1

Dr. Emily Hartford sat nervously at her father’s side. He was lying helpless on a stretcher in the back of the ambulance as they raced down the two-lane country road to Freeport Hospital. Had she not stopped by to say goodbye on her way back to Chicago, he might have died right there on the kitchen floor. Thank God she had.

His heart rate was dropping, and he was going in and out of consciousness. She knew from the sweat beading on his face, his increased breathing, and his recent stint in the hospital for a heart attack that he was having another one. And it took everything in her power not to push the paramedic aside, grab the defibrillator paddles, and take charge. Just be there for him. He needs to see you calm.

She held tight to her dad’s hand, glanced out the windshield, and saw Nick Larson, the county sheriff, leading the way in his squad car, flashers swathing a red-and-blue path to Freeport Hospital. Nick had been with her at her dad’s house when she’d found him lying in the kitchen. And he had stayed with them until the paramedics arrived and packed Dad into the ambulance. She was so grateful she hadn’t been alone.

“Em?” mumbled Dr. Robert Hartford from under his oxygen mask.

She snapped her gaze back to her father, struggling for his life. “Dad. I’m here.” She removed his oxygen mask for a moment and pressed her ear close to his mouth. “What is it?”

“I’m not gonna make it this time,” he said in a wispy voice.

“That’s not true. Hang in there. There’s a surgeon waiting for you at the hospital.”

Doc, as he was known by locals, not only held a thriving family medical practice at his home office but had also served as Freeport County’s coroner for over thirty years. He shook his head ever so slightly. “No, Em. Don’t waste his time.”

Emily put the mask back on her father so he could get more oxygen into his system. “It’s not a waste. We’re going to do emergency bypass, and in a couple weeks you’ll be back in your orchard fertilizing the trees for spring. Okay?”

He struggled to lift his hand to his mouth. Emily understood that he wanted to speak again, and she removed his mask. “Your mother had cancer when she died,” he sputtered out in short breaths.

“No, Dad. She died in a car accident. Remember?”

“She had terminal cancer, and she didn’t tell us.” Tears started to flow from his eyes.

“Are you saying Mom died from cancer?”

“No …” A breath caught in his throat, and he began to wheeze.

Emily quickly replaced the mask over his nose and mouth. He wasn’t making sense. Just like when she’d found him on his kitchen floor twenty minutes earlier, babbling about how it was his fault his wife had died thirteen years ago.

It had been an accident. Deer versus car. The police had confirmed it. But Emily had found evidence to prove otherwise. Her mother’s blue slipper under a bush near the crash site. What had Mom been doing driving her car in slippers? It was unlike her. But Dad had refused to investigate, and they’d drifted angrily apart. At sixteen, hurt and grieving, Emily had run to Chicago to live with her Aunt Laura. She’d finished high school and immediately enrolled in pre-med at the University of Chicago. She was now three years into her surgical residency. Emily hadn’t been to Freeport since she’d left at sixteen. But a week ago, her father’s first heart attack had sent her rushing back after her long hiatus.

“Breathe, Dad. Breathe.”

He tried, but had trouble sucking in the air he needed. Emily noticed his gray skin taking on a bluish hue. If he didn’t get into surgery as soon as they got him to the hospital, she would lose him.

“How close are we?” Emily asked the paramedic.

“About three minutes,” he said.

“Can you get the driver to go faster? Please!”

“Sit back, please,” barked the other paramedic, who was standing by with the paddles and monitoring her father’s sinking heart rate. Her dad’s eyes rolled back.

Emily slapped his arm three times. “Dad! Dad! Wake up! Come on!”

It worked. Doc’s eye fluttered open. “Just a few more minutes, Dad. Focus on me. Focus on breathing. That’s all you have to do.”

His eyes darted back and forth, finally landing lazily on Emily’s face.

“That’s it. Good. Good. Look at me.”

He started to talk again, but she couldn’t understand him with the mask over his mouth. She leaned over again and lifted it a few inches from his face.

“The day … your mom died … I was meeting … a woman …”

Emily felt the ambulance jostle as they made a corner. They were here. Thank God.

