AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Alone, she would have worried, dwelt on the past, and anticipated a thousand grim scenarios awaiting her at the hospital. She dealt with life-and-death issues every day, but that didn’t make her own father’s illness any easier.
They arrived by noon and found Beth and Thea in a waiting room outside intensive care. Both were pale, their faces drawn with tension.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Thea murmured. “I left a message for Rafe and tried your cell phone—then Dad was airlifted, and we took off in a rush. We were really worried about him.”
Jolie hugged Beth, then Thea. “Has the doctor seen him today?”
“Earlier. They said his EKG was consistent with another mild heart attack. He’s comfortable now, but they want to do an angiogram before he goes home, and so far he has refused.”
“Has Cassie been here? Bobby?”
Thea nodded. “They both were, for most of the night. You just missed them. One of Cassie’s friends kept Zak overnight, but she had to go pick him up. Herman came by less than an hour ago to take Bobby home. Bobby’s taking this pretty hard. He thinks it’s all his fault, because he had a fight with Dad last night.”
“Over his ranch duties?”
Thea grimaced. “Hesayshe took one of the trucks and went to town to meet his buddies, though I’m not sure that’s true. I don’t think his old friends want to hang around with him anymore. When he got home, the helicopter had already picked up Dad, and we were leaving for the hospital. So he came with us.”
“Maybe this will be the wake-up call he needs.” Jolie flagged down a passing nurse and introduced herself as Robert’s daughter—and his doctor—and asked to review her dad’s chart.
It revealed nothing she couldn’t have guessed.
While being transferred by helicopter, Robert had been given TPA treatment to treat the heart attack.Good.
He’d shown some brief arrhythmia since then, but he was currently stable.
The attending doctors strongly recommended an angiogram and expected angioplasty and stent placement would be needed.
“I’d like to see him,” she said.
The nurse nodded and led her to the open cubicle. “He’s been resting. Quite a...spunky gentleman, all things considered.”
If you only knew.
“Dad?” Jolie stepped between two IV poles and laid a hand on his arm. His eyes fluttered, then opened. “It’s Jolie.”
“I know who you are.” The words were pure Robert Maxwell, but he sounded tired, sedated.
“How are you feeling?”
“Terrible.”
“Good.”
His eyes widened.
“Now you have just a small taste of how you’ll feel if you don’t go along with your doctor’s advice. And strangely enough,” she added with a smile, “most of it’s exactly what I told you last Thanksgiving. If you’d listened then, maybe you wouldn’t be here now.”
“I’ve got to keep going,” he said wearily. “There’s too much left to do.”
“Leftto do?”
His eyes drifted shut as he turned his head away. After a long moment he opened them again and stared at the partition next to his bed.
“I’ve been searching Google on my phone. People can die from all that testing—that angio thing. Every one of you kids has made mistakes that have to be fixed. And I’ve got to run that ranch until Bobby proves man enough to do it.”
“What mistakes?”
But Robert’s breathing slowed. He was either asleep or had tuned her out. She guessed it was the latter.
