Page 86 of Love and Other Lost Things

“Oh my God.”

“And if he were a heavy smoker…” Mom shrugged. “According to the medical journals, that would make it harder to detect foul play.”

The clink of Matteo’s spoon against the bowl sounded louder now. Like an alarm in her head. Would Mom have really done this? Jane had to do something. Run down the hall and stop Matteo from finishing that bowl.

But Jane just stood there, frozen.

Matteo’s words came back to her. You know this isn’t going to work out for you, Jane.

And then Martin’s warning. We may not be able to keep Matteo away from Scarlett. It’s going to get ugly.

The spoon scraped against the bottom of the bowl.

You know this never works out for you.

He would never let her go. He’d never let Scarlett go. And if Jane tried to run, and Matteo caught her…

Most women who are murdered by their abusers are killed after they leave.

Jane sank onto the bar stool, her breath shallow.

And she waited.

Mom began loading the dishwasher. Jane’s mind went still. Down the hall, the spoon clattered into the bowl. And then came a thump.

Mom calmly wiped her hands on a towel and headed down the hall. Jane knew she should get up and follow her, but her whole body was shaking, and she didn’t think her legs would carry her.

A moment later, Mom reappeared in the doorway holding the empty bowl of chili. Calmly, she crossed the kitchen to the sink, rinsed the bowl, and set it in the dishwasher. “We should call 911.”

Jane swayed on the stool. “Is he—?” She couldn’t even choke the words out.

“It was too late by the time we found him.”

THIRTY-FOUR

“Be sure to follow up with your primary care physician on Monday, Mrs. Banerjee,” Nik instructed the older woman as he led her from his exam room. “And no more shoveling icy sidewalks. From now on, call one of those teenage boys who live down the road.”

“Yes, young man,” Mrs. Banerjee said, holding her newly casted wrist to her chest as she shuffled down the hospital hallway next to him. “Thank you.”

Nik was just handing Mrs. Banerjee over to the woman at the front desk for discharge when the call came in.

“This is Ambulance 81 en route. Forty-three-year-old male experiencing sudden cardiac arrest. VF, no pulse. CPR in progress, six shocks, two adrenalines. ETA four minutes.”

Three years in, Nik was so used to the drill that his pulse barely even picked up speed when an emergency call came in. But as the ambulance driver called out the patient’s age, his hand clutched the phone just a little bit tighter. Forty-three. Not much older than his dad had been. That thought galvanized him into action. Nik washed his hands, grabbed a pair of gloves, and headed toward the ambulance bay just as the paramedics were wheeling the patient in, pumping a manual ventilator and performing CPR. The paramedics repeated the patient’s stats and treatment, and then handed him off to Nik and the rest of the ER team.

Nik took over chest compressions—up, down, up, down, like a kickdrum—as the nurses wheeled the patient into a treatment room. Once inside, Nik rested just long enough to press the button on the defibrillator to take a rhythm analysis.

“Charging.”

The machine let out a long, high-pitched beep.

“Clear.”

Nik and the other medical staff stepped back, and the machine delivered a charge. The man’s arms and bare chest lifted off the stretcher and then dropped back down again. When the patient’s heart didn’t respond, Nik ordered a cocktail of medications for the nurse to administer in the IV the paramedics had started.

“Come on, man,” Nik muttered, returning to the patient to continue chest compressions. Up, down, up, down. He used all the strength of his shoulders and back as his attention narrowly focused on the man’s muscular abs and chest see-sawing with each shove of his body into the stretcher. “You can do it.”

The nurse stepped back from inserting another IV, and with a deep breath of air, Nik paused for another rhythm analysis. “Charging… clear.”

---