Power Play: A Novel (22 page)

“He just came in. He’s having a cardiogram now. He lost consciousness in the ambulance on the way here, but he’s alert now. You can call back in an hour.”

“Thank you,” Liz said, feeling breathless herself. “Tell him I love him.” This was just what she’d been afraid of lately, and she wondered if she’d sensed it coming. She had a constant feeling of impending doom now, as though something terrible were about to happen. Maybe this was it. But she knew that people often survived heart attacks these days, and he was in good hands. As soon as she hung up, she grabbed her purse and keys and ran into Lindsay’s room. “I’m going back to the city,” she said with a look of panic, as Lindsay looked up at her in surprise.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

For an instant, Liz wondered if she should tell her the truth. But she was sixteen and old enough to know, and he was her father.

“Dad had a heart attack. They just took him to Marin General. I’m leaving right now.” She knew that Lindsay could manage alone for the night, and the housekeeper would be there in the morning. And she could call the neighbor if she had a problem, or stay there.

Lindsay leaped off her bed immediately, closed the nail polish, and stepped into flip-flops on the floor next to her bed. “I’ll go with you,” she said, and followed her mother out of her room. Liz was already on the stairs. She didn’t stop to argue with her, and was glad that Lindsay wanted to come.

Without thinking, they left the lights on, and Liz didn’t want to lose any time. They were in the car two minutes later, and Liz drove as quickly as she dared. She knew that she could make it to Marin in three hours without traffic, and they could call on the way to see how he was. Liz had not been so frightened since Tom had a severe concussion when he fell off a horse at seven and Lindsay had a seizure from a high fever when she was two. And a heart attack was serious business. She prayed that Marshall would be all right.

Half an hour later, they were on the freeway, and Liz was quiet as she drove. Lindsay could see how terrified she was, and she knew how much her mother loved him. And even if she thought he was a jerk sometimes, she loved her father too.

“He’ll be okay, Mom,” she tried to reassure her, and Liz nodded with tears in her eyes. She was sure that the threatened sexual harassment suit had done it. It had been so stressful for all of them. She hated that woman for her lies. None of them had been the same since. Liz herself had been terrified of what terrible thing would happen next, and she felt guilty now for harassing Marshall about it and crying all the time. But she had been so upset for nearly three months, and he had been very patient with her. And now disaster had struck again. At least he didn’t smoke, and drank very little, but he had so much stress at the office, and all the responsibility for running UPI rested on him. She wondered if he’d have to retire now. He was only fifty-one, but maybe he would be able to go back to work after this. She wondered if he’d have to have an angioplasty or bypass, or if they’d put in stents, like the husbands of some of her friends. Her mind was racing, but there was no traffic and they were making good time. She was flying.

They called the hospital after they’d been in the car for an hour. The nurse who answered the phone in coronary urgent care said that his condition was stable and they were doing an angiogram. Liz thought of calling John and Tom, but she wanted to have a better idea of what was happening before she did.

Liz pulled into the parking lot at Marin General just after midnight. They had made it in just under three hours, and she rushed inside with Lindsay right behind her. They told her in the emergency room that they had moved him to coronary ICU by then. It didn’t sound
good to her, and she looked at Lindsay in panic. They were both fighting back tears, as they held hands, and got in the elevator to go upstairs. Liz rushed to the nurse’s desk and gave them her name.

“He just got back from his angiogram,” the nurse told her with a sympathetic smile. It sounded frightening to Liz and Lindsay, but at least he was still alive.

“How is he?” Liz whispered, terrified to hear the news.

“He’s doing fine. Our resident on call is with him. We have him in a room by himself. You can go in, if you like.” She was relieved that she didn’t have to walk past all the little cubicles, with patients hooked up to monitors, and frightened relatives at their side. She was one of them now. Lindsay followed her to the room the nurse had indicated, and Liz cautiously opened the door, not sure what she’d find inside. The first thing Liz saw was her husband, looking pale underneath his suntan, and slightly gray, with a serious look as he spoke to the resident, a young dark-haired man in a white coat who looked like a boy to her. He was smiling at Marshall, who was surprised when he saw her.

