THE WAITING WAS INTERMINABLE. Although Brianna had sat with that woman in Honolulu, and cared about her husband’s outcome, she’d still been there as what she saw to be part of her job. This, on the other hand, was intensely personal. Her mother and father had arrived, as had Quinn. Sarah had called other friends, but asked them to put off coming to the hospital for now. Knowing how quickly word would get out, she’d also had Caroline’s condition put on the town’s Facebook page with a note that she wouldn’t be allowed visitors, so, not wanting to get in the way of staff trying to help patients, she requested that people not come to the hospital at this time. And please, no flowers, because, as they all knew, Caroline Harper suffered from allergies, especially during spring pollen season.
So for now, those waiting were just the small group of Mannions and Harpers attempting to reassure each other that everything was going to be fine. And repeating the cliché of all clichés—that no news was good news.
Ben, unsurprisingly, couldn’t sit still. Although his pacing was getting on her nerves, she understood. Taking in his complexion, which had turned from the angry red it had been when she and Seth had arrived to a sickly gray, she was grateful that medical care was close by. And wouldn’t that be all Seth needed? Both his parents admitted to the hospital on the same day.
Finally the doctor arrived.
“Mr. Harper?” she addressed Ben.
“That’s me. How’s my wife?”
“She’s doing quite well, actually. Especially considering that she’s already had at least one heart attack.”
“What? How could she have a heart attack and not know?”
“Women’s symptoms often go unnoticed. They can be mistaken for cold, fatigue, flu, general malaise. Even, this time of year, allergies.”
“She complained about that,” Seth murmured, closing his eyes and shaking his head, giving Brianna the impression he was wishing he could turn back time.
“It well could have been allergies,” the doctor reassured him. “This year’s Scotch broom is the worst I’ve seen in years... At any rate, as a precautionary measure, we performed blood tests to measure the levels of cardiac enzymes that can indicate heart muscle damage. The results of your wife’s test revealed that she did indeed have an attack today.”
Ben’s low, pained moan was easily heard in the silence of the small room.
“Not to get too technical, but troponins are proteins found inside heart cells that are released when damaged due to a lack of blood supply to the heart. Her levels also indicated an attack.”
“Christ.” The way Ben collapsed into a chair had Brianna worried he’d pass out.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat this,” the doctor said briskly. “It’s definitely serious, but not nearly as bad as it could be. The echocardiogram revealed enough damage that, since you’d signed permission for any necessary tests—”
“Hell, yes. Do whatever you need,” Ben said.
“We did a coronary catheterization, which you may have heard referred to as an angiogram. Liquid dye was injected into the arteries of Mrs. Harper’s heart through a long, thin catheter that was fed through an artery in her leg to her heart.”
She paused when he slumped and dragged both hands down his face. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah.” He took a deep breath. Blew it out.
“It’s a very standard test,” she assured him. “The reason we do it is the dye makes the arteries visible on X-ray, revealing areas of blockage. In your wife’s case, it appears not to be a problem we need to worry about at the moment. She was fortunate to receive good care from the start. She’d taken a small aspirin last night, but EMTs gave her an additional one, which reduces blood clotting to allow the blood to flow through a narrowed artery. They also gave her nitroglycerin to dilate the vessels, and oxygen, and installed an IV so she’d be ready for us to give her clot busters as soon as she arrived. Time, as you may know, is of the essence.”
“Both my parents died of heart attacks,” Ben said. “Both on the same day. Mom in the morning, Dad at night.”
“That, unfortunately, occurs,” she said. “It’s been recognized as sudden adult death syndrome, triggered by emotional stress. I’m sorry that you had to experience such a loss.”
“I got through it.” He brushed her sympathy off with his typical Harper male bravado. “All I want to know is when I can see my wife.”
“We’ll be moving her upstairs and settling her into a room,” the doctor said. “She’ll need to stay for three days, possibly more, until we’re sure it’s safe to release her. But she can’t resume her normal work life for probably eight weeks.”
“I’ll take care of her.” Ben shot a look at Seth. “I’m nearly retired now. She needs me more than you do.”
“Absolutely,” Seth agreed. “And don’t worry about the work. We’ll be fine.”
“All right, then.” The doctor glanced down at her watch. A code coming over the loudspeaker called her back to her duties. “We’ll talk again over the next days. Meanwhile, if all goes as well as I expect, she should be able to go home in a few days. But you need to remember that she’s still at risk. I’ll want her to undergo a stress test as a follow-up to see how her heart and blood vessels respond to exertion. However,” she said, more gently than she’d spoken since entering the room, “on a positive note, I’d say she’s a lucky woman, Mr. Harper. And I suspect, from the bit she and I have talked, she’s very special and you’re a very fortunate man.”
“You’ve got that right,” Ben agreed with more heartfelt emotion than Brianna had ever heard from him.
Caroline had to be all right, she thought. Because all of the Harpers, who were in new phases of their lives, needed her to be.
* * *
BEN HAD JUST finished taking a much-needed piss, which he hadn’t allowed himself to do because he’d refused to leave the waiting room for a second for fear of missing his wife’s doctor, when of all the damn people in this town, Mike Mannion strolled down the hall.
