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Chapter 66


AN: I apologize if this chapter hits too close to home for anyone. Honestly, I had a hard time writing it myself, but you know I’m not above writing difficult things for the sake of the story…


Claire had only been asleep for an hour when she was awoken again by the ringing of her cell phone. Too groggy to be surprised that she’d even woken up for the phone – normally she was a deep sleeper – or wonder why it was still quite dark outside her window, she automatically reached for the phone and punched the button to answer without even stopping to check who was calling.

“Hello?” she mumbled, her voice scratchy from sleep.

“Claire? Honey, it’s Mom.” Her mother’s unusually brusque voice jarred her into alertness. “I’m sorry to wake you up at this hour, but it’s important.”

“What?” Claire blinked, her disorientation and confusion rapidly melting into panic and fear. “What’s going on, what happened?” she demanded.

“I’m calling from the hospital,” said her mother, and her next words made Claire want to vomit. “They think your dad had a heart attack this morning.”

Her mother’s voice had grown oddly high-pitched; Claire could hear the tears in it and knew she had been crying. She gagged and clapped a hand over her mouth, and for a moment, she could not breathe. She sat frozen, clutching the phone to her ear with one hand, covering her mouth with the other, her lungs screaming as they fought for oxygen. Her chest felt as if there were a huge block of cement pressing down on it, until she finally released her breath in a shuddering sigh and sucked in more air.

“O-oh my God,” was all she could choke out, her throat tightening as frightened tears filled her eyes. Her mind raced with questions, but she could not bear to ask, afraid of the answers.

“He’s stable,” her mother added quickly, answering the most important question first. “They’re taking him for tests now to find out what happened exactly and what needs to be done next.”

“Oh, Mom…” Claire whispered, struggling to keep her tears at bay. If she lost it on the phone, her poor mother would lose it too, and she couldn’t let that happen. “What hospital? I’ll throw some clothes on and be there as soon as I can; we can talk more then.”

“North Florida Regional, in Gainesville,” her mother’s shaky voice replied.

“I’m on my way.”

“Alright; drive careful, honey.”

“I will,” Claire replied automatically and hung up, throwing herself out of bed before she had a chance to start thinking too much and darting around the room in search of clothes. Three minutes later, dressed in the rumpled t-shirt and jeans she’d worn the day before (they had been the first articles of clothing she’d spotted lying on the floor), she screeched out of the driveway, adrenaline pumping through her veins faster than her wheels on the road as she set off like a bat out of hell for the two-hour drive to Gainesville.

***

Bursting through the doors at the main entrance of the hospital, Claire was hit with a sudden sense of déjà vu. She’d sprinted through a similar-looking lobby before, sleep-deprived and frantic, almost a year ago, after receiving a chilling voicemail from AJ that told her Nick had been rushed to the hospital…

Please, God, she begged silently as she stood impatiently waiting for an elevator to take her up to the right floor. Please do what You did for Nick... Please let Daddy be all right…

Even as she stepped into the cardiology wing of the hospital, she couldn’t believe why she was there. Her dad… a heart attack? It seemed implausible; her father had always been active, athletic, full of life and spunk. He was fifty-six, but he looked and acted much younger. How could this have happened?

Her mother had no more answers than she did. Usually the calm one in the family, she pulled Claire into a quivering hug and cried on her shoulder when they met in a small waiting room. “I’m glad you’re here,” she confessed in a whisper that made Claire feel as if the mother/daughter roles had been reversed; she’d never seen her mom seem quite so lost. She knew her mother had had a hard time dealing with her leukemia, but even then, she’d stayed strong for Claire’s sake. Now she was leaning on her.

“I-I don’t know what to do with myself,” Carrie whimpered. “This all just happened so fast, it’s a blur…”

“What happened, Mom?” Claire couldn’t help but ask, though she knew she probably didn’t want to hear the details.