The ambulance rolled to a halt, and she heard the driver open the front door and slam it shut.

“I need to get him ready to exit,” the paramedic said, unlocking the gurney wheels. Emily stayed firmly in place, still grasping her father’s hand.

“A woman? Who? Dad?” Emily gasped. “What woman?”

“Mom … loved you. I love you.”

The other paramedic touched Emily’s arm and gently removed her hand from her father’s.

“We have to take him now.” The back doors flew open. Emily instinctively gripped her father’s gurney. But as soon as she did, the cold metal was ripped from her palms and the wheels dropped to the ground and snapped into position. The paramedics rolled the gurney toward the ER entrance, where three hospital staff were waiting to assist their patient inside.

What woman? What was he talking about?

Emily froze for a moment, unable to jump from the back of the ambulance. A sudden drop in adrenaline made her legs go to jelly. She took a deep breath, and when she looked up, Nick had parked behind the ambulance and emerged from his patrol car to meet her. He rushed over and offered his sturdy grip, and she grabbed his forearm. He lifted her from the back of the ambulance and led her through the emergency room entrance.

Emily was in a foggy dream state as they traveled into the waiting room. Nothing was normal. Not the sounds. Not the smells. Not the staff or other patients. Where was Dad? Her eyes darted around the room, frantically searching.

She felt Nick’s grip again, leading her to a curtained area. One of the nurses at her father’s bedside looked up from her mask, and Emily recognized those eyes immediately. Jo Blakely, her best friend. She was a floater nurse at Freeport Hospital and had been the first to call her when Dad had had his initial heart attack.

Emily knew once she looked into Jo’s grief-stricken eyes. “He’s not going to make it, is he?” she whispered.

Jo didn’t answer. She just motioned for Emily to come closer. Nick let go of Emily’s hand as she moved toward her father’s bed.

The staff were working hard in their efforts to stabilize him. An eerie foreboding swept through the space as Emily entered and saw one of the doctors on duty prepping the defibrillator. Dad was slipping into unconscious, and Emily took his hand again.

“Dad, I love you.” She choked out the lump in her throat and kept her focus on her father’s chest as he released a breath. Please don’t go now. We have twelve years of catching up to do.

The heart monitor blipped a weak rhythm as a nurse continued compressions and another one by his face squeezed the bag mask over his mouth and nose.

Emily looked up at the doctor in charge. Their efforts were in vain, but they kept trying. Emily knew he was gone. “It’s okay. You can stop.”

The doctor looked at Emily but kept charging the defib paddles.

She didn’t have the authority to make the call, but she couldn’t stand watching this torture. “I’m his daughter. Please. Stop.”

When they didn’t, Emily dashed over to the defib machine and switched it off. The nurses in the room stood still, unsure how to respond. Their eyes landed on the doctor in charge and then back on Emily.

“I’m calling it,” she said in a defeated tone as she glanced up at the large clock on the wall.

“You can’t call time of death,” said the doctor in charge.

She went on in a breathy, desperate voice. “Time of death, thirteen sixteen.” She looked around the room. Everyone was staring at her. “He’s gone. He’s … dead.” Her voice cracked and broke.

The doctor nodded and called out, “Time of death, thirteen sixteen.”

He then turned to Emily, putting a hand on her arm. “I’m very, very sorry. We all loved your father.”

Emily’s throat constricted as she stared at her father’s lifeless body. The staff began to remove tubes from him, then carted away machines and exited the space in a silent parade. Nick and Jo stayed with her.

“I’m so sorry, Emily. I don’t know what to say,” said Jo, gripping Emily’s hand with a tight squeeze. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

Neither can I.

She wasn’t able to voice the reality.

Here she was, thirteen years after the death of her mother, again in the emergency room of Freeport Hospital, now with a dead father. How can this be happening? She and her father had just started to reconcile after a long hiatus of estrangement. Her body went cold and quivery, and she couldn’t get it under control. Nick and Jo’s supportive grips were the only thing keeping her from buckling to the floor.

Emily let out a long sob. Why had she waited so long to return home?