“That’s true, but it comes with a flip side.” He turns beside a tall willow with branches that nearly sweep the ground. “Nothing hurts like having something hurt your child. And it especially sucks if that something is you.”
“Like you told Petey, though—it’s worse for a kid to be in the middle of a bad marriage,” I say. “I think he’s really lucky to have you as a dad. You seem great at it.”
He looks at me, his eyes dark with appreciation. “I try.”
I think about Brett’s comment after he drops me off at my parents’ house.Nothing hurts like having something hurt your child.
Is it true? I’m not a parent, so I can’t really say. Right now,though, nothing hurts like not being able to have a child of my own, especially since learning that my husband has one with another woman.
I pull out my phone and call Zack again. He and I desperately need to talk.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Quinn
TIME SEEMS TOgo into an entangled dimension as soon as I see Miss Margaret on the kitchen floor. It slows down, it drags, it runs backward until it smacks right intowhat the hell just happened?I later learn it took less than five minutes for the ambulance to reach us, because one was parked just a few blocks away when I called.
As we’re waiting, though, time is measured by Zack’s compressions on Margaret’s chest. An eternity seems to pass before the wail of a siren pierces the air.
I run to the door, jerk it open, and race to the street, waving my arm to flag the ambulance. Two blue-uniformed paramedics jump out.
“What’s the emergency?” asks a woman with dark hair pulled into a ponytail.
My words jumble over one another as I try to get them out. “Seventy-nine-year-old woman. She fell off a step stool. No pulse, no breathing. Hip looks funny.”
Both paramedics dash inside. I point to the kitchen, where Zack is working on Margaret. He doesn’t stop until both paramedics kneel down and the woman says, “We’ll take over now.”
Zack straightens, stands, and steps out of their way.
“I’ve got a pulse,” says the other paramedic, a fortyish muscular man with a buzz cut. He leans over Margaret as the female paramedic fits on a blood pressure cuff. “Ma’am, can you hear me?”
Margaret opens her eyes, then closes them again.
“Ma’am, are you in pain?”
She opens her mouth, but no words come out. The woman paramedic gently fits an oxygen mask on her. The man talks into a crackling radio. The woman runs back to the ambulance, opens the rear door, and wheels out a gurney, along with an assortment of traction devices. They put her neck in a brace, then attach a splint to her upper leg. Margaret groans.
“Do you know if she’s on any medications?” the man asks me.
I nod. “For blood pressure and cholesterol, I think.”
“Do you know which ones?”
“I’ll get them from her room,” I say.
“I’ll drive you to the hospital,” Zack tells me as they strap Margaret to the gurney. “Better bring her purse. You’ll need her insurance information.”
Good thinking, my mind registers as I race upstairs to her room.
“Grab a sweater, your phone, and whatever else you need,” Zack says when I return. “You’ll be there for a while. We’ll follow the ambulance.”
I reach into Brooke’s coat closet, pull out a black cardigan, and carry it, along with my purse and Miss Margaret’s, as we follow the paramedics pushing the gurney down the sidewalk. I hand her medicine bottles to the female paramedic, then I touch Margaret’s gray hair as they open the back of the ambulance. “I’ll see you at the hospital,” I tell her. I don’t know if she can hear me or not. Her eyes are closed, her lids blue-veined and thin as voile.
Across the street, Zack opens the passenger door of his BMW for me. As I climb in, I realize I’m shaking like poor Ruffles when she goes to the vet.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yeah.” I reach for the seat belt. “How—how did you know what to do?”