“What are you doing here?” He hadn’t called her, but he was vaguely aware that they told him someone had. There was a monitor in the room, next to his bed, and it was beeping softly, but the pattern on the screen looked regular as Liz glanced at it on the way to kiss him and take his hand.

“You thought maybe I’d sit in Tahoe waiting to hear how you were?” He smiled in answer. He knew her better than that.

“What took you so long?” he teased her. “I’ve been here for three hours.” She squeezed his hand and looked at the doctor.

“How is he?” She wanted it straight from the horse’s mouth, not played down by Marshall so she wouldn’t worry.

“He’s doing fine,” the doctor said, glancing at Marshall, who looked sheepish in the bed, where he was lying flat with pressure on his groin from the angiogram.

“I didn’t have a heart attack,” Marshall told her before the doctor said it. He owed her that much at least.

“It sounds like a hell of a warning,” Liz said, frowning, particularly if he’d lost consciousness in the ambulance on the way there. “That ought to tell you something. You need to slow down,” she scolded him, and the doctor nodded. They had been discussing it when she walked in.

“It wasn’t even a warning,” Marshall admitted. “They went over me with a fine-tooth comb. Apparently it was an anxiety attack, which is nothing. Just me being neurotic and stressed out.” Marshall looked embarrassed as the doctor confirmed it to Liz, and Lindsay sat down in the room’s only chair. Marshall noticed her for the first time, and smiled and thanked her for coming. She didn’t understand what was going on, and neither did Liz.

“An anxiety attack can mimic a heart attack pretty closely, at least in the superficial signs,” the young doctor explained. “The big difference is that your heart is never at risk. Mr. Weston’s heart is healthy, but he seems to be reacting to a considerable amount of stress. So you’re not entirely wrong in saying he should slow down, or at least remove some of the stressors from his life. This kind of episode can be pretty unpleasant. And you don’t want to be having an angiogram every week.” That part of the evening’s entertainment had been a lot more unpleasant than even Marshall had feared. And it wasn’t an experience he wanted to go through again. They had passed a catheter into the artery in his groin to check his heart. And he had
thought he really was having a heart attack while they did it. He knew that sometimes people did.

“So you’re okay, Dad?” Lindsay asked from her seat, with a worried expression. She and her mother looked worse than he did, even with everything he had gone through.

“I’m okay, Lindsay. Thank you for coming with your mom,” he said again.

“Of course.” She smiled at him, relieved.

It was taking Liz a few minutes to absorb what the resident had said, and she wondered if he knew what he was doing, but as Marshall said, the angiogram didn’t lie. He was fine. Just incredibly stressed. And he knew why, but he didn’t share that information with Liz.

“I had a rough day at the office, and an emergency meeting with the board.” He didn’t say what it was about, and she didn’t ask. She never pressed him about work, unless he volunteered. “It was no worse than any other day,” he said—lying again, it had been considerably worse and rocked his world—“but I guess it just got to me.” Liz felt guilty as he said it, knowing how shaky she had been lately, and how demanding of his time. Maybe it was her fault. But his anxiety attack had woken her up. They all needed to get over the aborted sexual harassment suit now. It was done, and time to move on.

“When can he go home?” Liz asked the doctor. It was one in the morning by then.

“Now, if he wants.” And then he turned to Marshall. “You just need to keep ice on the entry site in your groin tonight. But there’s no risk if you want to sleep in your own bed instead of ours.” He smiled at
Marshall and Liz. “Just take it easy. And try not to let things get to you this week.”
Yeah, like which woman to choose to spend the rest of my life with, or destroy my career. Little things like that
, Marshall thought. No one had any idea of the mess he was in, or the risk to his career. His whole world was about to fall apart, whichever way he turned. He knew that, and they didn’t. And as he thought of it, he realized that it was astounding he hadn’t had a real heart attack. He thought it was. And Ashley knew none of what had happened. Only Liz. He hadn’t wanted to upset either of them, and no one had called Ashley. Her name was nowhere on his papers, only his wife’s.

