sign, meaning whoever was on the stretcher was alive and probably stable, at least for the moment. And he couldn’t see any signs of blood, which was more reassuring to him than he liked to admit.
He didn’t start to breathe evenly, though, until he saw Charly come through the door, right behind the stretcher. She had one hand clamped across her mouth, and what he could see of her face above it was bone white. There was another woman with her-a tall, thin black woman with an Egyptian look about her-and the two were sort of holding on to each other, so it was hard to tell who was supporting whom. He got out of the way and let the stretcher go by, then lightly touched Charly’s arm. Her eyes leaped to his in startled recognition, and he realized that until that moment she hadn’t even been aware of his presence, so focused was she on the stretcher and its occupant.
“What’s goin’ on?” he asked in a tense undertone.
“It’s my dad.” She gulped air, looking like someone woken up from a bad dream. “I think he’s had a heart attack.”
“Oh, Lord.” Troy was thinking about his own father’s two heart attacks. Especially the second, the one that had killed him, when Troy was off somewhere in the service, so he never got a chance to say goodbye. He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “He gonna be okay?”
The black woman suddenly squeezed Charly’s elbow, muttered, “I’m goin’ with him,” and pushed past her and took off down the steps.
Charly frowned distractedly, looking as if she wanted to follow. “I don’t know. I have to…get to the hospital.”
“Wait-hang on a minute. I’ll take you.”
Troy reached back and pulled the front door closed, since it didn’t seem likely anybody else was going to think to do it, and followed the crowd down the steps, digging in his pockets for his keys on the way. The fire-department truck was already pulling out, and the ambulance’s engine was revving. Someone gave the black woman a hand up into the back and slammed the doors after her, and it rolled into the street, siren waiting and lights flashing.
Charly made it to the Cherokee before Troy did, running clip-clop on the uneven brick paving in her high-heeled shoes. He went straight to the driver’s seat and climbed in, fired up the engine and hauled the door shut. Then he paused with one hand on the gearshift and looked over at her. “You know where the hospital is, or shall I give chase?”
“I know where it is,” she said tensely, poised on the edge of the seat like a runner in starting blocks.
“That’s good,” Troy said in a quieter and more deliberate voice than he usually used. “In that case what I want you to do is, I want you to take a great big deep breath and ease on back in that seat and relax a minute.” She threw him a burning look, riled and rebellious. He looked right back at her. “I mean it. We’re not goin’ anywhere until you do.”
She exhaled in an angry hiss and muttered something under her breath-probably swearing, which he’d noticed she had a tendency to fall back on in times of stress. The part he could make out clearly was the rough equivalent of “Who the hell do you think you are?”
He folded his arms across his chest in a way he’d seen his mama do a time or two, and when he spoke it was in the quiet voice he’d heard her use to quell tantrums. “Who I am is the friend who’s drivin’ you to the hospital to see about your daddy, for starters. Also the friend who doesn’t want to see you wind up in the bed right next to him.” He paused to let that sink in. “Now, the man’s in good hands, and there’s not gonna be anything you can do for a while anyway. Nobody’s even gonna talk to you until they’ve got him all hooked up and stabilized. You understand?”
She fought it, fought him. Then she let out another breath, this one slow and weary, and sank back, closing her eyes. “You say that as if you know.”
“Oh, yeah. I was in high school when my dad had his first heart attack. I don’t imagine the drill’s changed all that much since then.”
“His first one?”
“My daddy was a stubborn man,” he said softly. “I was in the service when he had the second one. By the time I got there, it was too late.”
“Oh, God.” She didn’t open her eyes. He could see her throat move with her swallows.
“You feel like tellin’ me what happened?” he asked, making it gentle but matter-of-fact, knowing how close she was to breaking at that moment and understanding how much she wanted not to.
For a few seconds she didn’t say anything, and he wondered if she would. But then her lips tightened in a spasm of pain, and she whispered, “We were arguing. I was shouting at him. And he just…collapsed. I should have known something was wrong. I should have seen it coming. But I was just…so angry.”
“Hey,” said Troy, “this wasn’t your fault.”
She shook her head, a quick, violent denial. “I knew he didn’t look good. His color was bad. I knew it, and I kept yelling at him anyway. I did this to him.”
Troy snorted. “Woman, you do have a high opinion of your capabilities.” He reached over and put the truck in gear, while she gaped at him and tried to decide whether to take offense or not. “Fact is, people don’t get heart attacks from arguing-they get ’em because their arteries are plugged up with junk, due to bad genes or bad living, take your pick. If your dad hadn’t had a heart attack today, he was probably gonna have it later on, most likely when you weren’t even around. Look at it this way-at least you’re here. No matter what happens. You understand? That’s more’n I got.”
She didn’t reply. He drove to the square in a humming silence, wondering why he felt as if they’d just had a quarrel. Shoot, they hadn’t known each other long enough to be quarreling.
But if that was so, then why was it he felt…not angry with her exactly, but…hurt, maybe? Certainly disappointed with her, mistreated in some indefinable way. Which was so unlike him, he kept racking his brain to come up with a reason why he felt so. What was it she’d said or done?
“Turn right at the light,” Charly mumbled, and lapsed once more into brooding silence.
And that was when it came to him. That it wasn’t what she’d said or done, but what she hadn’t. Here he’d driven damn near two hundred miles to bail the woman out of jail, spent the whole night either making love to her or sleeping with her snuggled up in his arms, spent the entire morning helping her iron out her screwed-up affairs and now he was driving her to the hospital and trying his best to comfort her after her dad’s heart attack-and he
Dammit, it just wasn’t in him to pry. Growing up in a household with close to a dozen people in it counting grandparents and the occasional extra, not to mention a career in the military and a lot of years living in barracks housing, had given him a healthy respect for privacy. He believed in offering a helping hand if it was needed and asked for, but beyond that, he believed in staying out of other people’s business and minding his own.
And in a way that was the problem. Because after the events of the past eighteen hours or so, he’d begun to feel kind of like she
Okay, so he did. He cared about her. Which was what made it so damn hard, not knowing what was making her hurt so bad.
Mirabella put down the phone and turned to find that the man she adored was right there, eyes steady and soft with concern, ready to fold her into his arms. She still wasn’t used to the miracle of that, of having someone love her so much, read her so clearly and understand her so well, so she had to be coaxed a little bit. Which Jimmy Joe was more than up to.
“Problems?” he asked, gently massaging her neck until her muscles were ready to relax and let her head settle into its customary nest below his chin.
She tried to disguise a sniffle. “That was Charly. Her dad just had a heart attack.”
“Oh, Lord. How bad is it?”
“He’s alive, but at this point they don’t know much more than that.”
“Well,” said Jimmy Joe, “that’s good. That’s a good sign. Once they get ‘em to the hospital, they usually manage to pull ’em through.”
