One Golden Summer(95)

I spend a few days taking stock of my freelance work and make a conscious decision to scale back my list of clients so I can make time for my own work while still paying the bills. It’s easy determining who to weed out: From now on, I’m only going to work with people I enjoy working with. So I send a note to the art director at Percy’s magazine telling her I’d love to shoot for her again, and when I get an email from Willa, asking if I’ll take on another assignment for Swish, I politely decline.

But I’m surprised when Willa replies saying that she understands and asks if she can take me out for a drink. We go to a cocktail bar near her office, and she apologizes for what happened with the bathing suit photos.

“It was a new job,” she says. “I was under so much pressure from my boss, and I was worried about impressing him.”

I tell her I can relate, and that I’ll give her a second chance.

I meet Elyse to share what I’ve shot over the summer, and she gasps.

“I’m working toward a solo show,” I tell her, and ask whether she would consider hosting me at her gallery.

The question is only half out of my mouth when she screams, “Hell, yes!”

By the end of September, I’m more than okay.

But I still miss Charlie. I want to see him again. I want to yell at him.

I just don’t know what comes next.



* * *





The first day of October is a Wednesday. It’s a classic fall day. The sky is blue, the sun a plump marigold yellow. Every greengrocer has displays of chrysanthemums and pumpkins and gourds on the sidewalk. The coffee shop beside my studio has put out bales of hay for benches. I’d love to spend the day there, reading the sequel to Ruling the Rogue I bought at the drugstore yesterday, but I’m shooting a holiday entertaining story for Swish.

It’s a long day and a full set—Willa, models, hair, makeup, two assistants, food and prop stylists—and we’ve just wrapped when my phone rings. I frown at the name on my screen. Percy always texts.

I step out into the hall, shutting the door behind me, my stomach already twisting.

“Hello?”

“Alice, hi. I have some news about Charlie. Are you sitting down?”





49


Wednesday, October 1

37 Days Since Coming Home

I take a cab to the hospital. I don’t trust myself to drive. I could barely process what Percy was telling me beyond the words open-heart surgery and intensive care.

“He’s okay,” I tell myself. Because that’s what Percy told me. I keep saying it, even when the driver looks at me in the mirror with alarm.

I walk as quickly as I can through the lobby, and then I start to run. I get lost in my panic. I spin around, trying to find the room number, and then I see a pregnant woman at the end of the hallway. Percy’s in a yellow hospital gown and mask, talking to a doctor, her hands on her lower back. As I get closer, I realize the doctor is Sam.

She raises her hand when she sees me, and I know how I must look, red-faced and tearstained, mascara running to my chin.

“He’s fine,” she says, hugging me around her belly. “Right, Sam?”

“I’m not sure how happy he is with you, Percy.” Sam turns to me. “But yes, he’s fine, given the circumstances. Ross procedures are major cardiac surgery, but Dr. Lim is one of our best, and she’s pleased with how it went. He’s more than twenty-four hours post-op and recovering well.”

“I would have called you sooner,” Percy says. “But they’re strict about visitors the day of surgery. I know this must be a shock. We wanted him to tell you. Sam tried to convince him, but he’s been adamant.”

I stare at her, open-mouthed. This was scheduled. Charlie knew all along he was having heart surgery. I put a hand on the wall.

Sam looks apologetic. “He didn’t tell us at first, either. Fortunately, this is my hospital, and there was no way he could have kept it a secret. But I’ll let him explain himself.” He gives Percy a meaningful look. “Another day.”

“There’s a nurse in with him right now,” Percy says. “He’ll move out of the ICU to the surgery unit tomorrow morning.”

I can barely process what they’re saying.

“He knows you’re here, and I’ll show you to the room when he’s ready,” Sam says. “But do you want anything in the meantime? Water? Maybe a Kleenex?”

Over the next half an hour in the cafeteria, I listen to Sam explain that Charlie had a stent in the spring in addition to yesterday’s surgery. I type aortic valve stenosis and aortic coarctation into my phone so I can look them up later.

“It came out of nowhere,” Percy says. “Sam forced Charlie into seeing a doctor back in March after he complained about being out of breath at the gym.”

“He’d been feeling faint, too,” Sam says. “His blood pressure reading was high, and his doctor found a murmur.”

I think back to the fear in Charlie’s eyes when he grew winded that day working on the dock, and to when I’d seen him through the window, with the cuff around his arm. He’d said his blood pressure had been a little high. I hadn’t given it much thought. I assumed it was related to work stress.

Sam tells me that the conditions are congenital, that they’re most often passed down from fathers to their children. “We assumed Dad died of a heart attack, but there wasn’t an autopsy. He likely had the same conditions. In severe cases, left untreated, they can cause sudden death.”