“And now you’re crashing. Pull into a McDonald’s and get an Egg McMuffin.”
He sounded uncharacteristically solicitous, which made her wonder how bad she sounded.
“I don’t have time. Armitage expects me there in twenty.”
“Screw Armitage. Get something to eat. You’re running on fumes.”
Another wave of nausea gripped her. Maybe he was right. “I’m coming up on Princeton Promenade,” she said, easing over into the right lane. “They have a great food court.” She could grab some protein and a bottle of water and be on her way again with time to spare.
“Good thinking.”
“Oh, wait! I don’t have to stop. I have some nuts in the glove box.” She leaned across the passenger seat and popped open the glove box in search of smoked almonds, survivors of her last trip down the shore for the semiannual Atlantique City extravaganza. The Atlantique City trade show was a must for New Jersey antique shop owners, and Kate was no exception. French Kiss maintained a prominent spot twice a year. She sifted through her insurance card, registration, and owner’s manual and pushed aside a small flashlight and an open packet of tissues. Where were the almonds?
She veered toward the fender of a white Escalade and quickly steered back into her own lane to a chorus of angry horns.
“What the hell is going on?” Paul asked. “It sounds like you’re at the roller derby.”
She caught sight of herself in the rearview mirror, and the odd feeling in the pit of her stomach intensified. A single bead of sweat was making its way down her forehead toward her right eye. It was barely seventy degrees outside. Nobody broke into a sweat in seventy-degree weather, least of all her.
“You’re right,” she said. Everybody was right. “I’m a menace. I should get off the road.”
“Want me to drive down there and get you?”
She turned on her blinker and made the right into the parking lot of Princeton Promenade. “Don’t be silly. You’re in Manhattan. I’ll be fine after I get something to eat.”
“I’ll send a car for you. We use services all over the tristate area.”
She zeroed in on a spot two lanes over and headed for it. “I’ll stop. I’ll eat. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m gonna hold you to it.”
She whipped around the head of the third lane from the entrance and zipped into the spot as a dented blue Honda angled itself behind her. “Uh-oh,” she said.
“What’s going on?”
“Some guy in an old blue car is glaring at me. He seems to think I stole his spot.”
“Did you?”
“He didn’t have a turn signal on.” She hesitated, replaying the scene in her head. “I might have.”
“Where is he?”
“Stopped right behind me.”
“Blocking you in?”
She slunk down low in her seat. “I never do things like this. I’m the most polite driver on the planet.”
“Is he still there?”
“Yes.”
“Want me to call mall security? I can use another line.”
She hesitated. “Maybe you—oh, thank God! He’s driving away.” She watched through the rearview mirror. Good-looking men in her own age demographic had no business wearing Grateful Dead T-shirts.
Paul wanted to talk her into the mall and out again but her cell battery was running down. The only way he would let her go was if she promised to phone him after she saw Professor Armitage.
Normally she would have told him to back off, but so far nothing about the morning had been even remotely normal. It wasn’t like him to be so solicitous. The last time he had sounded that worried was when one of his daughters said she wanted to become a model.
A vague sense of dread wrapped itself around her chest and it wouldn’t let go.
“Okay,” she said out loud. “Don’t go getting crazy.”
The problem was so obvious that it was almost laughable: she needed food and water and she needed them right now. The food court was located near the multiplex at the south end of the Promenade. A huge round clock mounted to the left of the Sushi Palace sign offered up a reality check she didn’t need. Armitage expected her at his front door in exactly thirteen and one-half minutes. Even if she ditched the search for protein she would never make it on time.
Why hadn’t she just cancelled out earlier this morning when she was trapped at the airport waiting for her boxes and bags? Why had she been so hell-bent on squeezing as much from the day as was inhumanly possible?
She swallowed hard against a sudden, acrid burst of nausea at the back of her throat. The air was soft and sweet with spring promise and she swept huge gulps of it into her lungs in an attempt to clear away the discomfort, but that didn’t help either.
