Reunion in October (The Calendar Girls Book 2) (11 page)

“No,” I said a little too fast. Whoops. Talk about insulting. Even though I hadn’t meant to be condescending, I sensed my denial came off that way. I shuffled my feet. “I mean, not that you don’t look like an author or anything. I don’t even know what an author would look like. It’s just…it’s kind of a weird coincidence that I picked up your book with you standing right next to me.”

“Not much of a coincidence actually.” He leaned closer to my side to whisper, “Promise not to tell, but I come in here a couple of times a week and place my book with the cover facing out on the shelf to catch a reader’s eye. That’s why I asked why you put it back. I’m always curious as to what makes a reader pick up or put down a book. Especially when it’s mine.”

Cripes. Of all the rotten luck. My one brush with greatness, and I insulted the guy. Not once, but twice. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal. It’s just that…I’m a 911 dispatcher so I see enough tragedy on a daily basis—”

“You are?!” His smile widened, lighting up his incredible eyes like neon in Times Square. “Oh my God, that’s amazing.”

A snort escaped before I could stifle my ridicule. “Hardly.”

“No, I mean, my next book deals with a 911 operator involved in a murder spree. I don’t suppose you’d let me interview you, would you? I have a ton of questions.”

“Umm…maybe some other time.” I bounced Luke, who grabbed a hank of my hair and tried to stuff it, along with his fist, into his mouth. “I have to get this little guy home and fed before he eats me bald.”

“Please. We could have a cup of coffee right here in the café downstairs, if that works for you. Just a few minutes would be a great start. And then if I could maybe email you at another time, you wouldn’t be inconvenienced too much, would you?”

Email. Yeah, right. I wondered what he would think if he knew I didn’t use email. Or social media at all. Who had the time? Or the money? We didn’t even have Internet in the house.

“I’d be really grateful,” he pressed. “And I’d give you an acknowledgement in the book.”

An acknowledgement. Okay, I admit. That sounded too cool to pass up. Who’d turn down the opportunity to have their name in a
book
?

“I could even name a character after you if you want. What’s your name?”

“Emily.” I was softening, and he must have sensed it.

“Ten minutes, Emily? Please?”

“Okay. But only ten minutes.” I had to get Luke to daycare and be at work by twelve o’clock.

“Great. Thank you. I really appreciate this.”

We walked together to the stairs and descended, with him happily chatting about his latest project—his wip, he called it—which centered on a dispatcher who suspects her boss is a serial killer. “I just need some help with authenticity on the details of a police precinct,” he said. “Things like, do you still tape 911 calls or are they on computer discs or what. And is there a special room where you replay those tapes? And how long does it take between the time a cop requests a certain recording and he gets to hear it?”

He continued rattling off questions, never giving me a chance to answer, as we strode to the newly renovated lower level. At the bottom of the stairs, near the exit doors, the café gleamed with white columns and glass cases of pastries. On a nearby counter, a trio of thermal carafes held coffee, hot water for tea or cocoa, and decaf. Beside them, a tower of Styrofoam cups waited to be filled. Sugar packets, stirrers, and non-dairy creamer sat in wicker baskets. I poured a cup of decaf and added an envelope of powdered creamer, then stirred the mixture. Once it melded into a sickly taupe color, I reached for the coffee, but he touched my hand, stopping me in mid-grasp. An electric shock from his fingers jolted my nerve endings. What on earth was going on with me?

“Here,” he said, taking my cup. “You’ve got the little guy.”

My reaction to him addled my brain, but I managed to smile. “Thanks.” Walking ahead, I found an empty bistro table beside the magazine rack and sat in one of the two chairs. Luke nodded off on my shoulder, so I propped him up against my neck to make us both more comfortable.

“This is great,” Ambrose Chase said, taking the seat across from Luke and me. “I won’t keep you long, promise. I can see you’ve got your hands full. How old is he?”

I nuzzled my son’s head, inhaling his unique toddler smell of baby shampoo and arrowroot cookies. “Eighteen months.”

“Sweet. What’s his name?”

“Luke.”

“Luke. And do you and Luke have a last name?”

“Handler.”

“Emily Handler.” After a sip from his cup, he remarked, “Good name. Strong. Perfect for a fictional character who’s about to save the city from a vicious killer.”

I smiled again. How could I not? I, Emily Handler, was about to be immortalized in fiction. A chill zipped down my spine. What if the book sucked? My chest tightened at the thought.

