LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Twelve

      Lucy got the 911 dispatcher on the first ring. “Heart attack,” she said, almost positive she had it right—and even if she didn’t, the two scary words always got the ball rolling.

      The dispatcher took it from there, ready with the usual long list of questions. Lucy gave the address and the cross street as she guided Viv down the wall beside the door to her apartment. Viv clutched at her, panting, but Lucy managed to get her seated and supported by the wall with her knees drawn up. The dispatcher asked the questions and Lucy answered, calmly and clearly.

      Once the ambulance was on the way—six minutes, tops, the dispatcher promised—the dispatcher had her ask Viv if she was on nitroglycerin.

      Viv shook her head and whispered, “No...first time anything like this has happened....”

      “She’s not on nitroglycerin,” Lucy said into the phone. “She says this is the first time this has happened to her.”

      Next the dispatcher wanted to know if there was aspirin available. “Chewable, if possible.”

      Lucy had none. She bit back a groan. At that moment, she almost wished she’d had valve-replacement surgery rather than repair. With an artificial valve, she just might have been on an aspirin regimen and could have whipped a bottle right out of her purse. Then again, she probably would have been on warfarin or...

      Dear Lord, what did it matter? The point was she had no aspirin to give Viviana.

      She asked Viv, “Do you have any aspirin?”

      Viv gestured weakly toward the open door to her apartment. “Master bathroom cabinet...”

      Her phone to her ear, Lucy raced inside and down the hall. In the gorgeous retro pink-and-black-tiled bathroom, she found what she needed. “Got them,” she told the dispatcher. She grabbed the bottle off the shelf and read the label. “They’re the regular kind, not chewable, 325 milligrams.”

      “Are they timed release, the coated ones?”

      “No, the chalky white ones.”

      “That’s better than coated.”

      “Wonderful. Perfect.” Lucy ran back down the hall and out the door to Viv’s side again.

      The dispatcher gave her more instructions.

      Lucy put the phone on speaker, knelt by Viv to set it down on the floor and then shook out one aspirin. She put her arm around Viv. “You need to chew this for thirty seconds before you swallow it. Can you do that for me, Viv?”

      Panting, softly moaning, alternately clutching her chest and rubbing her shoulder, Viv managed a nod. Lucy gave her the pill and counted out the seconds as Viv chewed. It seemed the longest half minute of her life. “All right. Swallow.”

      Once Viv had the aspirin down, Lucy picked up the phone again. The dispatcher stayed on the line with her, asking questions that Lucy answered as best she could, all the while holding Viv’s hand—the one that wasn’t tightly clutched to her chest.

      After what seemed like forever but was probably no more than the five or six minutes the dispatcher had said it would be, they heard a siren coming on fast, stopping at full volume downstairs in front of the building. Lucy spoke gently, reassuringly, to Viv, who reluctantly let go of her hand so she could step inside the open door to the apartment again and buzz in the paramedics. Endless moments later the elevator doors slid open and two EMTs wheeled their EMS stretcher straight to Viv.

      They were just assessing her airway, breathing and circulation and hooking her up to oxygen when Dami came flying down the stairs wearing nothing but a pair of black jeans, with Quentin right behind him.

      Dami’s face was dead white. “Luce. My God. I heard the siren and I thought...”

      She dropped her phone into her purse again, eased around the busy med techs and went to him. “It’s not me. Oh, Dami, it’s Viv....” He grabbed her against his broad bare chest and she thought how very glad she was to have his arms around her at a time like this.

      “What happened?” he asked against her hair.

      “She had a heart attack, I think.” Lucy looked up at him, drew strength from the simple act of gazing at his dear worried face. “The signs are all there—and I doubt they’ll let me ride along in the ambulance with her, but I need to go with her, be with her. Her family’s not in New York.”

      “I’ll call for a car.”

      “Miss.” One of the EMTs signaled Lucy. “She’s asking for you....”

      Dami released her and she went to Viv, who panted out a series of instructions about looking after her place, about getting her little red address book from the drawer beneath the phone and calling her daughters. “And my purse... Insurance card...”

      Lucy ran back into the apartment and snatched the large brown shoulder bag from the end of the kitchen counter. One of the EMTs took it from her. She bent close to Viv again and tried to reassure her. “I’m here. I’ll take care of all of it, and I’ll be following you straight to the hospital....”

      “Sweet girl, God bless you....” Viv clutched for her hand again, but the EMTs were already wheeling her toward the open elevator doors.

      Lucy called after them, “What hospital?”

      One of them told her. They got on the elevator. The doors slid shut. Lucy stared at those doors, suddenly immobilized, images of all the times she’d been the one on the stretcher pounding in strobe-like flashes through her mind.

      And then Dami was there, wrapping his big arms around her.

      She clung to him. “We have to get going,” she said, and then she just stood there, holding him tight, safe in the circle of his embrace.

      He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “The car will

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