She flipped open her phone and said, “Call Armitage,” then waited while it attempted the connection.
“Call Armitage,” she said again.
No luck this time either.
She would have to find a pay phone in the food court and—
And what?
Professor Armitage. That was it.
Concentrate!
The thought of facing the professor’s wrath wasn’t half as unnerving as this weird, disconnected feeling that seemed to be growing more intense. Unless Armitage wanted to assess the documents in the emergency room of the nearest hospital, he would simply have to understand.
Understand what? She went blank for a second as scattered images flooded her brain. Professor Armitage’s woolly gray beard. His fierce little eyes. The cold, slick feel of the metal box in her hands. The way that stupid thong pinched exactly where no sane person wanted to be pinched. The whooshing sound inside her head . . .
Don’t faint!
she warned herself. She would die of embarrassment if the EMTs saw what she was wearing under her peach cotton twinset and pearls.
A shiver ran up her spine and she pushed the thought as far from her mind as she could. Clearly her imagination was as jet-lagged and out of whack as the rest of her, hopping without warning from one bizarre thought to the next.
She didn’t know the first thing about being sick. Her last hospital stay had been twenty-three years ago when she gave birth to Gwynn. She was the one who visited patients and brought them flowers and candy and trashy magazines to while away the hours. She was always the one who got to go home when visiting hours were over.
The thong pinched when she took a step, then pinched harder when she stopped. What she wanted to do was duck between the parked cars and make a swift adjustment, but wouldn’t you know it: the man she’d beat out for the parking spot was two aisles over and looking right at her.
Bad enough she was wearing underwear ten years too young and two sizes too small for her. Imagine being caught fiddling with it in public by an angry man in a Grateful Dead T-shirt. They locked eyes for a second and she looked away. His look was disconcertingly direct but it wasn’t angry, and that unnerved her. She had expected anger or irritation, but she saw neither. His look wasn’t flirtatious, but there was something there, something she couldn’t put her finger on. She couldn’t remember the last time a man’s gaze had unsettled her this way. The stupid thong was even affecting her judgment.
She shot him another quick glance. Tall, lean. Thick dark hair that caught the sunlight and held it. A deeply intelligent face alive with open curiosity aimed in her direction and a smile that—
Okay. Enough of that. The smile was for whoever was on the other end of his cell phone connection. Besides, the guy was wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt. What more was there to say?
A woman with three small children in tow raced past her in a cloud of baby powder and soap. Her stomach lurched at the sweet smell and for a second she thought she was about to faint. She tried to steady herself with another deep breath of spring-fresh air but suddenly her chest felt tight, as if some unseen force were wrapping a band around her rib cage and pulling tighter and tighter, and she knew she was going down.
Or was she down already? She wasn’t sure. The world had gone all soft-focus on her except for the sickening smells of pickled ginger, old Juicy Fruit, and motor oil.
I’m asleep,
she thought. What other explanation could there be? This had nothing to do with real life.
Open your eyes, Kate. You really don’t want to be having this dream.
The room smelled like a Dumpster. The mattress was hard as a rock and the covers were all tangled up around her legs and she felt as if she were being—
She opened her eyes and screamed. Actually she
tried
to scream, but she couldn’t draw down enough oxygen to manage more than a loud whisper.
The guy in the Grateful Dead T-shirt, the same guy she had beat out for the parking spot, was bent over her, tugging at the hem of her skirt.
“Glad you’re back with us,” he said, as if they were chatting over cocktails at T.G.I. Friday’s. “I was starting to worry.”
He tugged again and she tried to strike out at him, but her arms seemed weighted with lead.
“Whoa!” He pretended to duck. “Take it easy. I’m on your side.”
She thought of a half-dozen remarks she could make, but none of them found their way to her lips. What was wrong with her? Usually she could deal out a smart remark at the speed of light. “Get your hands off me,” she managed.
That’s the best you can do? Pathetic.
“You don’t want all of Princeton to see that red lace, do you?”
