“The people we love are often more important to us, and should be, but this could jeopardize your career. And I thought it was only fair to warn you of that, to tell you that we’ve become aware of it, and give you the chance to clean it up as quickly as possible. At this point, if you do care about your job, you really have no other choice.”
She looked at him with a serious expression, and if she had hit him with a two-by-four from across his desk, she couldn’t have hit him any harder or taken his breath away more. It took him more than a minute to regain his composure after everything she’d said. He hadn’t argued with her or asked her the details of how they’d found out. It no longer mattered. Over the years, some of his colleagues must have seen him and Ashley in various places, or with their daughters, and apparently his life with her was an open secret. And Connie had made it clear that if he didn’t make a decision about it quickly, it was liable to cost him his career, something he couldn’t allow to happen. But he nearly burst into tears at the idea of giving either of them up, and he had no idea which one. And he clearly couldn’t continue to lead a double life after Connie’s warning from the board.
She could see how undone he was, and she rapidly stood up. “I’ll let you deal with this, Marshall. Please keep me informed of how you intend to proceed, and what you plan to do. No one is going to be shocked or upset if you decide to get divorced. And if you decide to end it with the other woman, I hope you handle it carefully, so this whole situation doesn’t explode in your face and ours.” He was sitting on a time bomb, and so were they. And the last thing they wanted was this kind of publicity for their CEO. They were a very traditional corporation, with a serious, respectable image, and he was thought to be a proper family man. And straightening out his current situation without shattering that image was going to be a major feat. People had to feel they could trust him, not that he was some kind of sleazy, dishonest two-timer, with two families in two cities. She just hoped that his mistress was a decent woman and wouldn’t turn this into a circus. If the woman who had accused him of sexual harassment was any indication of the kind of women he favored, Connie was deeply concerned, and so was the rest of the board. And she didn’t envy what he had to do now. He was probably very attached to both women, but if he wanted to keep his job as CEO of UPI in the long run, he would have to make a choice.
“I’m sorry, Marshall,” she said quietly as she left his office, and Marshall sat at his desk for a long time, looking stunned. He had absolutely no idea what to do now.
After sitting in his office with the door closed for two hours, Marshall left at three o’clock, without explanation to anyone. He told his secretary he thought he was coming down with something and just walked out. And she never made the connection between his leaving and the visit from the chairman of the board. It wasn’t the first time Connie had come to see him, just for a friendly talk between chairman and CEO. But this time had been entirely different, and only Marshall knew that. His whole career was on the line, even more than it had been with the threatened sexual harassment suit, or maybe because of it. Maybe he had used up his tickets with the board. But whatever the reason, Connie had made it clear, if he wanted to remain the CEO of UPI, that they didn’t want him having a wife and family in Marin County, and a hidden mistress and two children in Malibu. He had gotten away with it for years and now he no longer could. The jig was up.
He couldn’t call Liz to discuss it with her; nor could he tell Ashley. He knew that as quickly as possible, he had to choose one of them and clean up his life. Thinking about it made him feel sick, and as soon as he walked into the house in Ross at four-thirty, he walked upstairs to his bathroom and threw up. And he felt no better when he did. He was engaged in another nightmare, and this one wouldn’t end as simply as Megan Wheeler’s claims against him. There was no one to buy off, no compromise solution possible. If he wanted both women, he would eventually lose his job, and probably sooner rather than later, since the board was terrified of being involved in a scandal, and having it reflect on both him and UPI. And if it did, it could affect their stock. So he had to decide what to do now, or kiss his career goodbye. What he couldn’t figure out was whether to stay married to Liz, with whom he had spent twenty-seven years, and who had always been the perfect wife, despite her recent emotional ups and downs, but whom he didn’t love as he did Ashley. And it brought tears to his eyes when he thought of giving Ashley up, and he didn’t think he could. But how could he do that to Liz? And his children, those he shared with Liz, would hate him forever if he abandoned their mother for the gorgeous girl who had shared his bed in L.A. for eight years, and given birth to his twins. He had no idea where to turn and no one to talk to. He had never been so terrified in his life, of making the wrong decision, but in this case, there was no right one, and he knew he would lose something and someone important either way, and a part of himself. Each of the women owned a part of him, and he would have to sever a limb to leave them, like an animal in a trap.
He sat in the dark in the house in Ross after nightfall, unable to move or clear his head. He just kept going around and around in his mind … Ashley … Liz … Liz … Ashley … Did he pick history or passion? Duty or desire? Youth or maturity? The perfect corporate wife or the girl of his dreams?… He had loved them both for too long … He had been sitting there for several hours, alternately crying and unable to breathe, with a rising feel of panic that tasted like bile in his mouth, when he was suddenly aware of a sharp pain in his chest and a tingling down one arm, and he knew he was having a heart attack. And for a minute it seemed much simpler to die than to make the decision he had to make. And as he thought it, he was so breathless, he started to pass out, and instinctively reached for the phone and called 911. They answered immediately.
“I’m having … a … heart … attack …,” he said, in short sharp breaths. He had no idea what time it was and didn’t care, and he still hoped he would die, but had called 911 anyway. He hadn’t called Liz or Ashley and didn’t want to. He wanted to die alone. It was another choice he couldn’t make.
