There were three ambulances at the entrance to the multimillion-dollar Anne & Isidore Falk Center. She’d attended a fundraising dinner for this very centre, a few years back. She hadn’t thought she’d be inside its doors, ever, Colette thought distractedly, making her way to the reception desk. ‘Des Williams. Admitted by ambulance with a suspected heart attack. Can I see him, please?’ she asked the woman behind the desk.
‘And you are?’ the woman asked politely, tapping his name on the keyboard.
‘I’m his wife.’
‘Fine, Mrs Williams, your husband has been triaged and has just been taken upstairs for an angioplasty. If you’d like to take a seat I’ll let you know when the procedure is over and you can see him.’
‘Thank you,’ Colette said weakly. ‘How long will it take?’
‘Thirty minutes. Three hours. It depends on what has to be done. Take a seat and I’ll let you know,’ the woman said politely.
Wasn’t the angioplasty the thing with the balloon going through an artery? That was fairly commonplace. Her dad had had one and he’d been let home the following day. Perhaps this all wasn’t as serious as she’d thought. She’d hold off ringing Jazzy until she knew more. She didn’t want to frighten her daughter and there was no point in both of them hanging around, and besides she needed to be on her own to think. To try and make sense of what was happening. Colette sat down on one of the dark blue sofas in a waiting area, almost in a daze. Her leather-gloved hands were shaking. She was in turmoil. Des with another woman. A woman who knew he’d taken a hit with Madoff. Colette hadn’t even known he’d invested with the disgraced financier. There’d been no discussion about it because she most certainly would not have been in favour and would have made her feelings very clear about it. So Des had hidden it from her and told this other woman. What else did he tell her? What else did he keep from Colette? What did that say about their marriage? Not a lot. Another memory surfaced and she buried it deep. She wasn’t going to think about that now. The past was the past: she had enough to deal with in the present.
She spent two hours alternating between rage, anxiety, grief and fear before she was finally allowed to see her husband. Des was very pale, and sedated, lying against the crisp white pillows, with an IV drip in his arm and a blood pressure and cardiac monitor attached to him.
‘How did you know I was here?’ he slurred when she called his name and he opened his eyes.
‘Your lady friend told me,’ she said coldly. ‘She’s leaving your phone and briefcase and clothes at our building. Arun will keep them until I get home.’
‘Oh!’ he said, his eyes sliding away from hers.
‘I have to have surgery,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll be here a few days.’
‘I’ll pack a case for you.’
‘Thanks,’ Des murmured and closed his eyes, the sedation taking effect as he drifted back to sleep.
Colette stared at him in the dimly lit room. This man she had shared her life with for almost twenty-five years seemed like a complete and utter stranger. She wanted to shake him, wake him up and slap his face hard and demand an explanation from him. Why? How long? Who is she? But his sleeping form defeated her and she stood in impotent fury and felt an irrational urge to tear his drip and his monitors from him.
‘Bastard,’ she swore at him. He’d even cheated her out of a scene. She wouldn’t be able to rant and rave at him for fear he’d have another episode. She’d have to swallow it all down and probably give herself a stroke or a heart attack, she thought bitterly, bursting into tears of anger and frustration.
‘Don’t cry, Mrs Williams, your husband is stable. He’ll be fine,’ a nurse said reassuringly, mistaking the reason for Colette’s distress when she came into the room to take a note of her patient’s vital signs. ‘Why don’t you go home to bed?’ she urged. ‘Mr Williams will sleep for most of the night anyway because of his sedation. There’s nothing you can do here. We’ll have him ambulatory tomorrow and he’ll be more with-it so you can talk to him then.’
‘Right, thanks.’ Colette struggled to compose herself. She picked up her coat and scarf where she’d thrown them over the side of a chair and took a tissue out of her bag and wiped her eyes. ‘I’ll bring his pyjamas and toiletries in tomorrow,’ she managed to say.
‘That’s perfect.’ The nurse smiled at her and held open the door for her and Colette walked out into the corridor wondering was she in some sort of surreal nightmare or could all this be really happening.
The icy blast of a needle-sharp breeze blowing off the East River hit like a slap in the face when she stepped outside, and Colette knew her life had changed completely and there was nothing dreamlike about it. The nightmare was very real indeed.
C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-F
IVE
At least Des’s clothes weren’t rolled up in a Macy’s carrier bag, Colette thought wearily when Arun produced her husband’s coat, briefcase and a Bergdorf Goodman bag from the small office behind his rosewood desk. Des’s bit on the side had some cop on, Colette noted caustically. The woman had placed a layer of white tissue paper on top of the bag, concealing what lay underneath. Top marks for discretion.
‘Let me get the bellboy to carry this up for you, ma’am,’ the concierge offered, carrying the bags to the elevators.
‘Not at all, Arun, just put
