"Yes. They just came to take Mr. Muldaur to the hospital." At this point the voice of the woman on the other end of the telephone broke.
Maggie stared unseeingly ahead of herself. The hospital?
"Samaritan Sinai," the woman on the other end of the telephone said. "I think—well, aren't there some children? Nothing like this has ever happened, and I feel so—I don't know how to reach anybody."
The woman was clearly breaking down, practically in tears. Maggie, meanwhile, felt like she was going into shock. Ian had been taken to the hospital? No. No, no, no. She'd already been through this with Sophia. She wasn't going to do it again.
And the children! No. God couldn't be letting this happen to them again.
Maggie felt a cool, clear anger settle over her. "What happened?"
But the woman on the other end of the phone was crying in earnest now.
"Listen." Maggie gave her voice the chill she'd often heard Ian himself use, the kind that was sharp enough to cut through anything. "Listen," she said again, one degree softer. "I need your help. You have to get a hold of yourself. Why did they take Ian to the hospital? What happened?"
"He—fainted. Briefly. The ambulance— They said heart attack."
Heart attack? There had to be some mistake. Ian was fit as an athlete. There wasn't an ounce of flab on his lean, rangy body, or at least none that was obvious. And he was how old? Forty? Forty-one? "That couldn't be right," she said out loud.
There was the faint sound of tears from the other end of the line.
"Okay," Maggie said again, confident. "I'll take care of the children. Don't worry about it. You just—" Just—what? Soak her head in some Zoloft? "Never mind," Maggie said. "I'll take it from here." She set down the telephone.
It took only half a second for reaction to set in. The hand that still rested on the telephone began to tremble. Maggie had never liked Ian, not from the first time he'd darkened her parents' door on Sophia's arm. He was arrogant, controlling, everything she disliked in the male of the species. And yet she felt as if she'd been punched in the gut.
Ian, with all that confident male power, brought down? The thought was oddly devastating.
And made worse by the fact she'd just been thinking ill of him.
Maggie drew in a sharp, quick breath. She took a step back from the counter. Thinking ill of Ian had not caused this problem, but beyond that her brain went into a tailspin. She'd abruptly, unexpectedly, been handed the reins, and now she had to do something. But what?
Maggie twirled on her heel. She gazed out toward the desert mountains. She ought to go to the hospital—or should she get the kids from school? Close up the nursery? She needed her keys.
You're panicking, Maggie. She closed her eyes and let out her breath slowly. Mentally, she apologized to Ian's secretary for having ridiculed her emotional state. Maggie took another breath. First, call the hospital, get information, she told herself. Based on that, she could figure out what to do next.
She turned back to the counter and picked up the telephone. She punched 411 to get the number for the hospital. While concentrating on breathing slow and keeping balanced, she tapped her fingertips on the counter.
After about two seconds of that, she hung up the phone, grabbed her keys, and ran out the door.
CHAPTER TWO
Maggie hated hospitals. She came through the main entrance of Samaritan Sinai tensed against this place of death.
She hadn't always hated hospitals. Until three years before, she'd thought hospitals wonderful places to save and improve human life. But the night Sophia died now put a different image in Maggie's head, a nightmarish one.
Swallowing a lump of fear, she approached the African-American woman sitting behind the reception desk.
"Fourth floor," the woman answered in response to Maggie's query about Ian's location. She glanced at her computer screen. "Cardiac care unit."
"Thanks." Maggie called the word as she walked backward. She twirled to stride the rest of the way to the elevators. He's gonna be okay. God could not be letting this happen to the kids again.
But she knew God could do whatever the hell he wanted to.
On the fourth floor, Maggie stalked out of the elevator, took a deep breath, and followed the signs to the cardiac care unit.
A glass wall and door marked the entrance. Maggie decided not to bother asking if it were okay to go inside. She simply pushed open the door.
The place was an arena of machinery. Screens, keyboards, and wires were arranged with frightening seriousness. Maggie scanned the six beds that ringed the room. She couldn't find Ian. Oh God, she couldn't find him!