“My wife isn’t allowed visitors,” he growled as his hands, scarred from a lifetime of saving Honeymoon Harbor houses, fisted.
“I understand. I’ve already talked with the charge nurse.”
Of course he had. For some reason Ben hadn’t been able to understand, every female in Shelter Bay seemed to go into estrogen overload whenever the artist was around.
“She told me that she was holding her own.”
“She’s a tough girl,” Ben said, softening a bit as that night they’d met flashed back through his mind. “One of those steel magnolias. She’s going to be fine.”
“Of course she will,” Mannion said in an agreeable way that made Ben want to punch him in that pretty black Irish face. “But I came here to talk with you.”
“What about?”
“Why don’t we take it to the coffee shop?” the other man suggested. “Or outside.”
If they went outside, he’d risk slugging the guy. Which Caroline would probably never forgive him for. He shrugged, even as his gut clenched. Ben didn’t want to hear anything Mike Mannion had to tell him. Especially anything to do with his wife.
“I guess I could use some coffee,” he said. His nerves were already jangling with worry and all the toxic sludge they called coffee from the hallway vending machine, but he figured the cafeteria was better than discussing their situation somewhere private.
After dropping back into the waiting room, letting everyone know that he was just getting some coffee and needed some time alone, Ben was sitting at a corner table, hunkered over a cardboard cup of joe he didn’t want, waiting for whatever Mannion had come here to hit him with.
“I’ll get straight to the point,” Mike Mannion said. “I love Caroline. I’ve loved her since that first night of the play, when she came over to talk to me about the set.”
“She left with me.”
Mannion nodded. Eyed Ben over the rim of the brown-and-white cup. “She did, to my everlasting regret. To tell the truth, I didn’t think you two would last the summer. You’re very disparate personalities. Different.”
Ben’s fingers tightened on the cup enough to send coffee splashing over the top onto the table. Both men ignored it. “I know what the hell disparate means. Just because I work with my hands doesn’t mean I don’t have a brain. Or a dictionary.” He’d like to see artsy-fartsy Mannion do a damn day’s work with his hands creating something that people, families, could build a life in. He painted pretty pictures that went on walls the Harpers had once built and now restored.
Another nod. “I didn’t mean to sound condescending.”
“Like you didn’t mean to take up with another man’s wife?” Ben challenged. His teeth clenched so tight he imagined he could hear them cracking.
“I haven’t taken up with her. She’s merely a student. And a friend. She appreciated the roses, by the way. Nice touch.”
Ben wanted to hate this rival. But gave him credit for offering some kernel of hope. He wasn’t sure that if he’d been in the other man’s shoes, he would’ve been that generous.
“But here’s the thing,” Mannion continued, his own jaw stiffening. “I know she’s given you an ultimatum. I suspect this incident could well tilt things. Whether toward or away from me, I’ve no idea. But I imagine when you think you might die, you take stock of your life.”
“Makes sense to me,” Ben agreed.
“So if you can’t pull this off and give her what she wants, what she needs, I’m giving you fair warning that I can. And I will. And you’ll be the one out in the cold, remembering a night when the most amazing woman you’d ever met in your life drove into town, showed up at a small-town Theater in the Firs, then left you to spend the rest of your days thinking about what might have been.”
His piece said, Mannion picked up his cup and tossed it, untouched, into the recycling bin on the way out of the coffee shop.
* * *
BRIANNA WASN’T THAT surprised when Seth’s visit with his mother was short. Although she hadn’t kept track, she doubted it lasted more than three minutes. It must have been horrible for him, having lost his wife, then almost his mother, both without any warning.
“It’s not your fault,” she said as they drove back to Herons Landing.
“She was coughing.”
“So is half the town. It’s spring in the Pacific Northwest. My car got covered with tree pollen while I was having lunch up on the ridge. I’ve probably been going through a box of Kleenex a day.” That might have been an exaggeration, but not by much. “It’s one of the prices we pay for living in such a stunning part of the country.”
“And she looked tired.”
“Her marriage is rocky right now. Which, thinking about it, also means she could lose her income if she and your dad can’t find a way to continue to work together. It only makes sense that she wouldn’t be sleeping well. When I first arrived, you had enough bags beneath your eyes that if you decided to fly anywhere, they’d probably charge you extra luggage fees.”
“Did you talk this way to those rich guests? Or am I the only one who’s lucky enough to get the tough love lecture?”
Ouch. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you to blame yourself. These things happen.”
“Yeah. I’m very well aware of that.”
He didn’t say anything else on the way back to the house, but she could feel him silently berating himself, possibly going all the way back to those arguments Zoe used to tell her they were having about ROTC. Because best friends tell each other everything, she knew how hard he’d tried to talk her out of going into the military. Now, she feared, his mind was filled with if only’s.
He wasn’t a negative person like his father, but one thing they did share was that, even on a good day, Seth wasn’t that talkative. So she decided there was no way to discuss this, at least not now, that would soothe his pain.
And this was one of the few cases when she doubted that food would work, either.
Which only left one thing.