“What’s your address?” the woman asked him in a calm clear voice, and he told her. “Are you close to your front door?” she asked him.
“No … can’t get downstairs … I can’t breathe …,” he said in gasps. “Pain in my chest … front door unlocked.” He felt again like he was going to pass out, but he hadn’t yet.
“Have you been drinking?”
“Two scotch … not drunk … I’m upstairs … in my bedroom.”
“I’ll send a unit out immediately. Keep talking to me. What’s your name?”
“Marshall Weston,” he said clearly, and it meant nothing to her.
“Marshall, are you alone?… Marshall?” she said sharply. He had gone silent for a minute, and then she heard him groan.
“Just threw up.” It was consistent with symptoms for a heart attack. She had already dispatched the paramedic unit from the fire department, which should be at his house any minute. And then she heard voices in the room with him, and knew they were there.
“Marshall, are the paramedics with you?” She had to check to be sure.
“Yes,” he said, and hung up the phone, as two burly paramedics knelt down next to him. He was lying on his bedroom floor in his own vomit. Marshall looked at them with eyes full of fear and despair. They checked his vital signs, and his heart was racing, but it sounded strong, as one of them listened with a stethoscope and nodded to his friend. There was a chance that they had gotten to him before the actual attack, but they had everything they needed to get his heart going again if it stopped on the way to Marin General.
“I can’t breathe … my chest hurts …,” Marshall said as two firemen put him on a gurney and strapped him in.
“You’re going to be fine, Marshall,” the senior paramedic reassured him. He looked about the same age as Marshall and exuded confidence as he directed the others to get him into the ambulance. “We’ve already called the hospital, and t
hey’re waiting for you.”
“… can’t breathe …,” he gasped again. He felt like he was choking, and he could feel his heart racing now, a thousand beats a minute, or so it seemed.
The paramedics talked to each other as they slid the gurney into the ambulance and closed the doors. They took off with lights flashing and siren screaming less than a minute later, as one of them sat next to Marshall and continued to take his vital signs. Marshall kept looking at him, with an oxygen mask on. He pointed to his chest and said “hurts,” and as the paramedic nodded his understanding, Marshall lost consciousness into a sea of black.
Chapter 16
Lindsay was in her room, doing her nails and watching a movie while talking on her cell phone to a friend, and Liz was quietly reading on her bed, when the phone rang at the house in Lake Tahoe. It was late for anyone to call, and Liz assumed it was Marshall when she picked it up. Instead, she heard an unfamiliar voice that identified herself as an emergency-room nurse at Marin General, and she told Liz that Marshall had been brought in by the paramedics for a suspected heart attack, and they were checking him for coronary blockage. Liz sat bolt upright on her bed as soon as she heard the words. They had found her name and all their numbers in his wallet and called her as soon as they admitted him.
“How did that happen? Is he conscious? Is he all right?” She was already standing next to her bed, ready to bolt out the door. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and she slipped her feet into sandals as she questioned the nurse.
“He just came in. He’s having a cardiogram now. He lost consciousness in the ambulance on the way here, but he’s alert now. You can call back in an hour.”
“Thank you,” Liz said, feeling breathless herself. “Tell him I love him.” This was just what she’d been afraid of lately, and she wondered if she’d sensed it coming. She had a constant feeling of impending doom now, as though something terrible were about to happen. Maybe this was it. But she knew that people often survived heart attacks these days, and he was in good hands. As soon as she hung up, she grabbed her purse and keys and ran into Lindsay’s room. “I’m going back to the city,” she said with a look of panic, as Lindsay looked up at her in surprise.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
For an instant, Liz wondered if she should tell her the truth. But she was sixteen and old enough to know, and he was her father.
“Dad had a heart attack. They just took him to Marin General. I’m leaving right now.” She knew that Lindsay could manage alone for the night, and the housekeeper would be there in the morning. And she could call the neighbor if she had a problem, or stay there.
Lindsay leaped off her bed immediately, closed the nail polish, and stepped into flip-flops on the floor next to her bed. “I’ll go with you,” she said, and followed her mother out of her room. Liz was already on the stairs. She didn’t stop to argue with her, and was glad that Lindsay wanted to come.
Without thinking, they left the lights on, and Liz didn’t want to lose any time. They were in the car two minutes later, and Liz drove as quickly as she dared. She knew that she could make it to Marin in three hours without traffic, and they could call on the way to see how he was. Liz had not been so frightened since Tom had a severe concussion when he fell off a horse at seven and Lindsay had a seizure from a high fever when she was two. And a heart attack was serious business. She prayed that Marshall would be all right.
Half an hour later, they were on the freeway, and Liz was quiet as she drove. Lindsay could see how terrified she was, and she knew how much her mother loved him. And even if she thought he was a jerk sometimes, she loved her father too.
