Page 92 of Love You
“They know. Her meds were in the kitchen.”
“I want to go with her.” For Nana’s sake she was desperately trying to hold it together.
“Jake?” Colt called. “Can Darcy ride in the ambulance with Mrs. Wallace?”
“Yep. We’re leaving right now.”
Colt hurried Darcy to the back of the truck and helped her get in. Nana was lying on a gurney with an oxygen mask over her face, hooked up to an IV.
“Nana.” Darcy touched her hand and it was cold. It was eighty degrees out but Nana was cold. And her pale skin, blue. “Nana, can you hear me?”
Other than a slight flutter of Hilde’s right eye, which could’ve been Darcy’s imagination, her grandmother didn’t respond.
“She said she got up this morning, short of breath, opened the windows for fresh air, and still couldn’t breathe,” a paramedic . . . Sean, according to his name tag . . . said. “She called nine-one-one and by the time we got here she was barely able to talk.”
“She has high blood pressure. Her medication just needs to be adjusted. That’s all.”
Sean didn’t say anything and Darcy sat next to Nana and held her hand. Someone closed the back doors and the ambulance started to move and the siren blared. Sean stayed in the back with them. For a large man, he was good at maneuvering in the tight space and constantly monitored Nana’s vital signs.
It was the longest trip of Darcy’s life. When they finally arrived, there were medical staff waiting to take her grandmother inside. Someone, an orderly maybe, guided Darcy to the intensive care unit, where she was shunted to a waiting room.
“A nurse will come out soon and take you back.”
“Thank you.” That must’ve been when the shock hit her because she began to cry. She sobbed her eyes out, feeling alone and afraid.
Her parents. She needed to notify them but couldn’t seem to make her hands dial the phone. She decided to wait for a status update and would call them when she had good news. At least she hoped it would be good. But after a solid thirty minutes passed she started to get antsy. What was taking so long? She tried to occupy herself by thumbing through a pile of old magazines, dog-eared from use. And when that didn’t hold her attention, she cleaned out her handbag, dumping the flotsam that had floated to the bottom in the trash. Then, finally, she heard footsteps in the hall. But it wasn’t the nurse or doctor who came to find her, it was Win.
“Colt called me.” He walked straight at her and pulled her into his arms. “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry. Any word yet?”
She shook her head. “I keep hoping that it’s just her blood-pressure medication, that they’ll tweak it, and everything will be fine.” She started crying again. “It’s bad, Win, it’s really bad.”
“Shush.” He rocked her back and forth like he’d done the time she told him about her parents’ separation. “Hilde’s strong.”
She hung on to him, taking comfort in his embrace, taking comfort in his arms. The fact that he’d come here meant the world to her but what about . . . ? “Where’s Madison? What about the itinerary?”
“I told her it was an emergency and we’d have to do it another time.”
She stepped back. “GA could lose the account. You realize that, right?”
“You think I care? I didn’t want you to have to go through this alone.”
Before she could tell him to go and salvage the rest of the day, a man in green scrubs and a stethoscope came into the room.
“Ms. Wallace? I’m Dr. Gerard.”
“Is my grandmother okay?”
He motioned for them all to take a seat. Win moved next to her and held her hand.
“Your grandmother is suffering from acute congestive heart failure. She needs emergency surgery to replace her aortic valve.”
At first, Darcy had trouble absorbing the diagnosis. Acute congestive heart failure. Was that like a heart attack? “If you replace it will it save her?”
Dr. Gerard leaned in closer. “We hope so.”
Darcy could feel a “but” coming on. To her, the doctor looked grim, almost hopeless but perhaps that was his everyday standing face. The face of doom and gloom.
“There’s a minimally invasive procedure available, which I recommend for someone your grandmother’s age,” he continued. “It involves threading the new valve through the vascular system, instead of having to open her chest. As you can imagine, it’s much less stressful on a person’s system, especially an elderly person’s. I’ve seen some patients go home in a day after TAVR.” Darcy didn’t know what that was and it must’ve shown in her expression because Dr. Gerard clarified. “Transcatheter aortic valve replacement.”
