He nodded, but before she could tell him (should she?), a jaunty little tune broke the silence. “My phone,” he told her, digging it out of his pocket. He glanced at the display, frowned, then answered, “DeRiccio.”
Then every bit of levity evaporated from his demeanor as he became alert, tight, and intense. “When? Where? …Is he on his way now? …Who’s taking hi— All right. I’ll be there stat.”
He was still holding the phone when he looked at Vivien. “It’s Pop. I have to get to the hospital. They’re taking him now.”
“Let me get my bag,” Vivien said. “I’ll drive you— No, Jake, let me. Then you can be on the phone on the way if you need to, all right? You can concentrate on that while I get you there safely.”
He was already halfway to the lobby by this time, and she was right on his tail. She was afraid Stubborn Jake was going to insist on driving, but to her surprise, he handed over the keys to his Lexus without her asking again. He climbed into the passenger side, already keying something into his phone.
“Which hospital—”
“Butterworth,” he said, then spoke into his phone. “Pop’s on his way to the hospital—chest pains, low BP. I don’t know—they said he was out working in the yard and he hurt himself or got bit or stung—probably doing something he shouldn’t—and then he started having chest pains. Can you let Irene and Mathilda know? I’ll start a text thread as soon as I know more. I’m on my way there now… Probably at least thirty minutes, maybe more. Thanks, Dom.”
Vivien knew better than to speak as Jake next called the hospital, identified himself, and told them he was on his way, then took two phone calls from his sisters, who clearly had gotten the news from their brother Dominic and didn’t want to wait for the text thread.
“I don’t know anything yet,” he said to one of them. “He was working in the yard, I guess, and he might’ve gotten stung or done something—anyway, he started having chest pains— I don’t know. The person who called was a little scattered, so I don’t have… No, I wasn’t with him. Look, Mattie, I don’t know anything yet. It could be a lot of things…maybe he had too much tomato sauce on his pasta, maybe he strained his pectoral lifting a log— Iknowhe shouldn’t be lifting logs! I don’t really know what he was doing. I’m on my way now, and I’ll update you and— Look, Irene’s calling me now, and I’m going to take it. I’ll let you know— Yes, I know this is just like Mom…Iknow. I know, Mattie, I know, I’ll… All right.” He pulled the phone away, stabbed at it, then brought it back to his ear. “Hi, Irene… Yes, I’m on my way— Yes—no, I don’t know anything yet…”
Vivien focused on the road and was grateful it was just past noon and not rush hour so they could fly on the expressway. She couldn’t help but notice and admire Jake’s calm, clear responses to his obviously freaked-out siblings while he must also be fighting his own level of freaked-outness.
At last, she pulled up to the emergency room entrance and he jumped out. “Thanks, Viv, I’ll find you in a few,” he said, and then rushed into the building.
She followed him in a few minutes later, but Jake was nowhere to be seen in the emergency room. She hoped that meant he’d been able to get back into a room with his father.
Instead of taking a seat, she tracked down the café inside the hospital and grabbed a few granola bars and a couple of waters and coffees. Who knew how long they’d be waiting, and she figured Jake wouldn’t want to leave to eat.
When she came back to the emergency room waiting area, the woman behind the counter waved her over. “Are you here with a patient? Someone is waiting for you in the back, but I can’t give out the name.”
“DeRiccio,” she said, and the administrator nodded.
“Yes, the son is back there with him and said you could come back too.”
Vivien felt a shudder of relief. If Jake was inviting her to come to the examination room, then it must not be desperate.
Unless it was horribly desperate, and he wanted someone to wait with him…
The nurse who led her back past rows of curtained rooms didn’t give any indication of Mr. DeRiccio’s status, and Vivien didn’t want to ask. She’d find out soon enough. The place smelled like antiseptic and medicine and other scents she figured were things she’d rather not identify, all things considered.
“Okay for her to come in, sir?” asked the nurse, stopping at one of the curtains and poking her head around the edge.
“Yes, please,” came a grumpy, gravelly voice. “I want a witness in case he tries to kill me.”
“You almost did that yourself, Pop,” said Jake as Vivien slipped in through a gap in the curtains. His eyes lit on her, and the relief and warmth in them made her feel a little wobbly inside.
“Thank God you came with him,” said Ricky DeRiccio, who was lying on the hospital bed. “Otherwise, who knows what he’d do.”
Vivien had to stifle a gasp at the sight of the old man. He looked frail and ashen, and his face was a mess of swollen red wheals over the weak pallor of his skin. What she could see of his arms—he had an IV needle stuck into the back of his hand, and the other arm had a blood-pressure cuff around the bicep—were also covered with the same angry red bumps. His thick black hair was an unruly mess, and his mustache bristled every which way as if it needed a comb.
“Pop tangled with a bee’s nest,” said Jake before she could ask. “After I told him not to—”
“You did nothing of the sort, sonny. You told me you’d take care of it, but you didn’t, and it was a week ago, and I wanted to trim the bushes under that window,” replied his father stoutly. “So I took care of it myself.”
Vivien swore she heard Jake counting under his breath before he replied very calmly, “When I told you I would take care of it, thatmeant for you not to do it, Pop.And it meant that I would as soon as I could. And it was onlytwo days agothat I told you I would take care of it.”
Jake looked at her with something like pleading in his eyes. She wasn’t certain if he was asking for her to side with him against his father (asif), give him a break from his dad somehow, or simply empathize with his frustration and worry. Having a difficult parent of her own, Vivien could relate to the latter, at least.
“Well, it looks like the bees got the best of you, Mr. DeRiccio,” she said, coming closer to the bed. “I’m sorry to see that. I hope you’re not in too much pain.”
“Not anymore. They fixed me up just fine.” He pouted a little and looked even more Mario-like with those big eyes and the forward-thrust lower lip below his mustache. “I was being very careful, even though Genius here doesn’t think I know what I’m doing. I used a rake to knock it down, but when I was running away, I tripped over a damned stone and fell on my a—fell, and the blasted bees attacked.”