“He’ll be okay, Mom,” she tried to reassure her, and Liz nodded with tears in her eyes. She was sure that the threatened sexual harassment suit had done it. It had been so stressful for all of them. She hated that woman for her lies. None of them had been the same since. Liz herself had been terrified of what terrible thing would happen next, and she felt guilty now for harassing Marshall about it and crying all the time. But she had been so upset for nearly three months, and he had been very patient with her. And now disaster had struck again. At least he didn’t smoke, and drank very little, but he had so much stress at the office, and all the responsibility for running UPI rested on him. She wondered if he’d have to retire now. He was only fifty-one, but maybe he would be able to go back to work after this. She wondered if he’d have to have an angioplasty or bypass, or if they’d put in stents, like the husbands of some of her friends. Her mind was racing, but there was no traffic and they were making good time. She was flying.
They called the hospital after they’d been in the car for an hour. The nurse who answered the phone in coronary urgent care said that his condition was stable and they were doing an angiogram. Liz thought of calling John and Tom, but she wanted to have a better idea of what was happening before she did.
Liz pulled into the parking lot at Marin General just after midnight. They had made it in just under three hours, and she rushed inside with Lindsay right behind her. They told her in the emergency room that they had moved him to coronary ICU by then. It didn’t sound good to her, and she looked at Lindsay in panic. They were both fighting back tears, as they held hands, and got in the elevator to go upstairs. Liz rushed to the nurse’s desk and gave them her name.
“He just got back from his angiogram,” the nurse told her with a sympathetic smile. It sounded frightening to Liz and Lindsay, but at least he was still alive.
“How is he?” Liz whispered, terrified to hear the news.
“He’s doing fine. Our resident on call is with him. We have him in a room by himself. You can go in, if you like.” She was relieved that she didn’t have to walk past all the little cubicles, with patients hooked up to monitors, and frightened relatives at their side. She was one of them now. Lindsay followed her to the room the nurse had indicated, and Liz cautiously opened the door, not sure what she’d find inside. The first thing Liz saw was her husband, looking pale underneath his suntan, and slightly gray, with a serious look as he spoke to the resident, a young dark-haired man in a white coat who looked like a boy to her. He was smiling at Marshall, who was surprised when he saw her.
“What are you doing here?” He hadn’t called her, but he was vaguely aware that they told him someone had. There was a monitor in the room, next to his bed, and it was beeping softly, but the pattern on the screen looked regular as Liz glanced at it on the way to kiss him and take his hand.
“You thought maybe I’d sit in Tahoe waiting to hear how you were?” He smiled in answer. He knew her better than that.
“What took you so long?” he teased her. “I’ve been here for three hours.” She squeezed his hand and looked at the doctor.
“How is he?” She wanted it straight from the horse’s mouth, not played down by Marshall so she wouldn’t worry.
“He’s doing fine,” the doctor said, glancing at Marshall, who looked sheepish in the bed, where he was lying flat with pressure on his groin from the angiogram.
“I didn’t have a heart attack,” Marshall told her before the doctor said it. He owed her that much at least.
“It sounds like a hell of a warning,” Liz said, frowning, particularly if he’d lost consciousness in the ambulance on the way there. “That ought to tell you something. You need to slow down,” she scolded him, and the doctor nodded. They had been discussing it when she walked in.
“It wasn’t even a warning,” Marshall admitted. “They went over me with a fine-tooth comb. Apparently it was an anxiety attack, which is nothing. Just me being neurotic and stressed out.” Marshall looked embarrassed as the doctor confirmed it to Liz, and Lindsay sat down in the room’s only chair. Marshall noticed her for the first time, and smiled and thanked her for coming. She didn’t understand what was going on, and neither did Liz.
“An anxiety attack can mimic a heart attack pretty closely, at least in the superficial signs,” the young doctor explained. “The big difference is
that your heart is never at risk. Mr. Weston’s heart is healthy, but he seems to be reacting to a considerable amount of stress. So you’re not entirely wrong in saying he should slow down, or at least remove some of the stressors from his life. This kind of episode can be pretty unpleasant. And you don’t want to be having an angiogram every week.” That part of the evening’s entertainment had been a lot more unpleasant than even Marshall had feared. And it wasn’t an experience he wanted to go through again. They had passed a catheter into the artery in his groin to check his heart. And he had thought he really was having a heart attack while they did it. He knew that sometimes people did.
“So you’re okay, Dad?” Lindsay asked from her seat, with a worried expression. She and her mother looked worse than he did, even with everything he had gone through.
“I’m okay, Lindsay. Thank you for coming with your mom,” he said again.
“Of course.” She smiled at him, relieved.
It was taking Liz a few minutes to absorb what the resident had said, and she wondered if he knew what he was doing, but as Marshall said, the angiogram didn’t lie. He was fine. Just incredibly stressed. And he knew why, but he didn’t share that information with Liz.
“I had a rough day at the office, and an emergency meeting with the board.” He didn’t say what it was about, and she didn’t ask. She never pressed him about work, unless he volunteered. “It was no worse than any other day,” he said—lying again, it had been considerably worse and rocked his world—“but I guess it just got to me.” Liz felt guilty as he said it, knowing how shaky she had been lately, and how demanding of his time. Maybe it was her fault. But his anxiety attack had woken her up. They all needed to get over the aborted sexual harassment suit now. It was done, and time to move on.
Power Play: A Novel Page 17