Closing off her misery behind her walls of business senses, she faced him with a steady gaze. He stared back, unblinking, and yet, unsure. Maybe that kiss hadn’t affected him as much as it did her, or maybe he experienced some small whisper of remorse at how their relationship had imploded. God knew, she felt it.
With all the details hammered out at last, she picked up the gold fountain pen her father always used to sign his contracts and put the nib to the first line requiring her authorization. She’d just started the arc in C when the interoffice unit buzzed.
“Cam?” Casey’s uncertain voice broke into the silence of the boardroom. “Sorry to interrupt. I got an emergency call from the stadium. Something’s happened to Bertie. He’s been taken to Regional Hospital.”
The pen fell from her fingers with a clatter as she shot to her feet. Panic coursed through her veins, tightened her chest, and stole her breath, but she didn’t stop her forward momentum. From behind her fleeing figure, she heard Val announce into the speaker with crisp efficiency, “Casey, have someone bring a car out front.”
“Already done,” Casey replied. “Larry’s waiting downstairs.”
A high-pitched buzz blaring in Cam’s head drowned out anything else said in the conference room. She pushed out the door and raced past the elevator to the stairs. Later, when asked, she wouldn’t recall how she made it down the dozen flights, out to the street, or anything she said to her driver before he opened the door again in front of the hospital’s entrance. Minor details became a blur. All that mattered was reaching Bertie.
Once inside the emergency room, she barely took in the groupings of people seated around the waiting area. She raced straight to the reception desk where a dark-haired nurse sat at a desk behind a wall of Plexiglas. When the nurse didn’t look up right away at her approach, Cam used her fingernail to tap on the barrier.
With an annoyed expression on her face, the nurse slid the window to one side. “Can I help you?”
“Bertie—Albert Wallace,” she told the woman through gasps for breath. “He came in by ambulance a while ago.”
“Are you family?”
“I’m his daughter,” she replied.
The nurse turned to her computer and entered in some information, then looked up at Cam again. “Your name?”
“Cameron. Cameron Delgado.”
She pointed to the waiting room with its clusters of strangers. “Have a seat. Dr. Ferrone will be out in a few minutes.”
Cam gripped the counter in front of her. “How is he? Can I see him?”
“Have a seat, please.” Scriiiiitch! She slid the window closed again.
With no other choice, Cam walked to a row of chairs and perched on the edge of the closest seat to the double-doors that read Authorized Personnel Only. Her legs shook, her heartbeat thundered in her ears, and a hitch in her throat made her breathing ragged. What had happened to Bertie? An injury on the field? An injury like Jordan’s? Couldn’t be. Bertie was a coach. The much-younger players took the hits and did the work these days. He just yelled a lot and blew a whistle. And sometimes got in the way because he was stubborn and thought he knew best.
Oh, God. What if he was really hurt? She straightened her spine. Well, then, she’d take care of him. Just like she would’ve done with Jordan if he’d wanted. Because that was what you did for the people you loved.
She glanced at the clock above the nurse’s head behind that stupid window.
4:54 pm.
How long would she have to wait before she could see him? Where was he? Was he in surgery? Were they running tests? Would he be staying overnight? Longer?
The doors remained closed. No answers came.
Around her, other people looked at their phones while they waited on these uncomfortable hard chairs. She couldn’t be bothered to pull her phone out of her purse. Why would she? She didn’t want to see the text messages from coworkers asking for details she didn’t have yet. Another glance at the clock.
4:54 pm.
Aaaargh! How could that be? She’d been sitting here forever already! Was the clock broken? Maybe that was why everyone stared at their phones. To keep track of the time. She twisted her fingers round and round, tried to watch the television mounted in the corner of the room, turned to local news. Nothing penetrated her brain. She dared another glance at the clock.
4:55 pm.
Oh, come on! This was ridiculous.
At last, the doors hissed open, and a man in scrubs strode out, stopping at the nurse’s window. She skooched until more of her bottom was off the chair’s edge than on. The two spoke, the side wall barring Cam from seeing the doctor’s expression or reading his lips. Not that she could read lips. The man left the nurse’s area. Cam’s breath caught. He walked back through the double doors. Cam deflated.
4:59 pm.
This was excruciating!
The nurse slid her window open again. Cam shot up. “Blankenship?” A man and a woman with a toddler on her hip rose from their chairs and headed forward. “You can go on back to Exam Room Three.”
With a sharp buzz, the doors opened, and the family disappeared into the inner sanctum.
5:06 pm.
The doors swished open again, and this time a woman in scrubs came out, calling “Wallace?”
For a minute, Cam didn’t move, but then her brain kicked in and she realized the woman was referring to Bertie. She shot up, her arm straight in the air. “Here!”
She sped forward, and the woman escorted her through the double doors, but stopped once they were inside a vast room separated by curtained areas with numbered signs hanging from the ceiling.
The noise, the smells, the frenetic activity swirled around her, but she kept her focus on the woman speaking.
“Ms. Delgado, I’m sorry to have to tell you this. Mr. Wallace suffered a massive heart attack on the field at Vanguard Stadium. He died before
