Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [98]
Daphne and I were halfway through our salads, and I was listening to her tell me about her latest boyfriend’s new job—something to do with corporate branding and search-engine optimization—when my phone trilled from inside my bag. I bent down to look at the number. When I saw that it was Marcus’s office, I picked up fast, pressing the phone against my ear and bending my head close to the table. Marcus and I e-mailed. The only times he’d call me during the workday was when it was an emergency.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Croft?” Kelly, one of Marcus’s executive assistants, was on the line, and she sounded as rattled as I’d ever heard her.
I was on my feet before I knew it. Daphne stared at me. What’s wrong? she mouthed. I hurried through the restaurant without answering, not even sparing a glance at Barbara Walters at the table by the window, and stood on the sidewalk as Kelly gave me the details. Chest pain . . . called the doctor . . . Beth Israel . . . intensive care. “Does his cardiologist know? Is it the same blocked artery?”
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Croft, but I told you everything they told me.”
“I’ll be right there,” I told her. I ran out the door and into the first cab I saw, snapping out the hospital’s address, hardly able to breathe.
What would I do without him? I thought, as the cab made its way downtown. How would I live? How would I pay the bills, how would I manage the staff? I had no idea how any of it worked. I hadn’t wanted to learn. I’d been superstitious, thinking that too many questions would be asking for trouble. I’d turn myself into Bluebeard’s wife. If I went poking around, I’d find . . . what? A row of my beheaded predecessors rotting in the basement? Documents showing that Marcus was secretly broke? And what was I doing, thinking this way at a time like this? Marcus. My husband. The man I’d come to love, with all my heart, in spite of myself.
Through the windows, I saw a man with a plastic bag over his hand holding a little dog’s leash, a boy and a girl walking side by side, one earbud of the iPod she carried in each of their ears. I pulled my telephone out of the purse and called Trey at the office and Tommy on his cell phone and Bettina at Kohler’s, saying that I didn’t know what was happening, but that I’d been told it was urgent; that I was on my way to the hospital and that they should probably join me.
“I’ll leave right now,” said Trey.
“Be there as soon as I can,” said Tommy.
Bettina hadn’t said anything before she’d hung up. I knew she was thinking that this was, somehow, my fault, even though I’d been the one to call the doctor that first time, and I’d been the one to monitor his diet, to make sure he took his medication, to buy a treadmill and hire a trainer, to tell him, every night, how much I loved him.
The cab dropped me off by the emergency room. I ran through the automated doors. “Marcus Croft,” I said to the receptionist. My chest was as tight as if someone was squeezing it, the skin of my forearms pebbled with goose bumps. The receptionist pecked at her computer, then gave me directions: elevator to the C wing, down the second hallway, left and then another left, check in at the blue desk, and I hurried away, not feeling the floor underneath me or seeing the faces of the people I passed.
When the elevator doors slid open, there were three nurses gathered around a desk, talking quietly. A blue light flashed in the hall, and an orderly pushed an empty stretcher. “Marcus Croft,” I said. All of them looked up, guiltily, like schoolgirls caught passing notes, and I knew, in that instant, what had happened.
“Oh, God.” My knees felt like they’d melted, and I would have fallen if I hadn’t managed to grab the edge of the desk.
“Where is he?” My voice was loud and high and frantic. I could see my reflection in the pane of glass behind the desk, skin pale, hair disheveled, eyes unrecognizable.
“I’m so sorry,