Her mother took a shuddering breath to compose herself. “I woke up... something woke me up, that is – once you have a family of your own, you’ll find that when something goes wrong, you just know… you sense it. Somehow, I sensed it, and I woke up to find your dad… sitting on the edge of the bed…” She trailed in and out, struggling to keep her composure. “I could tell his breathing was off, and he was holding his chest, and he turned and looked at me and said…” Her voice squeaked, and she swallowed hard. “He said, ‘Carrie, I think I’m having a heart attack.’”

Her voice rose on the last two words as fresh tears filled her eyes, and Claire shook her head, not wanting to hear anymore. “Where is he now?” she asked as gently as she could, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “You said he was having tests done?”

“Yes,” Carrie nodded. “They gave him medication in the ER, and the doctor I talked to down there said the heart attack was over, but that now he’s been handed over to a cardiologist, and they’re going to find out how much damage was done and decide what to do next.”

Claire nodded silently, wondering what that would be. Would they operate? Heart surgery? The very thought made her shudder with fear; she didn’t want her father to have to go under the knife. That always scared her so much…

She chewed absently on her fingernails as she sat anxiously beside her mother and didn’t even realize she was doing it until Carrie wordlessly reached over, took her hand, and brought it down to her lap, resting her own on top of it. Claire looked down at her mother’s hand on her own and then offered Carrie a sheepish smile. Carrie patted her hand. “Don’t tell me you’ve picked that habit up again,” she remarked, returning the tight smile.

Claire let out a dry chuckle, remembering how she’d bitten her nails relentlessly during her youth. “No,” she murmured. “I just hate this waiting… it’s the worst.”

“Don’t I know it,” agreed her mother, and Claire nodded sadly, knowing her mom had done a lot of waiting and worrying during her own illness. The last thing she deserved was to have another member of her family sick. Claire knew she shouldn’t complain, or question, but… hadn’t they been through enough?

“Did you call Kyle?” she asked suddenly, thinking of her brother.

Carrie nodded. “Yes. He should be here any minute; he said he was leaving right away too. Maybe I shouldn’t have called when I did… I don’t like him leaving Amber alone in the middle of the night… but I didn’t think I should wait too long either…”

“I’m glad you called us when you did,” Claire assured her. “And it’s not the middle of the night anymore – the sun’s coming up.”

“Is it?” her mother asked vaguely, looking especially weary.

Claire glanced around the small waiting room and found a small clock mounted high on one of the walls. It was close to six-thirty; she’d made it to Gainesville in record time. Automatically, she subtracted three hours in her head – it was only three-thirty a.m. in Los Angeles. Much too early to call Nick, who was hopefully sleeping off the large quantity of liquor he’d had that night, if his phone call had been any indication. She wanted to talk to him, to tell him what had happened and hear his reassuring voice on the other end of the line, but she would just have to wait a few hours.

More waiting…

She fought the compulsion to regress back to biting her nails and settled for chewing on her bottom lip instead. It was not long before Kyle arrived, providing a temporary distraction. Her brother, who was visibly worried, hugged them both, and they filled him in on what they knew, which was still very little.

Luckily, shortly after Kyle’s appearance, a woman in a white coat materialized in the doorway. She rapped her knuckles against the doorframe twice before striding into the room, hand outstretched. “Mrs. Ryan?” she addressed Claire’s mother, shaking her hand. “I’m Dr. Corwin; I’m your husband’s cardiologist.”

Carrie nodded and quickly introduced herself, then her son and daughter. All three of them laid questioning eyes upon the physician, waiting to hear what she had to say. Claire’s palms were clammy with sweat; she wiped them nervously on the thighs of her jeans as Dr. Corwin pulled a chair over and sat down right in front of their little cluster.

“Let me tell you first of all that Kris is stable and resting comfortably,” she began, and Claire appreciated the compassion in her voice. She’d met enough doctors to know which kinds she liked and which she didn’t – and she liked the ones who cared about their patients and the patients’ families. “The tests show that he has suffered a minor heart attack, but the damage doesn’t appear to be anything too serious. We’ll have to monitor him for longer to be sure, but things are looking good right now.”

