopped, and while I’d worried about finances, the siren’s wail had disappeared. Bruce crouched over me, his head inches from the ambulance ceiling. “Okay, Em, we’re gonna bring you inside now. You’re doing great.”
The doors in front of me burst open, and I went from a cocoon of Bruce’s soft but steely comfort into a cacophony of chaos. Half a dozen faces appeared, and everyone seemed to talk at once.
“Put her in seven.”
“What are her vitals?”
“Who performed CPR?”
“Did you give her any meds? Aspirin?”
“How long was she out?”
“Did someone contact her husband?”
Bruce crouched by my head, rattling off information I couldn’t fathom, and another man popped up near my feet. “On the count of three. One, two, three.”
I was suddenly lifted, then lowered again, and we rolled down a hospital corridor. The hectic voices around me created an impenetrable wall of sound. My eyelids weighed a ton, and the overhead lights zipped by at such a frantic pace, I grew dizzy. Blackness called, and I surrendered to the dark.
Chapter 9
Emily
Someone snored near my feet. Freckles? No. Couldn’t be. Freckles was dead. I tried to lift my legs to knock the snorer off, but a heaviness weighed down my limbs. When I forced my eyes open, I was in a hospital bed, a bunch of tubes and wires snaking from my body to a series of beeping and dripping machines. The snoring came from some kind of cuffs on my feet that filled with air and slowly deflated over and over. I turned toward the window, and a shadow popped up from the corner.
“Em, thank God!” Roy leaned over the bedrail, his hand near but not touching my shoulder. “Don’t move. Let me get the nurse.”
He shot out of the room before I could form an argument.
“Nurse?” I heard him call from the doorway. “She’s up.”
When he returned a minute or two later, a young blond woman, garbed in scrubs decorated with bumblebees and daisies, followed on his heels. She was skinny, pretty, and wore a name tag that read, Leslie Ellis, R.N. I hated her on sight.
“Hi there,” she said with a bleached white smile. “I’m Leslie, your daytime nurse. I’ll be with you until five o’clock so if you need anything at all, just ring for me, okay?” She rolled over a cart filled with additional medical paraphernalia and pulled out a plastic wrapped package about the size of a PEZ candy dispenser. “Dr. Stewart’s been waiting for you to wake up. He’s doing rounds on the third floor right now. I’ll have him come up here as soon as possible. In the meantime, let’s get some numbers for him.” After ripping the package open, she slid a narrow wand inside and whipped out a pen-looking item. “Open your mouth, please.”
A thermometer? Weird. I’d never seen one like this before. Lifting my tongue, I opened my mouth and sure enough, Leslie the supermodel nurse, slipped the hard plastic into position. “Umm…” I struggled to speak around the wand under my tongue.
“Sssh.” Leslie pressed a finger to her lips. “Give me a minute, okay?” Turning to the EKG machine near my bed, she drew some vicious-looking lines on the paper rolling out, then tore off the long strip.
I turned to Roy, who stood near the wall of windows, shifting from one foot to the other. Why wouldn’t he look at me? Or talk to me? What had I done? I still had no idea why I was here. And where was Luke? What about the rest of our kids? Who was taking care of them all while Roy and I were here? Had they come home from school yet? Would Miss Lydia bring Luke home when she left the library? Oh, God, had anyone fed Luke? He’d missed lunch by now, and that boy had a powerful set of lungs for communicating hunger.
What time was it anyway? I scanned the walls, but the clock was cut off by the pale yellow curtain that separated my half of the hospital room from whoever had the bed near the door. All I could see was one hand between the two and the three. Leslie had said she’d be with me ‘til five. I took another glance out the window and confirmed the sun lit the sky and buildings. So…maybe 2:40, 2:45? Definitely after 2:30 but before three o’clock in the afternoon.
Was it still Monday? I had no idea.
At last, Leslie returned to my bedside and removed the thermometer. After ditching the disposable sleeve in the wastebasket, she popped the interior plastic piece into a digital case. Picking up a patient chart, she scribbled something. What? Were my numbers good? Bad? Meh? I stretched my neck to see, but she must have sensed my curiosity because she turned her back, blocking my view.
“Okay. Dr. Stewart will be in in a bit. Can I get you some water or something in the meantime?”
I pushed the up arrow on my bedrail to raise myself to a sitting position. “Yes, please.”