Oh God . . . the thong . . . just leave me here so I can die of embarrassment . . .
“So what happened? Did you trip? One second you were walking toward the Promenade and the next—” He made a falling gesture with his hand.
Couldn’t he see she wanted to roll under a car and disappear? Why was he trying to make conversation?
It wasn’t a hard question, but she couldn’t seem to figure out the answer.
“Does this sort of thing happen a lot?”
“Never.” She cleared her throat. “Absolutely never.”
“I’m going to take your pulse again.”
Again?
“It was over a hundred when I checked your carotid artery. That’s not great.”
Not every Deadhead could use “carotid artery” in a sentence with such ease. Was it possible he actually knew what he was doing?
“No thanks.” But she wouldn’t mind an extra-strength Advil. Her shoulder. Her back. Her hand. Even her teeth hurt from the fall. Her left jaw was actually throbbing.
“I’m a licensed EMT.” He pulled some cards from his pocket and she pretended to examine them, but the truth was she couldn’t focus on the text. “Fifteen years’ experience. New Hampshire and New Jersey.”
“This really isn’t necessary,” she said. Or at least that was what she tried to say. She was having trouble following the conversation and even more trouble synching her thoughts with her words.
“Do me a favor and lie down. You look like you’re going to pass out again.”
She wanted to protest, but suddenly the thought of lying flat on her back in the middle of the Princeton Promenade parking lot sounded like the best idea she’d ever had. He opened a newspaper wide and spread it down on the ground beneath her head, but the combined smells of pickled ginger, motor oil, and chewed-up bubble gum seeped through and made her retch.
He placed two fingers on the pulse point in her inner wrist and monitored the second hand on his watch. “One twenty. Any nausea?”
She nodded.
You felt queasy in the car. Maybe you should tell him that.
“Any underlying medical conditions that might have some bearing on this?”
She was perfectly healthy. Why couldn’t he see that for himself?
“Are you on any medication?”
“Vitamins.”
“Are you in pain?” The man was relentless.
“Not—not exactly pain.”
“Discomfort?”
Oh God. Even through the fog swirling around her, she could see where this was going. “Yes.”
Admit it, French: you’re in big trouble.
“Where?”
“My back.”
“Sharp pain?”
“Not sharp . . . pressure.” Three words and she was totally wiped out. What was happening to her?
“Okay. I’m not trying to worry you but we need to call nine-one-one.” He pulled a cell phone from his back pocket and punched in the numbers.
The band around her chest tightened and she broke into a sweat.
“. . . Yes, I’ll stay here with her . . . thanks.” He jammed the phone back into his pocket. “You’re probably right. I’ll bet it’s nothing too but I know you’ll feel a lot better if you hear that from a doctor and not some guy in a Dead shirt.”
She wanted to laugh at his joke, but all she could manage was a quick smile. She was sweating. How could that be? She wanted to say, “This isn’t really me,” but that required more energy than she could muster up. He wiped her forehead with the back of his hand, and she almost wept from the gentleness of the action. “Heart attack?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said. “There’s a good chance that’s what it is.”
“Lie to me,” she managed. “I don’t mind.” She tried to force another laugh, but the iron band around her rib cage wouldn’t let her.
He didn’t pull his punches, but the deep compassion in his eyes made her feel safe.
“It could be indigestion, a panic attack, a sprained muscle. But if it
is
your heart, we need to get help sooner rather than later.”
“Are you sure you’re not a—”
She was going to say “doctor,” but the pain exploded and it blew everything else away. Deep crushing pain from the center of her body that stripped her of her identity, her memories, her future, stripped her of everything but bone-deep terror.
“Oh God . . . oh God . . .” Was she saying it or just thinking it? She didn’t know. She felt as if she were floating above the parking lot like a helium balloon on a very fragile string.
He leaned closer. She could feel his warm breath against her cheek. “What is it? Do you want to say a prayer? Is that what you’re saying?”