It was impossible to forget the last time she'd been at this hospital. Three years ago Sophia had been brought here after a semi had jackknifed into her BMW. Maggie had spent agonizing hours in a bland waiting room, together with Kathy, Andy, and Ian. They'd all been in dread, but hanging onto that last thread of hope. The doctors would be able to put back together what had remained of Sophia after the emergency crew had extracted her broken body from the wreckage of twisted metal.
But in the end, the surgeon had come out in his soiled-looking scrubs, his face haggard. He'd simply shook his head.
Maggie's little sister, Sophia, who had the ability to drive her crazy but whom she'd loved with all her heart— Sophia, so generous and compassionate, was gone.
Now Maggie drew in a shaky breath. Oh, please, where is Ian?
Then she saw a doctor standing by one of the beds, partially obscuring a patient. Maggie could only see the back of the patient's head, but she recognized the distinctive, coffee-brown color hair. Ian.
So he was alive. Even conscious, if a doctor was talking to him. For a moment Maggie felt weak at the knees. If Ian was conscious, then things were much better than she'd feared.
But she still felt unsteady as she started toward the bed.
"Thrombolytics," she heard the doctor saying to Ian. "Your standard clot-busting drug, but at your age I think angioplasty, with a possible stent, ought to be done as well."
"At my age." Maggie could hear Ian's voice, sounding faint, slightly nasal. And disgusted.
At this point the doctor looked up and saw Maggie. The shadow of disapproval that crossed his face told her that, indeed, she wasn't supposed to have come through the door.
Too bad. She wasn't about to leave now. Clearing her throat, Maggie said, "I'm, uh, here to see Ian."
The doctor, a stocky, older man, tilted his head.
Maggie took this as permission to approach the bed. Drawing in a surreptitious breath, she looked down.
Though she'd been prepared for worse, shock still hit her. Ian's normally tanned complexion was almost as white as the sheet he lay on. Clear tubes ran into his nose while his naked chest was covered with EKG wires.
Two things hit Maggie in that moment. One was that Ian had a body at all—that is, a body with skin and hair and not simply a form covered by clothes. The other thing that hit her was that this admittedly vigorous-looking body had betrayed him. The powerful, overbearing man she'd sparred with on so many occasions lay on a hospital bed looking completely helpless.
She did her best to disguise her dismay, but she knew her polite smile faltered. She dragged it back on again, forcing herself to appear confident. "Hello, Ian. How are you doing?"
His eyes were very dark as he looked back up at her and loaded with an emotion that was so foreign to him it took Maggie a moment to interpret it.
Ian was scared.
"Mrs. Muldaur?" the doctor asked.
"No," Ian and Maggie said at the same time.
Maggie shook her head. "Distant relative," she explained, although "only relative" would have fit the bill just as easily. Ian's parents were deceased and he had no siblings, nor any other relations Maggie knew of. And yes, there were her parents, and her brothers, but none of them lived within a thousand miles of Palmwood. "I came to—well." She drew in a breath to regain her composure, the composure she
'd lost by seeing the mighty Ian looking scared. "What's going on?"
One side of Ian's mouth twisted in a bad facsimile of a smile. "The doctor and I are leisurely discussing what to do about my heart attack. How did you know I was here?"
Maggie felt taken aback by the banal question. "Your secretary called me."
"Ah."
Maggie cleared her throat. "It seemed—well, I came to see if there's anything I can do." It sounded stupid, suddenly, and incomplete. She'd come because she was afraid he was dying.
Ian seemed to know this. He managed to get paler. With his half-smile fading, he said, "Thanks."
Thanks? Maggie's dismay morphed into terror. This kind of conversation just didn't happen between them, something kind and careful. It hadn't even happened when Sophia had died right here in this very hospital. She was wondering how to react when the doctor interjected.
"If you don't mind—" He looked down at his watch. "I'd like to start the angioplasty as soon as the heart surgeon shows up."
