Charlie was sprawled across Katharine’s king-sized bed, clutching his left arm and gasping for breath, his face paler than the sheets that barely covered his nude torso. His body was covered with a thin sheen of perspiration.
“How long has he been like this?” Mary Bliss demanded of Katharine, who was flitting around the room in a short black see-through negligee, trying to find Charlie’s clothes.
“Maybe ten minutes. Just since right before I called you,” Katharine said, picking up a pair of sequin-spangled shorts. “I called nine-one-one like you said. Now hurry up and help me get him into these.”
Charlie groaned loudly. Mary Bliss glanced over at him. He’d rolled over onto his side and was trying to sit up.
She ran to the bedside. “Lie still, Charlie,” she commanded. “The ambulance is on the way.”
“No,” Charlie gasped, pointing wildly at the flag shorts. “Not those.”
“Find him something else, Katharine,” Mary Bliss ordered.
“There isn’t anything else,” Katharine snapped. “He moved out three months ago, remember? I threw out or burned everything he didn’t take with him.”
She took a step closer to the bed and Charlie groaned again, shaking his head like a rabid dog. “Noooo.”
“Just put him in anything,” Mary Bliss said. She could hear sirens approaching the house. “How about one of your bathrobes?”
“Nooo,” Charlie groaned.
“Chip’s clothes! Get a pair of Chip’s pants from his bedroom.” Mary Bliss sat on the side of the bed and stroked Charlie’s forehead. “Stay quiet now, Charlie,” she said soothingly. “The EMTs are on their way. Piedmont Hospital’s not ten minutes from here. They’ll have you fixed up right away.”
Katharine ran back into the bedroom, holding a pair of khaki golf shorts. “Here,” she said triumphantly.
“Get him dressed,” Mary Bliss ordered. “I’ll go downstairs and let the EMTs in.”
“Right,” Katharine said. She flung the sheet off Charlie and started sliding the pants up his bare legs. Mary Bliss looked away, but not before she caught sight of her best friend’s own naked behind bent over her ex-husband.
“And Katharine?” she said gently.
“What now?” Katharine answered.
“You might want to put some clothes on yourself before those guys come charging in here. Unless you want to give them a heart attack too.”
The siren’s wail was right outside now. Mary Bliss ran down the stairs and into the marble-floored entry hall. She flipped on the outside light and opened the front door just as the ambulance was pulling into the circular drive of the Weidmans’ two-story brick Georgian.
“In here,” she called as the technicians ran up the walkway. “Hurry. I think he’s had a heart attack. He’s conscious, but he’s struggling to breathe, and I don’t think his color looks too good.”
The rest of the evening was a blur. She and Katharine stood in the doorway of the bedroom, watching as one EMT shoved what Mary Bliss assumed was a nitroglycerin tablet under Charlie’s tongue, while another hooked him to a portable heart monitor, and still another clamped an oxygen mask over his face.
Katharine rode to Piedmont in the ambulance with Charlie, while Mary Bliss raced behind, driving Katharine’s Mercedes.
At the hospital, she found Katharine hovering near the admissions desk in the emergency room, harassing the young clerk behind the desk.
“They brought him in fifteen minutes ago,” Katharine fumed. “I want to know what’s happening.”
The clerk, a kid in his early twenties, wearing blue hospital scrubs, was on the phone. “In a minute, ma’am,” he said, rolling his eyes at Katharine but otherwise ignoring her.
The two women finally retreated to a pair of chairs nearest the desk, taking turns approaching the clerk for information every ten minutes. After they’d been waiting an hour, the clerk looked up from the phone.
“Mrs. Weidman?” he called. Katharine jumped up.
“What’s happening?” she asked. “Can I see my husband now?”
“Not yet,” the clerk said, glancing down at some notes on a chart. “They’ve got him stabilized, and they’re assessing the damage. He did apparently have a massive heart attack. They’ll move him over to the CICU in about half an hour, and you can probably see him then.”
“What’s the CICU?” Katharine asked.
“Cardiac intensive care unit,” the clerk said. “You might want to go get some coffee or something, maybe call the rest of your family, and then head upstairs. His doctor should be ready to talk to you when you get back.”
It was two in the morning. The hospital cafeteria was closed, but they managed to scrounge enough change from the bottom of Mary Bliss’s purse to pay for two cups of weak, lukewarm coffee from the basement vending machines.
“I’m scared,” Katharine whispered, as they trudged back down the corridor to the bank of elevators. “Charlie looked so awful. What if he dies?”
“He’s not gonna die,” Mary Bliss said, slipping an arm around Katharine’s shoulder. “This is one of the best heart hospitals in the southeast. And Charlie’s young. It’s not his time yet.”
“He’s fifty-one,” Katharine said. She rubbed her red-rimmed eyes, smearing her mascara and eye shadow. “Bet you didn’t know that. He turned fifty-one in June. I was so pissed at him for leaving me, I didn’t even send him a birthday card. He had dinner with Chip that night, but I wouldn’t even lend Chip money to buy his daddy a present. God, I’ve been such a bitch.”