Claire felt her shoulders sink as she sighed with relief. Her mother’s own sigh was audible, and she felt her brother squeeze her hand. Thank you, Lord, was all she could think. Relief overpowered her as she listened to Dr. Corwin go on. Her father’s coronary arteries had been nearly blocked with cholesterol, and although the medication they had given him in the Emergency Room had opened the arteries back up, they would need to do angioplasty to remove the cholesterol deposits as soon as possible. As she listened to the vaguely familiar medical terms she’d heard in school and on the news, a part of Claire still couldn’t believe they were talking about her father. But the other part of her was just plain relieved. He was okay… or at least, he would be.

“Would you like to see him for a few minutes before we take him in for the angioplasty?” asked Dr. Corwin, after she’d answered all of their questions. She didn’t have to ask twice – immediately, they all nodded and stood.

***

It was weird seeing her father lying in a hospital bed, Claire realized as she sat perched at the end of it, feeling as if the roles should be reversed. She was used to being the one in the bed, while her daddy sat up with her for hours, keeping her company and making her laugh.

This wasn’t right.

When she’d first walked into the hospital room and seen him lying there, she’d been caught off-guard just by the change in his appearance. His normally ruddy face was pale, almost ashy, in color, and there were dark bags beneath his half-closed eyes, a sign of the stress his body had been under. He’d greeted her and the rest of the family with a crooked smile that was missing its usual sparkle – the nurse who had led them down the hall to his room had warned them that he had been given painkillers and sedatives that would make him a little out of it, and it was obvious how tired and weak he was.

Claire had hugged him gingerly, skipping the “How are you feeling?” sort of questions – her mother had already covered all of those anyway – and simply whispering, “I love you,” into his ear instead. As she pulled back, she couldn’t help but marvel at how gray his formerly reddish-brown hair was getting, and how the small crinkles that had always appeared around his eyes when he smiled had become more pronounced and permanent wrinkles. Somehow, she’d never noticed before.

“Love you too, sweetheart,” her father slurred, offering her another smile that seemed only an imitation of his own. He reached up and touched her upper arm, giving it a weak squeeze. “Don’t you worry about me, okay? Where do you think you got the genes that made you so strong?” He winked, and she smiled, nodding. Her dad was strong. She’d considered him nothing short of a superhero when she was a little girl. He was still her hero now.

He’d get through this. He had to.

Still, she couldn’t help but feel nervous when the nurse returned to ask them to leave, since they were going to be taking him in for the angioplasty soon. As she reluctantly followed her mom and brother back to the room they’d waited in earlier, she wondered what time it was. She pulled her cell phone out of her purse and saw that it was just after eight a.m. Still too early to call Nick – it was only five in California, and he would most definitely be sound asleep now.

She wanted to talk to someone though – she needed to, to keep her sane while she waited – and it only took a few seconds for the most obvious choice, besides her fiancée, to come to mind.

She glanced down at the screen of her cell phone again; the time glowed up at her. Subtract an hour - it was after seven in the Midwest. And it was a Sunday… he’d be getting ready for church.

“I’m gonna make a phone call,” she told the rest of her family once they had reached the waiting room. Carrie and Kyle both nodded without question and trudged back into the room while Claire walked on past, looking for another private area to sit. She found a quiet nook down the hall where there were chairs, vending machines, and a pay phone. Not surprised to find it deserted – who felt like Snickers and Coke at eight in the morning? – she sank down into one of the chairs and pulled Jamie Turner’s name up on the contact list of her cell phone.

Truth be told, she’d been rather upset with Jamie ever since he’d called the house and spilled the beans to Nick about the night she’d crashed in his hotel room. She’d been meaning to let him know it too, but he hadn’t called since, and it had seemed a stupid idea to call and bitch at him for it. The fight she and Nick had had that night was her fault, not his. She was the one who had lied; he’d been perfectly honest, even in his attempt to stir up trouble, which, in her anger, is what she had suspected.

