Page 111 of Reckless Hearts

I exhale slowly. “I’m sure they’re doing everything they can.”

I sink into a chair next to Saskia, the plastic cold and unyielding beneath me.

The silence stretches between us, broken only by the rhythmic beeping of monitors and the squeak of nurses’ shoes on the linoleum floor. Mum’s hands twist in her lap, her wedding ring catching the harsh fluorescent light.

Saskia’s phone beeps.

“Is that Tom?” Mum asks.

“No. It’s Marcus. I just messaged to tell him what’s happened,” she says.

Shit. I’m guessing Marcus hasn’t mentioned he already knew from me.

“Where’s Tom?” I ask.

“He’s in Australia. He’s got a client dinner he couldn’t get out of, but I think he’s going to try to catch a flight tonight after that.” There’s something brittle in Saskia’s expression.

Over the next few hours, we alternate between silence and trying to reassure ourselves and each other. Dad’s fit andhealthy. He’s only sixty-five. Because Mum was with him when he had the heart attack, he got medical attention quickly.

But words of comfort are difficult to maintain when a nurse comes out to tell us Dad’s arteries are more damaged than they first anticipated, and they’re having to graft multiple new blood vessels to restore proper blood flow to his heart.

“Touch and go” are never words you want to hear associated with someone you love.

Time blurs into an endless loop of watching the clock, fielding calls from concerned relatives, and trying to interpret every facial expression of the medical staff passing by.

My eyes burn with exhaustion, and the harsh hospital lighting drills into my skull.

I send a few messages to Marcus, but he doesn’t reply. It’s the middle of the night in LA, so I don’t really blame him.

I find myself cataloging useless details—the number of ceiling tiles, the pattern on the nurse’s scrubs, the flicker of the exit sign—anything to distract from the gnawing worry in my gut.

We finally get news that Dad is out of surgery, but touch and go is still applied to him. The surgeon explains that the next forty-eight hours are critical.

“You can sit with him if you like,” she says.

Nothing could prepare me for the sight of my father lying in an ICU bed, hooked up to what seems like a hundred machines, each one monitoring a different vital sign.

It’s more waiting, hoping.

Mum, Saskia, and I have run out of words to try to reassure each other, and we just sit there, lost in our own thoughts. The steady hiss of the ventilator becomes a grim lullaby as we sit by his bed.

Dawn comes creeping through the cracks in the curtain, and the hospital starts to wake up around us, but Dad’s status remains unchanged.

When the door to Dad’s room opens, I wearily raise my gaze, expecting to see another nurse. Instead, I find myself staring into a pair of familiar, worried eyes.

My heart stops.

Marcus.

Here. Now.

Am I hallucinating? Have I reached that point of extreme tiredness where the boundaries between wishful thinking and reality start to blur?

“What are you doing here?” The words are out of my mouth before I can think.

“Seb.” Saskia’s voice has an admonishing tone. Shit. In my shock at seeing Marcus, I’d forgotten she and Mum were witnessing this.

Saskia’s eyes fill with tears as she stands to hug Marcus.