Ambrose Chase pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and gathered a handful of napkins. “Sorry I don’t have any paper with me. I wasn’t exactly prepared to run into a 911 dispatcher today.”

I shrugged. “I wasn’t expecting to meet an author, so we’re even.” I reached for my coffee, but the smell rocked my stomach. I put the cup down, pushing it far away. Nausea suddenly overwhelmed me. My hands jerked, and the cup tipped, spilling its contents all over the table. “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” I exclaimed as I shot to my feet, shielding Luke from the spreading lake of hot coffee.

“It’s okay. No big deal.” Ambrose Chase stood as well and began mopping up the mess with the napkins he’d planned to use for notes. “See? At least we were prepared.”

That familiar heaviness crushed my ribs, and my limbs went numb. My little guy was growing faster than I realized, getting too heavy to stay in my hold like this for long periods of time. His weight had cut off my circulation. I would have to start making him walk more often. I had to…take a second. Had to...

…breathe.

I couldn’t breathe. A cold sweat broke out over my flesh as I struggled to pull air into my lungs. The room darkened around the edges of my vision, and my arms, though they felt like lead, tightened on Luke.  My son woke up suddenly, screaming in my ear, but I couldn’t even see him. Everything in my vision blurred to globs of color.

Oh, God, what was happening to me? Something was very wrong. I felt myself falling, falling down a spiral, and I clutched Luke even tighter to my chest as the world tilted.

“Emily?” A man’s urgent tone came to me as if from underwater. “What’s wrong? Emily? Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but no sound emitted from my throat. Air. I needed air. I was going to suffocate here in this black hole that had sprung up in the library. And I was taking my son with me. “Help me,” I eked out.

I heard someone yell, “Call 911!”

My last conscious thought was,
Who was manning the calls today
?
Rowena or Jake? And which EMTs would come to the scene?

Before I could find out the answer, I descended into blissful nothing.

****

Hands gripped my shoulders, lifting me onto something soft. I couldn’t argue—couldn’t speak, could barely hear over the roar of a siren from somewhere outside. Whatever was happening sounded serious. And too close for comfort. God, I hoped nobody died.

Meanwhile, invisible, dry water surrounded me, dulling all my senses. The ground underneath me seemed to move in a bumpy, unsteady manner. Fuzz framed the edges of my vision, as if I watched everything through a furry mask. Despite this muzzy haze, I managed to recognize the rugged features of the man who fussed over me.

“Hey, Bruce.” The greeting didn’t travel far. Something hard and plastic muffled the sound of my voice.

“Don’t talk, Emmie,” he ordered. Years of captaining a ferry had given Bruce Dunham an air of command no one dared ignore. Even me.

The ferry crossed the Long Island Sound, linking Snug Harbor visitors with either Block Island or Connecticut. But I didn’t remember boarding the ferry. The last time Roy and I had crossed the Sound was to take the kids to the aquarium in Mystic, at least five years and two kids ago. So why did I wake up in some enclosed space with no one around but Bruce Dunham? I mean, I’d fallen asleep in some weird places lately, but I’d always known where I was within seconds of waking up. Except, this time, I had no clue. Why couldn’t I remember? Had I been sleepwalking? Or considering Bruce’s appearance in my newest nightmare, had I been sleep-
sailing
?

No. Ridiculous.

What other explanation was there? Bruce also served as a volunteer emergency medical technician. Did that mean I was in an ambulance? That would explain the incessant wailing of the siren overhead, the plastic cone over my face—an oxygen mask, and Bruce’s presence.

I stared up past Bruce’s Yankees baseball cap to the ceiling where high intensity bulbs gleamed from recessed lighting fixtures. Behind him, stainless steel storage shelves with clear windows displayed bandages, drugs, and other medical supplies. A defibrillator, monitors, and various gauges were mounted to the wall on my right. An ambulance. I was definitely in an ambulance. How on earth did I wind up here?

Oh, my God! Luke! Where was Luke? I struggled to sit up, but Bruce’s hand slammed me down on the stretcher again.

“Don’t fight, Em. Just relax. Breathe.”

Breathe? Why? Who cared about breathing right now? I had to find my son. “Luke.” Jeez, through the plastic cup with the whooshing ventilator, I sounded like Darth Vader.
Luke, I am your father…

Somehow, though, Bruce understood what I said. Nodding, he squeezed my fingers. “Your son is fine. He’s with Miss Lydia.”

