Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 154890 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154890 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
“Yes.” I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my noise. “The bank.” VirTu, my bank, I suppose. Springing up from the chair, I walk to the darkened window and press my forehead against the cool glass. Get. The. Fucking. Words. Out. “I don’t know how to tell you this, except to say first and foremost that she’s stable, she’s okay.” Sort of. “But she’s in hospital.”
I hear the terrified intake of her breath, her words then falling in a rush, tumbling over each other like water over rocks. “Oh my God. It’s happened, hasn’t it? Her heart?”
“Yeah. Yes, they said it’s her heart.” There go the hairs on the back of my neck again. “She had a, a cardiac arrest.”
“But she’s okay?” she demands frantically.
“She stable,” I answer gravely. Stable is better than the alternative, right? Which would be unstable. Or worse still, completely fucking rigid, stretched out on a slab.
Stop. The glass rattles as I whack my head against it as though I can afford to waste brain cells. How on earth does a twenty-four-year-old suffer a cardiac arrest?
“I need to go—I need to book flights. No,” she adds under her breath. “Tell me where, Whit? Which hospital?”
“Saint Barts—Saint Bartholomew’s. It has a…” Does she need to hear this? Yes, I decide, there might be comfort in the knowledge. “It has a heart center. It’s a teaching hospital, too. One of the best in London.”
“Thank you, Whit,” she breathes out. “But do they know?”
“Know what?”
“About her condition? About Brugada?”
“I don’t know what that is,” I answer confused and sorry and so fucking scared.
“Oh, Whit. Please go and find a doctor. Tell them, please. Let them know she has Brugada Syndrome—it’s what killed Connor.” Her mother bursts into sobs.
“I’ll go and find someone,” I promise. “Let me…”
“Yes, yes, you do that. Call me right back?”
I promise I will.
And I do, several more times between finding a doctor and explaining what her mother told me. Between googling what the hell Brugada Syndrome is and finally cursing Mimi Valente for her recklessness.
41
MIMI
“Oh, honey.”
I wake to my mother, brushing my hair from my face.
“Mom?” My voice sounds croaky, and my throat is really sore. “What are you doing here?” But then a sinking sensation fills all the spaces in my brain and my aching body, where I feel hollow. I try to move, pushing up on one elbow only to lower myself back again. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. I hope that’s not the case.
Wasn’t it morning? Afternoon, maybe, last time my eyes were open? How is it dark?
“Hush now.” My mother fusses with the blanket. Why is she here? She lives in Florida, and I live …
“Mom, where is here?” I swallow audibly, and Mom brings a tumbler of water to my lips. Her expression. I know before she says it. I’m in the hospital. My brain supplies the rest. I’m in a hospital in London. And it happened.
“You gave us all such a fright, but you’re okay now.”
“Oh.” She means okay for now. This much I know. Hey, but at least I’m not dead. I want to laugh before a black thought ripples through my head. Maybe I was dead, but I’m still here. Everything seems to fade into the distance. It happened. The thing I’ve been trying to ignore while living my life happened—and I came out on the other side.
“Mom, where is—”
“Dad?”
No. The other one. Daddy. Whit. The man I love. The man I tried to make go away. But I nod, because that’s what she expects. “He’s gone with Whit to get some of your things. Why didn’t you tell us you were staying with him?”
“I didn’t want to worry you,” I say, pressing my head into the pillows. I don’t want to talk about it, but I feel like there’s a lot to be said. A lot of questions to answer as I lift my hand and press it to my chest.
“When he told me about the unexploded bomb. How crazy, sweetheart. You might’ve been hurt.”
I ball my hand into a fist. Which ticking time bomb are we talking about? I survived the first and the second. The third, I guess we’ll see.
“Well,” she whispers, covering her hand with mine. “It’s safe to say we haven’t stopped worrying about you since you left.”
“I know.” Old habits are hard to lay down.
“The doctor will be coming around in a little while. They want to fit the ICD before you leave.” Though her voice is strong, her eyes plead.
An ICD. An implantable cardioverter defibrillator. A machine that could shock my heart into a rhythm should I suffer… well, what just happened, I guess. But it could also shock the hell out of me whether I need it or not. In other words, my heart is the first ticking time bomb, an ICD the second.