It didn’t matter now though. All of that seemed petty and unimportant compared to what she was going through now – it was incredible how quickly things could change… and ironic, how she’d had that same thought only hours ago, before any of this had happened. Jamie could relate though. He’d been through this himself… and he’d called her after his own father had suffered a heart attack not quite a year ago. She knew he, of all people, would understand what she was going through.

When he answered the phone, his familiar voice was like a flash of light in the dark, a glimmer of hope that temporarily soothed the rampant butterflies in her stomach.

“Jamie?” she squeaked, surprised at how little girl-ish her own voice sounded in her ears. “It’s me.”

“Hey,” he said, sounding surprised. “What’s goin’ on?”

“My dad had a heart attack this morning,” she told him, not wanting to mess around with small talk. “They think he’s going to be okay, but he’s having angioplasty done right now, and I’m at the hospital waiting. I just really needed to talk.”

“Oh no, Claire… I’m so sorry,” Jamie’s voice crackled over the line. “I’m… I’m glad you called me. Is there anything I can do?”

“Just talk to me,” she pleaded. That was all he could do, from Iowa. “I mean, if you can,” she added as an afterthought. “I don’t want to make you late for Mass or anything.”

“No, no, don’t worry about that,” Jamie assured her quickly. “I’m not going anywhere. Let’s talk.”

But as soon as he’d said the words, silence fell. She knew she should start the talking, but she didn’t know quite what to say, and neither, apparently, did he. A part of her wished he were here in person instead of on the phone. She was often comforted more by the mere presence of someone than by words. A touch on the shoulder… a hug… gestures sometimes meant more than words. When she’d flown to Iowa to be with him before and after his father’s death the year before, there had been many times where they’d simply sat together in silence. At the time, she felt she wasn’t doing much to help him, yet now she knew her being there had meant a lot to him.

“I’m worried,” she finally confessed quietly. “The cardiologist talked like this was all routine and that my dad would be fine, but… things can happen, you know? I just hate this waiting part.”

“I know,” replied Jamie. “But it sounds like your dad is a lot better off than mine. They sent my dad in for bypass surgery… not even knowing if he’d make it out again.”

She felt a lump rise in her throat, remembering… She’d arrived in Iowa while his father was still in surgery. He had made it out of the surgery, but had died hours later in the ICU. She shuddered involuntarily just thinking of it. What if…?

“I’m sure he’s gonna pull through just fine,” Jamie added gently, after a pause. “This isn’t like what happened to my dad.” His voice held a mournful tone, and she felt tears begin to prickle in the corners of her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Jamie,” she whispered. “I’m sorry for making you relive all that. I just didn’t know who else to call… and I knew you would understand.”

“It’s okay. Is your family there with you?”

“Oh yeah, of course. Mom’s a basket case… not that I blame her. Kyle’s with her right now.”

“How about Nick?”

“Still in LA. He doesn’t know yet… it’s still too early there to call.”

“Ah,” Jamie murmured vaguely. After a moment of silence, he added, “I just don’t want you to be alone. You shouldn’t have to be alone, you know? It’s good to have people around you during times like these.

“I know,” she said, smiling slightly. “Don’t worry; I’m not alone. But thank you.”

“Of course… anytime, Claire – I mean that,” Jamie replied, a firmness in his tone. “I know I haven’t always been there for you… but things are different now. I’m here, anytime you need me.”

“Thanks, Jamie,” she whispered.

She didn’t keep him on the phone much longer. There was only so much they could say to one another, and besides, she was anxious to get back to her mother and Kyle... but just hearing his voice and knowing that he cared and empathized had helped. “Pray for him, will you?” she’d asked before getting off the phone with him, knowing he’d be off to pick up his mother for Mass before long. He always had been a more devout Catholic than she.

“I will,” he promised. “Keep me updated, alright?”

“I will,” she echoed the vow. “Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.”

Feeling calmer than she had before, she hung up and walked slowly back to the waiting room where her mother and brother sat, hoping they would know more soon.

***