Miss Lydia? The librarian? Miss Lydia had been a fixture at Snug Harbor Library, probably since my grandmother was a kid. No one called her by her last name, Koziekiewicz, because…well, really, who could pronounce that, much less spell it?

The bigger question at the moment was why was Luke with Miss Lydia? I tried to think back to what might have happened. The day’s events came to me in flashes—like someone had given Roy free rein with the remote control of my life. Click! Storytime at the library:
Billy and the Dragon.
Click! Coffee in the downstairs café. Click! A strange man’s concerned face looming too close to me. Click! Luke yanking on my hair, shooting darts of pain through my scalp. Click! Me, falling, my knees slamming into the thin carpet that covered the concrete floor. A shout from someone to call 911. And then…nothing.

“Keep breathing, Em,” Bruce said. “We’ll be at the hospital any minute now.”

The hospital? No. I couldn’t go to the hospital. I had to drop Luke off at daycare, then be at work by twelve o’clock. I didn’t have time for the hospital.

“We already paged Roy,” he added. “He’ll meet us in the E.R.”

Great. Just what I didn’t need. I waved a hand in Bruce’s face, hoping to get him to change his mind. To un-page Roy, tell him it was a false alarm. I was fine. Really. I just fell asleep. It happened a lot these days. No big deal.

“Almost there,” he said.

I waved harder, but an I.V. tube taped to the inside of my elbow snapped against my skin, spraying pain through my nerves.

“Be still, Em. Just breathe. Everything’s okay.”

Ha. That’s what he thought. We had a three hundred dollar deductible for emergency room services without an admission. I already owed Dr. Herrera both my kidneys to cover the vet bill for Freckles. What’d I have left for a three hundred dollar hospital bill? And this ride, which would also fall into the deductible category. Tally in the bills for each of the seventeen doctors who’d pop their heads into my E.R. suite to ask how I was feeling, then charge a thousand dollars for a “consultation” and I would probably lose our house.

The jostling suddenly stopped, and while I’d worried about finances, the siren’s wail had disappeared. Bruce crouched over me, his head inches from the ambulance ceiling. “Okay, Em, we’re gonna bring you inside now. You’re doing great.”

The doors in front of me burst open, and I went from a cocoon of Bruce’s soft but steely comfort into a cacophony of chaos. Half a dozen faces appeared, and everyone seemed to talk at once.

“Put her in seven.”

“What are her vitals?”

“Who performed CPR?”

“Did you give her any meds? Aspirin?”

“How long was she out?”

“Did someone contact her husband?”

Bruce crouched by my head, rattling off information I couldn’t fathom, and another man popped up near my feet. “On the count of three. One, two, three.”

I was suddenly lifted, then lowered again, and we rolled down a hospital corridor. The hectic voices around me created an impenetrable wall of sound. My eyelids weighed a ton, and the overhead lights zipped by at such a frantic pace, I grew dizzy. Blackness called, and I surrendered to the dark.

Chapter 9

Emily

Someone snored near my feet. Freckles? No. Couldn’t be. Freckles was dead. I tried to lift my legs to knock the snorer off, but a heaviness weighed down my limbs. When I forced my eyes open, I was in a hospital bed, a bunch of tubes and wires snaking from my body to a series of beeping and dripping machines. The snoring came from some kind of cuffs on my feet that filled with air and slowly deflated over and over. I turned toward the window, and a shadow popped up from the corner.

“Em, thank God!” Roy leaned over the bedrail, his hand near but not touching my shoulder. “Don’t move. Let me get the nurse.”

He shot out of the room before I could form an argument.

“Nurse?” I heard him call from the doorway. “She’s up.”

When he returned a minute or two later, a young blond woman, garbed in scrubs decorated with bumblebees and daisies, followed on his heels. She was skinny, pretty, and wore a name tag that read,
Leslie Ellis, R.N
. I hated her on sight.

“Hi there,” she said with a bleached white smile. “I’m Leslie, your daytime nurse. I’ll be with you until five o’clock so if you need anything at all, just ring for me, okay?” She rolled over a cart filled with additional medical paraphernalia and pulled out a plastic wrapped package about the size of a PEZ candy dispenser. “Dr. Stewart’s been waiting for you to wake up. He’s doing rounds on the third floor right now. I’ll have him come up here as soon as possible. In the meantime, let’s get some numbers for him.” After ripping the package open, she slid a narrow wand inside and whipped out a pen-looking item. “Open your mouth, please.”