"Heart surgeon?" Maggie turned back to the doctor, the words coming out of her in a squeak. "I thought— Doesn't angioplasty mean you don't have to cut him open?"
The doctor lifted his hands in a placating gesture. "That's true, but..."
"But," Ian jumped into the pause caused by the doctor's hesitation. "But there's always the chance of a problem." His lips thinned. "So they keep a heart surgeon on standby."
The doctor smiled benignly at Maggie. "Ninety-eight percent of the time everything goes exactly according to plan. Chances are excellent that in a few days Mr. Muldaur can walk out of here as if nothing ever happened at all."
"Oh." Maggie looked from the doctor down to Ian. A huge weight inside her lifted. Chances were excellent Ian could go home as if nothing had ever happened at all. Well, that was...fantastic. Much better news than she'd expected.
Ha! Ian was over-reacting. This could be easy, a snap. In fact—
Maggie thought of the kids still at school, still blissfully ignorant of this whole situation. If Ian could have the angioplasty right away, why... "The whole thing could be done before the kids get out of school," she breathed out loud.
"No," Ian said.
Maggie blinked. "No?"
"No," Ian repeated. "I need to see them."
"What?"
"Before the procedure," he told Maggie, "I need to see them."
Maggie's lips parted. She blinked a few more times.
"Heart surgery," Ian said, staring at her.
"Well, yes, but Ian, the chances are overwhelming that you're going to get through this just fine."
He glared at her.
Maggie felt a wave of compassion. He was scared. It was the most human she'd ever seen him. But she couldn't help thinking about the kids—and their fear. "Oh, Ian, are you sure? Think of the kids, having to come to the hospital, to sit and wait to hear the fate of another parent..." She couldn't finish the sentence. Her throat closed with the memory of the other parent for whom the children had had to wait.
Something of the same memory must have crossed Ian's mind, for a flicker of pain showed in his face. But then an expression of determination hardened his features. "Believe it or not, Maggie, I am thinking of them. And I'm not doing anything here until I have a chance to talk to them."
Maggie stared at him. He'd just had a heart attack. She knew she ought to be patient or even giving, but irritation lashed her. He was always so sure he knew what was best. Over and over she'd seen him pull this routine on her sister. But she wasn't letting him pull it on her, even less so in this instance when his judgment was obviously skewed by his condition.
Thinking it best not to answer Ian directly, Maggie bit her tongue and turned to the doctor. "What do you think?" she asked. "Didn't you say he should have this done as soon as possible?"
The doctor raised his brows. "It would be ideal to start as soon as the heart surgeon gets here, but I have to admit he's stable. At the moment there's no emergency."
Maggie clenched her jaw. Couldn't the doctor help? "It will take me over two hours to collect both children. They're in different schools. Maybe even three hours."
The doctor pursed his lips to one side. "It would be possible to wait."
"It would?"
The doctor lifted a shoulder. "We can always move forward if it looks like it'll be necessary."
"No," Ian put in. "Not until I've seen my children."
Maggie shot him a dark glance. "Think."
"I have thought. Get Andy and Kathy. Now."
Maggie pressed her lips together. She wanted to say no. She wanted to take as stubborn a stand as he was taking. Because, dammit, he was wrong. To put the kids through such a wait would be cruel.
But she was bristlingly aware of the helplessness of Ian's state. He was mechanically and electronically connected to the machinery of the cardiac care unit. He looked like a hiccup would knock the life out of him entirely.
She couldn't take advantage of that, not even as much as she wanted to. "Dammit," she hissed. "You— You—" She couldn't think of an appropriately derogatory epithet.
A muscle in his jaw moved as he stared up at her. But his voice was maddeningly calm when he spoke. "The sooner you leave, the sooner you can get back."
She narrowed her eyes, wishing she could shake some sense into him. Instead, she had to satisfy herself with silently turning and striding swiftly from the room.
She couldn't take advantage of him, but neither could she bring herself to admit that he'd won. He knew it, anyway. He always did.