She grabbed my plastic pitcher from the rolling tray and left, abandoning me to my husband’s aloofness. He stood by the window, one hip leaning against the radiator, a deep frown hardening his features.
“Wanna fill me in?” I asked him. “Why am I here?”
“Hell, Em, you don’t remember?” He furrowed his fingers through his scalp.
“If I remembered, would I ask you?” Jeez, Louise. What was going on? “What exactly happened?”
“You had a heart attack.”
I smirked. “Yeah, right. Enough games. I’m about to have a real heart attack if someone doesn’t clue me in soon. Come on, Roy. What really happened? What, I fell asleep again? Big whoop. I’m just tired. I’m sorry if I scared you, but I don’t need to be here. Let’s just get the kids and go home, okay?”
“Em.” He sank into the chair beside my bed, but didn’t touch me.
Which sucked because I really could have used his solid strength right then. Something was very wrong, and I had no idea what to do or how to fix it.
“No joke,” he continued. “You had a heart attack in the library café. Your boyfriend had to perform CPR.”
“My…boyfriend.” Okay, now I knew he was kidding. My boyfriend. Ha, ha. Very funny. “You mean Luke?”
“No,” he bit out, his gaze pinned to the trees outside my window. “I mean that Ambrose guy.”
Ambrose? Who was Ambrose?
At last, my husband turned to look at me, his eyes moist and reddened. “Jeez, Em, if you planned to have an affair, you had to pick a guy with a prissy name like Ambrose?”
I jerked as if he’d slapped me. “Wait. Hold up.” My brain struggled to stay in the game. “You think I’m having an affair, and what bothers you the most is my alleged lover’s name?”
An angry flush crept into his cheeks. “Don’t think I’m not upset that you’re cheating on me. I am. It’s just that…we haven’t exactly been getting along lately so I understand if you started looking for something better.”
Acid roiled in my stomach. “How civilized of you,” I retorted. When did I wind up in a Jane Austen adaptation? A chill rippled through me as a sudden thought slammed into my head. “Are you having an affair, Roy?”
His eyes blazed fire. “Of course not. I wouldn’t do that to you. I love you, Emily.”
“And I love you. Yet you think I’m cheating on you.”
“Well, you have to admit, you’ve been acting strange lately.”
“So you automatically make the leap from ‘acting strange’ to ‘having an affair,’ an affair, mind you, at the library with a toddler in tow.”
At least he had the grace to duck his head when he muttered, “I don’t know what you’re doing while I’m at work.”
“I’m not having an affair, Roy.” My voice rose with my outrage, and he dared to shush me, then point to the curtain that separated us from my unknown roommate. I couldn’t care less if the entire floor heard me. “I was at the library with our son for storytime. Where I go every Monday morning.”
“And Ambrose Chase?” His lips curled around the name.
Ambrose Chase? Where had I heard that name before? Wait. The author. In the library. Ah, that Ambrose. My memory was slowly coming back. “Mr. Chase is
a local author,” I told him with exaggerated calm. “I only met him this morning. He wanted to ask me some questions about what it’s like to work police dispatch in a small town. Research for a story he’s writing. Now, if we’re done doubting my fidelity, why don’t you tell me how I wound up here and when I can leave?”
“You won’t be going anywhere soon, if you keep shouting like that.” A new voice entered our little corner of paradise. Dr. Stewart stepped around the curtain and stopped at my bedside. While his overlarge glasses shielded any true expression from his eyes, a frown etched parentheses around his lips. “You gave us quite a scare, Emily.”
My mouth dried to dust. “So then it’s true? I really did have a heart attack?”
“It’s true. You were lucky your friend knew what to do.”
I shook my head. “But that doesn’t make sense. I didn’t have chest pains. I just couldn’t breathe.” This was a dream. Like the other night, when I dreamt about asking Roy for a divorce. Any minute now, I’d wake up and find myself sitting in my minivan outside the library.
“That’s why you were lucky. A woman’s symptoms differ from the standard chest pains and pain radiating down the arm most men experience. Often, women don’t realize they’re having a heart attack until it’s too late. If your friend hadn’t started CPR when he did, you and I might be having a very different conversation than what’s happening right now.” He pulled a penlight from his shirt pocket and flashed it at my eyes. “How are you feeling?”
“Confused.” I turned to glare at Roy. “And ticked off.”