Page 7 of What You Wish For

“Are you partying too hard, Max?” one of them said with a big grin when he saw Max sitting on the floor.

“Kenny,” Max said, smiling back. “Will you tell this batch of worriers I’m fine?”

Just then, a man pushed through the crowd. “Can I help? I’m a doctor.”

Very gently, Max said, “You’re a psychiatrist, Phil.”

Kenny shook his head. “If he needs to talk about his feelings, we’ll call you.”

Next, Babette and I stepped back, and the paramedics knelt all around Max to do an assessment—Max protesting the whole time. “I just got dehydrated, that’s all. I feel completely fine now.”

Another medic, checking his pulse, looked at Kenny and said, “He’s tachycardic. Blood pressure’s high.”

But Max just smacked him on the head. “Of course it is, Josh. I’ve been dancing all night.”

It turned out, Max had taught both of the paramedics who showed up that night, and even though they were overly thorough, everything else seemed to check out on Max. They wanted to take him to the ER right then, but Max managed to talk them out of it. “Nobody’s ever thrown me a sixtieth birthday party before,” he told them, “and I really don’t want to miss it.”

Somehow, after they helped him up, he charmed them into having some snacks, and they agreed to give him a few minutes to drink some water and then reevaluate.

They took a few cookies, but even as they were eating, they were watching him. Babette and I were watching him, too.

But he seemed totally back to his old self. Laughing. Joking around. When the band finally started up again, it was one of Max’s favorites: ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.”

As soon as he heard it, Max was looking around for Babette. When he caught her eye about ten feet away, he pointed at her, then at himself, then at the dance floor.

“No,” Babette called. “You need to rest and hydrate!”

“Wife,” Max growled. “They are literally playing our song.”

Babette walked over to scold him—and maybe flirt with him a little, too. “Behave yourself,” she said.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You just—”

But before she could finish, he pulled her into his arms and pressed his hand against the small of her back.

I saw her give in. I felt it.

I gave in, too. This wasn’t a mosh pit, after all. They were just swaying, for Pete’s sake. He’d had at least six glasses of water by now. He looked fine. Let the man have his birthday dance. It wasn’t like they were doing the worm.

Max spun Babette out, but gently.

He dipped her next, but carefully.

He was fine. He was fine. He was absolutely fine.

But then he started coughing.

Coughing a lot.

Coughing so hard, he let Babette go, and he stepped back and bent over.

Next, he looked up to meet Babette’s eyes, and that’s when we saw he was coughing up blood—bright red, and lots of it—all over his hand and down his chin, drenching his bow tie and his shirt.

He coughed again, and then he hit the floor.

The paramedics were back over to him in less than a second, ripping his shirt open, cutting off the bow tie, intubating him and squeezing air in with a bag, performing CPR compressions. I don’t really know whatelse was going on in the room then. Later, I heard that Alice rounded up all the kids and herded them right outside to the garden. I heard the school nurse dropped to her knees and started praying. Mrs. Kline, Max’s secretary for thirty years, tried helplessly to wipe up a splatter of blood with cocktail napkins.

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