~~~
Ian had never felt so helpless in his life. As he watched Maggie march out of the room, he cursed the wires that attached him to the EKG machine. He wanted to get up and follow her. He wanted to grab hold of her arm, whip her around, and demand she go get his children.
But even if he were able to do that, the stubborn woman probably wouldn't listen to him. Oh, no. Maggie always knew what was best.
Ian closed his eyes. At least he knew he didn't have the right answer all of the time.
In fact, he could even admit that maybe Maggie was right. Maybe it would be better to get the angioplasty over with before the kids even knew there'd been a problem. Save them worry.
But he couldn't help thinking about that two percent, the chance that something could go wrong.
Ian swallowed and made himself open his eyes.
The doctor was looking down at him, frowning. "Are you still in pain?"
Ian made an effort to clear his face. "No. No pain." None that was physical, anyway.
Apparently satisfied, the doctor nodded. "Try to take it easy, then. I'll be back when the heart surgeon gets here."
Ian watched him walk away. He didn't bother repeating that he wanted to wait until his children arrived. Nobody seemed to care. And he couldn't do anything about it.
Gritting his teeth, Ian turned to glare at the ceiling. Dammit, this shouldn't be happening to him, none of it. Okay, yes, three years ago when Sophia had died, he'd learned you couldn't really take anything for granted, but he wasn't like Sophia, so delicate and breakable. And for God's sake, a heart attack? This wasn't right. He exercised regularly, had good cholesterol. He was strong, always pulled his own weight and more. There was no good reason he should be having heart problems.
Ian threw a glare toward the monitor that was recording his heartbeats. Okay, granted, there was one reason. The cardiologist had muttered something about family history being a risk factor. That was enough, simply a father or a mother who'd had heart disease.
Ian clenched his jaw very tight. It was possible he had a parent who'd had heart disease. But he had no way of knowing if he had any blood relatives with this problem. None at all. He didn't know any of his actual blood relatives.
A sensation of helplessness swept over him, like a thick fog that wanted to fold him inside. He had no control over his birth parents' medical history, or where tiny amounts of cholesterol chose to lodge in his arteries, or—or
whether or not Maggie would go get his kids.
For one bad moment, the feeling of helplessness nearly overwhelmed him. Then he drew in a deep breath.
No. He refused to feel helpless. He was determined to regain some control. Ian let out his deep breath and thought about how to do that. It didn't take much thinking for his fury at Maggie to return. Oh, yes, that worked. Fury trounced fear, no doubt about it.
He could take back control.
A tiny voice inside screamed that Ian didn't really have any control, but Ian gazed at the heart monitor and ignored the stupid voice. He concentrated on Maggie and her utter obstinacy. Damn the woman for refusing to get his kids.
As he let his anger rise, he saw the space between his heartbeats lengthen.
Oh, yeah. Anger definitely worked.
~~~
It was not as difficult as Maggie had feared to get Andy out of school. Her name was on his emergency card, just as it had been on Ian's. The women working behind the scarred wooden counter of the school office clucked sympathetically over Maggie's tale of Ian's troubles and made a call to Andy's geometry class.
While she waited, Maggie did her best to wipe her face clean of the irritation that had only built toward Ian during her drive to the high school. Thanks to his almighty dictatorship, she had to be the one to meet his son with the news that his father was not yet all right. She hoped she looked relatively calm when Andy came through the wire glass door.
He was big for his age, stocky, like a football player. It always startled Maggie to see him now, so huge compared to the infant she'd fallen in love with.
He was smiling, obviously pleased to have been summoned from his math class. When he saw Maggie standing there, his smile widened.
"Hey, Aunt Maggie, this is cool. What's going on?"
"Hi, Andy. I'm sorry to get you out of class." And sorry she couldn't bash Ian for making her the one to wipe the smile from Andy's face.
"Aw, that's all right." Andy's gaze slid to the office staff, who stood by silently watching. With his face sobering, he turned back to Maggie. "What's wrong?"
Maggie chose her words carefully. "There's been something of a...situation with your father."
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