Page 62 of Threat of Danger
Half a dozen workers stood by the outbuildings, talking all at once. Jess caught sight of Derek jumping into his white pickup truck. Before she reached close enough to ask anyone what was going on, he pulled up next to her and reached over to shove the passenger-side door open. “Chuck collapsed. They think it might be a heart attack.”
“I’m going to the hospital,” Jess told Pam, her heart lurching into a race.
“Want me to come with you?”
“You need to go to work. Nothing you could do at the hospital anyway. I’ll call you when I find out what’s going on.”
“If you need me, I can be in Burlington before you know it.”
As Pam stepped back, Jess jumped up into Derek’s pickup, sweaty from the run, her heart speeding up faster from the news than it had from running ten miles.Oh God. Chuck!“Where’s Zelda?”
Derek stepped on the gas, his mouth a grim line. “In the back of the ambulance.”
“Kaylee?”
“I’m going to pick her up at school right now.” He sounded calm and in charge, and she was glad for it. “I already called the school office. I told them we had a family emergency. I didn’t want Kaylee to find out what happened without us being there for her. She should be waiting for us in the lobby.”
She was. Derek ran in to sign her out. Chuck had him on the family list. Thank God for Chuck thinking ahead.
Jess could see the moment Derek told Kaylee the news, putting his arms around the girl’s skinny shoulders. As Kaylee’s face crumpled, Jess jumped out of the pickup and went to give the girl a hug. When, a minute or two later, they finally piled into the cab, Kaylee sitting in the middle between Derek and Jess, Jess kept hold of the girl’s hand.
“He’ll be fine,” she said as Derek pulled out of the parking lot. “He’s a tough customer.”
Kaylee stared, wide-eyed with shock. “People have heart attacks all the time, right? Then they recover.”
“You bet. No way he’s not coming home to finish sugaring. He couldn’t stand to miss it.”
Kaylee wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. “He wouldn’t. He even talks about the syrup in his sleep.” She sniffed. “What happened?”
“He collapsed,” Derek said, his tone gentle. “A couple of workers were right there. They thought he tripped. He didn’t get up. He was clutching his chest. One guy ran for the house, the other one called 911 on his cell.”
Fat tears rolled down Kaylee’s face. “Are you sure he’s going to be OK?”
“He was already better when they put him in the ambulance. He was talking. He was grumbling at us. Didn’t want anyone making a fuss.”
“UVM Medical Center is the best anyone can hope for,” Jess said. “They’ll patch him up. He won’t be alone there. He’ll be visiting with my mom. Zelda will camp out. The worst that can happen is those two women will cheat him at poker.”
A watery smile flashed onto Kaylee’s face, then disappeared. “I’m scared.”
“I know.” Jess put an arm around her and squeezed. “You’ll stay at the house with me for as long as he’s at the hospital, all right?”
“Can’t I camp out at the hospital too?” Kaylee mumbled into Jess’s shoulder.
“We’ll see. He’ll probably tell you to go to school. You know how he is.”
Chuck, a high school dropout, was a firm believer in education. He tried to make up for his misspent youth by listening to NPR every chance he got. Even back when Jess had been in high school, if she needed help with a school paper on a subject, she’d go to Chuck. And, invariably, he’d say,Oh, they were just talking about that on the radiothe other day.He might have been uneducated, but he wasn’t ignorant. And he had great plans for his granddaughter’s future.
Kaylee groaned at the mention of school. “He’ll probably make me go back to my afternoon classes.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Derek said. “You definitely deserve a free pass today. He owes you for giving us all a scare.”
He focused on the road, driving fast but safely, Jess noticed for the first time. He must have had some type of defensive-driving training during his spec-ops days. He would have made a good stunt driver.
On the way into the hospital, Jess took Kaylee’s hand again. Derek, on the girl’s other side, took the other hand. They walked like that, linked, ready to face together whatever news waited for them.
Jess didn’t even let Kaylee go while she texted Zelda to see where they needed to go. Zelda texted right back. They found her outside Surgery.
She was dabbing at her eyes as she sat in a white plastic chair. Her normally pristine hair tumbled all out of order, her laughing eyes as bleak as Jess had ever seen them. Her voice was weak with worry. “Heart attack. They wheeled him right in.”
