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“Which hospital? Do you know his doctor’s name?”
“Nein, I do not know the doctor’s name, but they took him to—”
“Thank you, Gretchen,” Ben interjected, reaching over Lilah’s shoulder to grab her phone. “I’ll take it from here. We’ll keep you informed of any further developments.”
“Ben, I was still—” Lilah’s outraged protest went unheeded as he hit the end call button and Gretchen’s frazzled face disappeared from the screen.
Lilah rounded on him fiercely, and slammed the flat of her hand into his shoulder. It was meant to be a frustrated shove, but the blow landed harder than she’d expected and the impact stung her palm. He glowered at her, lowering his arm to toss her phone to the bed.
“I told you I was trying to reach Cyrus’s doctor,” he said from between clenched teeth. “Gretchen can’t tell us more than he can.”
“Well, I had to do something, since you seemed more concerned about share prices plummeting than ascertaining Gramps’s condition.”
“Until Cyrus’s doctor is available to speak to me, I’ll do my fucking job. The job your grandfather entrusted me to do.”
“The job, the company, isn’t more important than Gramps!”
“I never said it was, but it is his legacy and as such—”
“His legacy?” she spluttered in disbelief. “Why are you talking about legacies? You don’t even know what’s wrong with Gramps. Why are you talking like he’s dying? He’s not dying! He’s just had a bad turn. He’ll be fine.”
He stared at her unblinking for a long moment, before his brows lowered and his face softened a fraction.
“Of course, you’re right… I don’t know what his current condition is. But I do know how he would want me to proceed at this moment. Cyrus prepared me for exactly this type of eventuality. I absolutely care about how he is right now, it’s all I can think of, but I don’t have the luxury of being ruled by my emotions the way you do.”
“Until I know what the hell is going on, you can’t blame me for being ruled by my emotions… and I don’t know why you’re not making more of an attempt to find out exactly what happened to my grandfather!”
“Because everybody has the exact same information we do. He collapsed, he’s in the ICU. We won’t know any more than that until we talk to his doctor. I can’t physically do anything more than I’m doing right now.”
He turned back toward his precious laptop, effectively dismissing her.
Ben was wrong. He could do more than he was doing right now, Lilah reflected bitterly. He could take her into his arms and tell her everything was going to be okay. He could tell her that Gramps is tough, that he would be fine. Even though he couldn’t possibly know that, Lilah would feel better, simply because he’d said it. Because he cared enough to make up the comforting lie. He could ease her fears and make her feel less alone. He could do that. But he wouldn’t, because comforting her would never occur to him. Those were the actions of a loving husband, not… whatever he was.
She wrapped her arms around herself and inhaled deeply. The sound was harsh and it dragged his attention away from the screen. He gave her a quick once over.
“You okay?”
“Don’t worry Ben, I’m not on the verge of an attack or anything,” she reassured him, and his eyes remained impassive as they bore into her face.
“Good.” The word was curt. “Because that would be the absolute last thing we needed right now.”
She gritted her teeth and turned her back on him. She picked her phone up from the bed and retreated to the poolside to call Blake.
Usually she would Facetime her friend, but wasn’t in the mood to school her expressions right now. And seeing how much of a wreck Lilah currently was would only needlessly worry Blake.
The other woman answered immediately.
“Are you okay?”
Lilah’s eyes flooded with tears at the concern she heard in her friend’s voice.
“No.” Her voice was small and emerged on a sob.
“What’s the latest news on his condition?”
“We don’t know anything. Ben’s been trying to reach the doctor, but no luck so far. I just want to be back home by his side. I hate that Gramps is going through this without us.”
“I’m so sorry, Lile,” Blake murmured. “I know how tough this must be on you guys. How’s Ben doing?”
Lilah’s eyes drifted to the room where her husband was growling into his phone while glaring at his computer screen.
“Keeping busy,” she prevaricated. “Doing damage control.”
“Oh, God, of course, the stockholders must be in a panic.”
“I think it would probably have been a lot worse if Ben hadn’t already been essentially running the ship for the better part of the last two years,” Lilah said, lifting her thumb to her mouth to worry at a cuticle. She couldn’t care less about anything company related right now and didn’t want to talk about it.
