Emily didn't know. Emily was probably at some coffee shop with terrible reception or on the phone with Chicago or a hundred other ordinary things people do on ordinary Monday mornings that turn into the worst day of their lives. And her father was in an emergency room and she had no idea. And Marcus was the one who'd been called. He was the emergency contact.
That fact hit him somewhere around the third red light he ran. Harold had listed him, a man he'd known for 2 months. A man he'd met on the side of a road, as the person to call when everything went wrong. Not a lawyer, not an old friend. Him.
And Marcus didn't have time to feel the full weight of what that meant. But he felt the edge of it. And the edge alone nearly undid him. He got to the hospital in 19 minutes. He parked crooked across two spaces and left it there.
He ran through the sliding doors and hit the front desk at almost a full sprint. "Harold Bennett," he said. "He was brought in this morning. He collapsed. I'm his—" He stopped.
What was he? "I'm his emergency contact. Marcus Johnson." The woman at the desk typed, and her face didn't tell him anything. And the not knowing was its own kind of torture.
"He's in the back," she said. "The doctor will want to speak with you. Have a seat. Someone will—" "Is he alive?" Marcus said.
He didn't mean for it to come out that blunt. It just came out. "Please, I just need to know if he's alive. I've done this before. I can't sit in a chair not knowing. Is he alive?"
Something in the woman's face softened at that, at the I've-done-this-before, and she leaned in slightly. "He's alive," she said quietly. "He's stable. Let me get the doctor." Marcus put both hands on the counter and let his head drop and just breathed for a second.
Alive. Stable. Two words. He'd have given anything for those two words 5 years ago and never gotten them. He straightened up, and that was when he heard fast footsteps behind him and a voice call his name.
"Marcus." He turned. Emily was running toward him across the waiting room, coat half-on, phone in her hand, her face white with terror. "I got your message. I was—Where is he? Is he—"
"He's alive," Marcus said and caught her by both arms because she looked like she might go down. "Emily, listen to me. He's alive. He's stable. They just told me."
"He collapsed, but he's alive." Emily's whole body sagged against him. And for a second, she just held on to the front of his jacket with both fists shaking. "Oh my God," she whispered. "Oh my God."
"I thought when I saw your message—all it said was collapsed. I thought—" "I know. I know what you thought." He held her steady. "He's okay. Or he's here. He's alive."
"That's what we know. We'll find out the rest together. Okay? I'm not going anywhere." She looked up at him, and there were tears standing in her eyes, and something passed between them in that moment that hadn't been fully said yet.
Something that ran deeper than the joking on the frame and the careful conversation in the kitchen. Because this was the real thing now. This was the middle-of-the-worst-day thing, and Marcus was here, and he wasn't going anywhere, and Emily saw it. The doctor came out a few minutes later, a tired-looking woman in her 50s, and asked which of them was family. "I'm his daughter," Emily said.
"I'm—" Marcus started. "He's family too," Emily said and reached over and took Marcus's hand. "Whatever you have to say, you can say it to both of us." The doctor nodded and got to it.
Harold had suffered what she called a cardiac event, not a full heart attack, but a serious warning, the kind the body sends when it's been asking for help for a while and finally decides to shout. His heart had an arhythmia they hadn't caught. Made worse by the fact that a 75year-old man had been spending every daylight hour for 2 months hauling lumber and swinging a hammer in a backyard. "The garden house," Emily said faintly. "He's been out there every single day."
"I kept telling him to slow down. I kept—" Her voice broke. "I kept telling him." "This isn't your fault," the doctor said gently. "Hearts like his, this was coming one way or another."
"The good news is he came in fast and we caught it, and it's very treatable. He'll need a procedure, a small one, to correct the rhythm. And then he needs to actually rest, which I understand from the paramedics may be the hardest prescription he's ever received." Despite everything, Emily let out a wet laugh. "You have no idea."
"Can we see him?" Marcus asked. "He's asking for both of you, actually," the doctor said, and she gave Marcus a curious look. "He was quite insistent. Said, and I'm quoting, 'Get the big fella too. He's the one who knows where the good spatula is.'"
Marcus laughed, a real, surprised, relieved laugh that came out closer to a sob. That was Harold. They found him propped up in a hospital bed, hooked to monitors, looking small and gray in a way that squeezed Marcus's heart, but his eyes were open and sharp. And the second he saw them, he tried to sit up straighter, which set off a beeping and earned him a stern look from a passing nurse. "There they are," Harold said, his voice weaker than usual but full of the same mischief.
"My two favorite people. Come to see if the old man kicked it." "Dad." Emily was at his side in an instant, taking his hand, and now she was crying openly. "Don't you ever—do you have any idea?"