They both thanked the doctor then, and he said he’d leave the discharge papers at the desk, and left the room. Marshall looked a little unsteady as he got out of bed. He’d been through a lot that night. Liz helped him dress, and treated him like a child. He always appreciated her motherly style, which made him feel better when he was sick. With Ashley, he was the adult and she the child. With Liz, it was the reverse. But she was a nurturing person and had been taking care of him for almost thirty years. That counted for a lot, and she felt safe and familiar to him as she helped him to the car, and Lindsay slid into the backseat with a yawn. All three of them were relieved as they drove home to Ross, with Liz at the wheel. And as soon as they got to the house, Liz put him to bed, and cleaned up the vomit on their bedroom floor. She brought him a cup of tea and some crackers to settle his stomach, which he said was upset, and an ice pack for his groin. And Liz kissed her daughter before she went to bed, and thanked her again for coming with her. At the root of it all, Lindsay was a good kid, just immature, and a little spoiled. Liz seemed in full control of the situation now. She was great in a crisis.

“Thanks, Liz,” Marshall said, looking at her with a grateful smile as she sat down on the bed next to him. He knew it had been a terrifying night for her. “You always take such good care of me when I’m sick. But I’m not even sick, just stressed.”

“Well, you will be sick if you don’t take it easy. Next time it really could be a heart attack.” Two of her friends had lost husbands who were younger than he was, one while he was jogging, and the other on the tennis court. And she didn’t want that to happen to him. The doctor had offered to send him home with tranquilizers, but he had refused. “You need to slow down and relax,” she said, and he nodded. And as he looked at her, he wondered how he could walk out on her now. The board was asking him to cut off his right arm … or his left … or his heart … head … or lose his job, which was the life force that pumped through his veins. It was a terrible choice. “Did anything special happen at the office today?” she asked him with a look of concern, and he shook his head, lying to her again, and he felt guilty for it this time, but he couldn’t tell her the truth.

“The usual. Nothing special. We have some internal problems I have to work out. I had a meeting with Connie Feinberg about it.”

Liz nodded, and felt guilty herself. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a pain in the ass lately. I think I just got shaken up with all the sexual harassment stuff. Even if it wasn’t real, it felt like it for a while, and it made me realize that bad things can happen.” And then her eyes filled with tears, “And I don’t want anything bad to ever happen to you … or to us …,” she said, and he sat up and hugged her.

“Nothing will,” he promised, and then wondered if he was lying again. How could he promise her that now? But what else could he say? That he wanted to leave her for a woman twenty years younger
in L.A.? He had no idea how he would ever do it, or tell her. And he was sorry for a minute that he hadn’t died that night. He’d thought he was dying. It would have been so much simpler. And he knew that Liz didn’t deserve what was coming, nor did his kids. Tears filled his eyes as he looked at her too, and Liz looked shocked. Marshall never cried, and it made her realize how scared and vulnerable he was too. She put her arms around him and held him, gently stroking his hair like a child.

She turned off the lights in the room then, and went to get undressed. Marshall was dozing when she got back, and he opened his eyes and looked at her as she got into bed. She was a familiar sight in his landscape, and he couldn’t imagine what he would do without her, or how he would run his career.

“I love you, Liz,” he said sleepily, as she snuggled up to him and rubbed his back. He smiled and closed his eyes, and she lay there watching him until he fell asleep.

When Marshall woke up in the morning, Liz was already downstairs cooking breakfast. He lay in bed for a few minutes, thinking. He wondered if the night before had happened for a reason, to show him what he had to do. He hated doing it, but it was clear in his mind now. He and Liz had been married for twenty-seven years. He couldn’t leave her now. It wasn’t fair to her. And he needed her too much. It would almost kill him to give up Ashley, but he knew he had no other choice. Liz was the mother of three of his kids, and the wife he needed for his career. It was the decision he had to make. And Ashley was young enough to move on and build another life, and even have more kids, with a man who was willing to marry
her. It was just too complicated for him now at this point in his life. And it was going to be a scandal if he admitted to his involvement with Ashley now. They had two illegitimate children, and she was proof that he had cheated on Liz for eight years. It wasn’t the side of him that he wanted to show the world. And he had a responsibility to UPI too, as their CEO. He had no desire to become the scandal of the century or even the year. It was clear to him now. And he knew he had to go to L.A. to tell Ashley. He was going there the next day anyway, for his usual stay.