“You were hurt,” Mary Bliss said. “Brokenhearted.”
Katharine nodded. “The bastard broke my heart. So what do I do? I give him a heart attack. Nearly killed him.”
“Hush!” Mary Bliss said, shocked. “You did not give Charlie a heart attack. He’s fifty-one, a little overweight. Didn’t you tell me he’s had high blood pressure for the last few years? All of those are contributing factors to heart disease.”
“It wasn’t the blood pressure,” Katharine said, sniffing. “It was the sex.”
“Katharine!” Mary Bliss said. “Stop!”
“It’s true,” Katharine said tearfully. “I went to that dance tonight with a whole big plan. You saw how I was dressed. I even bought myself a pair of green thong panties! I went to the club with the specific purpose of seducing Charlie Weidman. And it worked. After all these years, I knew how to push every single one of his buttons. And honey, I pushed ’em all. I flirted. I rubbed up against him, and while we were slow-dancing, I promised to do things to him that we hadn’t done since our honeymoon.”
Mary Bliss clamped her hands over her ears. “I do not want to hear this, Katharine.”
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” Katharine said, stabbing at the elevator button. “I just wanted to have some fun. And maybe get a little revenge on that bitch girlfriend.”
“You’re still in love with him,” Mary Bliss said. “It’s natural to want him back.”
“What I wanted was some honest-to-God sex,” Katharine said. “I don’t care what anybody says, a vibrator is not the same thing. A vibrator can’t scratch your back, or kiss your nipple. A vibrator doesn’t have a tongue…”
“Stop it right now!” Mary Bliss exclaimed. “We are in a hospital! Don’t you have any decency?”
“No,” Katharine said. “If I had any decency, I wouldn’t have gone down on Charlie on the practice tee tonight. He was a little pale, afterwards, I admit, but we were having such a good time. It was his idea to go back to my place. And afterwards, when he started groaning like that, I just thought, you know, he was letting me know how good it was. But then he went all blue…”
The elevator chimed softly, and the doors slid open. An elderly man in a black cleric’s collar, white-haired, bent over a walker, shuffled onto the elevator and looked first at the control panel, and then helplessly around at the two women for some kind of direction.
“Lobby?” he said in a wavery voice.
Mary Bliss punched the number 1 on the control panel and the doors slid shut.
“I think maybe it was the Viagra,” Katharine continued, ignoring their new companion. “He told me he bought it off the Internet. You’re only supposed to take one, but you know Charlie. If one’s good, two are better. And he really did have the most amazing woodie. You should have seen it, Mary Bliss. He was so proud of himself.”
Mary Bliss clamped her hands over the priest’s ears. “Katharine, for God’s sake!” she shouted.
The elevator bell chimed softly again. Third floor. “This is us,” Mary Bliss said, shoving Katharine off the elevator.
They trooped down to the CICU reception desk.
“Charlie Weidman,” Katharine said to the clerk. “My husband. Has he been moved up here yet? Can I see him now?”
Mary Bliss noticed the language. Husband. Katharine was referring to Charlie as her husband. She took it as a sign.
The clerk picked up the phone and called back to the unit. A moment later, she handed Katharine a plastic clip-on visitor’s ID tag.
“They’ve given him morphine for the chest pain, so he’s asleep. But you can see him if you don’t stay more than a few minutes.”
“Come with me?” Katharine turned to Mary Bliss, her voice pleading.
The clerk shook her head. “Sorry. Only family in the ICU.”
“She’s my sister,” Katharine said. She drew her fingertips across her chest. “Cross my heart.”
“Uh-uh,” the clerk said, eyeing them both. Katharine stood a good six inches taller than Mary Bliss, her frosted blonde hair and blue eyes a telling contrast to Mary Bliss’s dark hair and eyes.
“For real,” Mary Bliss added.
“Go on, sisters,” the clerk said, handing Mary Bliss a visitor’s tag. “Five minutes. Then you’re outta there.”
The two women stared down at Charlie Weidman, who was, as promised, asleep. The heart monitor beside his bed beeped softly, and his face, behind the oxygen mask, seemed peaceful. His color was better, and his breathing was regular.
“See?” Mary Bliss said, nudging Katharine. “He’s fine. He’s not gonna die at all. So now you can quit feeling guilty about killing him. Come on. Let’s go home. I’m beat.”
“Hmm,” Katharine said. She glanced around Charlie’s glass-walled ICU cubicle. The unit seemed quiet. Two nurses at the horseshoe-shaped desk were bent over a computer monitor. Another talked animatedly on the phone.
“Just a minute,” Katharine said. Before Mary Bliss could stop her, she’d lifted the sheet covering Charlie, poked her head under it, then surfaced again.
“Damn,” she said. “I guess the Viagra wore off.”