Not Quite Forever (Not Quite #4)(65)
Author: Catherine Bybee

She reached for his hand and held tight when he squeezed.

“I’m in New York. It’s going to take me a few hours to get there. All right. Good-bye.”

“What happened?”

Walt’s face was a shade of white she never wanted to see. “My father had a heart attack.”

Dakota blinked, felt her heart drop. “Is he . . .”

“Alive, in the ICU.”

“Oh, Walt.” She wrapped her arms around him, wished she could take some of the burden draping over him like a cloud.

“I have to go.”

Dakota leaned back. “We. We have to go. I’ll wake the others, you pack.”

Between arranging a flight and driving to the airport, it took them nearly seven hours to land in Denver. Walt had little to say as he held her hand and walked through the doors of the hospital.

They were led to the waiting room of the ICU, where they found Brenda curled up, her head in Larry’s lap.

Larry noticed them first. “Hey.”

Brenda woke slowly, her eyes were swollen, her clothes rumpled. “Oh, Walt.” She uncurled from the couch and moved in to hug her brother.

“How is he?”

“Sleeping. Mom is in there with him. It was awful, Walt.”

Walt kissed the top of his sister’s head and turned to the locked doors of the ICU. “Wait out here for me?” he asked Dakota.

“Of course.”

After announcing himself to the staff, they buzzed him in.

Dakota dropped her purse into a chair. “How are the two of you doing? Have you eaten?”

Brenda shook her head, her gaze moved to Dakota’s hand resting on the baby.

“So my mother was telling the truth.”

It was hard to find a smile. “Walt and I are having a baby.”

Without warning, Brenda pulled her into a hug. “That’s awesome. I’m so happy for you.”

Larry hugged her next, patted her belly the moment he let go. “For everything bad that happens out there, something good is there to take its place.”

Familiar beeps and dings filled the ICU as Walt walked through. Antiseptic mixed with more scents than should be possible filled his nose.

He thought he was prepared. It wasn’t like he didn’t know what a man in a hospital bed recovering from an MI looked like. Still, Walt hesitated at the doorway, feeling as if someone sucker punched him in the gut.

Walter Eddy II had aged ten years overnight. His face was drawn, his color matched the white of the sheets. Walt’s mother sat sleeping in a chair by his father’s bed, her head drifting to one side.

When his foot scraped the floor, his mother’s head snapped up. “Walter,” she whispered.

She unfolded from the chair and stepped into his arms. They stepped out of the room in an attempt to keep from waking his father.

“How is he?”

“Stanley said he’s stable. You remember Dr. Altman?”

Stanley Altman was a longtime consultant with his father. A man they both looked up to and trusted. It would make sense that his father would want Stanley to take care of him, and vice versa if their roles were reversed.

“Of course. Has he been in this morning?”

His mom nodded. “Before office hours. He’s waiting for you to arrive, said to call him when you got here.”

Walt glanced back inside the room, noticed the cardiac monitor, his father’s rhythm and basic vital signs. Stable was a relative term when someone was hooked up to as many drugs as his father was. Probably best the man was sleeping, Lord knew how he was going to react when he had enough energy to bitch.

Walt approached the nursing station and asked to speak with the nurse caring for his father. Millie was a tiny Filipino woman with very little accent. After he introduced himself he asked to see his father’s chart, requested she call Stanley and let him know he was there.

As luck would have it, Stanley had cleared Walt to look over his father’s chart.

He started with the ER report and traced the events. An ambulance arrived twenty minutes after 911 was called. Snow on the mountain and the remote location of his family home would always prove a problem for timely emergency response time. According to their records, his father had collapsed, crushing chest pain radiating down his left arm. All the classic signs of a heart attack. What surprised Walt was the record of medications his father was taking according to the triage report. From what he could tell, his father knew he had a predisposition for a heart attack.

“Dr. Eddy?”

Walt looked up, found Millie standing over him. “Dr. Altman is on the line.”

“Thank you, Millie.” Walt took the phone and turned the page in the chart. “Hi Stanley.”

“Hello Walt. I’d ask how you are . . . but . . .”

“No need for pleasantries. Thanks for taking care of my dad.”

“I’d do anything for him. You know that.”

With the niceties aside, Walt dove in. “So he went to the cath lab?”

Stanley told him about his blockages, the ones they had to open in the cardiac catheterization lab . . . and the ones they still needed to attack. “He needs bypass, Walt. I’ve been harping on him for over a year. Maybe now he’ll listen.”

“Jesus, Stanley, he never said a word to me about this.”

“We’re surgeons, Walt. Hard to take it when something goes wrong with our own bodies.”

“Hard to admit, you mean.”

“Very hard. Maybe you can convince him. Of all people he knows the risk and the gain. Your dad is stubborn.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I’ll do my best. When do you think he’ll be able to go under?”

“I’d like to see him stabilize, get a couple nights’ rest. Of course if he turns we’ll want to go right away.”

Emergency surgery was never an optimal choice. “I’ll talk to him.”

“You know where to find me. And make sure your mother goes home. I can’t kick her out, but she’s not doing him or her any good sitting there.”

“Got it. Thanks.”

Walt ran a hand over the stubble on his chin and closed his father’s chart.

He encouraged his mother to join him outside the room.

“Looks like Dad is going to be here for a few days.”

“That’s what Stanley said.”

“Did you know about his heart?”

His mother’s jaw came up and part of her normal mask reappeared. “We didn’t really talk about these things. He said something about taking medicine, but he didn’t offer any details. I assumed he would have said something if it were serious.”