"Thank you," Emerson said, just as the signal dropped. Lowering the now-useless phone, she framed Mr. Cross"s face with her hands. "Mr. Cross, can you hear me? I need to know if you feel pain anywhere."
He blinked his eyes open, his breaths shallow and rapid. "My arm. I feel so dizzy."
"It"s okay," she rea.s.sured him at the same time she begged G.o.d not to make her a liar. "I"m right here and I"m not going to leave you. Help is on the way."
"Owen . . . and Hunter and Eli," Mr. Cross wheezed, and she smoothed a hand over his clammy brow.
Calm. She had to keep him calm no matter what. "Don"t you worry one bit, Mr. Cross. I"ll be sure to tell them everything they need to know. But first, we need to get you all taken care of, okay? Did I tell you how much I loved that sweet corn last week? Don"t tell Hunter, or he"ll make fun of me, but I actually had some for breakfast the other day."
She murmured low encouragement, telling him the story of how she"d bypa.s.sed cereal and oatmeal in favor of the leftover sweet corn in Hunter"s fridge. Although Mr. Cross remained weak and somewhat confused, he also stayed relatively composed, and when paramedics knocked on the door a handful of minutes later, she sprang from the floor to let them in.
"Please, hurry!" Emerson guided the pair, a man and a woman, over to Mr. Cross, repeating the same information she"d given the nine-one-one operator. She stood back while the paramedics worked, their hands moving in a rapid flurry and their words volleying in a back and forth of medical jargon that made her head hurt.
"Owen . . . Eli . . ." Mr. Cross"s gravelly whisper drifted up from the spot where the paramedics tended to him, and Emerson"s chin snapped up. She commanded her legs down the hall toward the office, lasering in on the small table where they kept the charging stand for the two-way radios. Three of the four slots were empty-of course, Mr. Cross was probably still wearing his on his belt-but aha! Hunter"s was resting in the charger.
Emerson swiped the handheld radio, fumbling with the power b.u.t.ton before she pressed the bright-red rectangle on the side to speak. "Owen! Eli! It"s Emerson. Can you hear me?"
She pressed the two-way up to her ear as she retraced her steps back down the hall to the living room, chanting a silent chorus of please, please, please with every step.
"Emerson?" Owen"s voice came back first, tight with concern. "What"s the matter?"
"I"m at the house. Your father . . . I had to call an ambulance. Hurry, both of you. Please."
"What?" The word was all panic, and oh G.o.d, the paramedics had gotten Mr. Cross strapped to the gurney and hooked up to IVs with startling speed.
"Paramedics are here, but you need to hurry."
"I"m on the far side of the property. I"m coming as fast as I can."
Emerson sucked in a breath, turning toward the paramedics, and wait . . . how were they already moving?
"Stop!" She raced to keep up with their brisk strides, her pulse sledgehammering with every step. "You have to wait for his sons to get here."
"We can"t," said the female paramedic, a brunette who looked too young to be familiar to Emerson. "Even in the rig, it"s going to take us thirty minutes to get to Camden Valley Hospital. We have to go now."
Panic threatened both Emerson"s heart and her brain, but she wrestled both into submission as they cleared the front door and moved into the shock of brilliant sunshine spilling over the yard. "Okay. Then let me ride with him."
"You"re not next of kin," said the male paramedic, who clearly knew the Cross family.
But Emerson used that to her advantage in less than a breath. "No, but do you want to tell the Cross brothers that you let their father ride all alone to Camden Valley? I can keep him calm," she promised, nailing the paramedic with a stare.
"Plus, you"re not going without me."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.
Hunter adjusted his faded navy-blue baseball hat against the glare of the sun, his medical clearance in one hand and the whole freaking world at his feet. Okay, so he might be leaning a little toward the sappy side with that last part, but come on. He was back in the proverbial saddle at Cross Creek, his brothers seemed to have put a moratorium on trying to knock each other"s heads in, and he was in love with a beautiful woman.
On second thought, he didn"t care how sappy it was. Right now, life was f.u.c.king outstanding.
He got four steps away from his truck when his cell phone started making an otherworldly fuss in the back pocket of his jeans. Sliding the thing free, he glanced at the screen, his brows tightening in confusion.
How had he missed seven calls from his brother?
"h.e.l.lo?" Maybe his phone was out of whack. After all, the hospital got the same kind of cell reception as Millhaven in general, and Dr. Norris had been nothing if not thorough. Hunter had been in the man"s office for nearly an hour.
"Hunter! Thank G.o.d." Weird. Why the h.e.l.l was Eli calling him from Owen"s phone? "We"ve been trying to get ahold of you for over half an hour. Where are you?"
The heavy dose of panic in Eli"s voice told him not to mince words. "In the parking lot at Camden Valley Hospital. Why?"
A rush of static garbled Eli"s response, and wait. There was no way that could be right. "Sorry, bro. Can you repeat that? Because it sounded like you said you"re on your way here."
"We are. Emerson called us from the two-way about forty minutes ago. She was up at the house with Dad and he collapsed."
The sweat on Hunter"s brow turned cold, his lungs filling with fear as thick as sand. "Collapsed . . . how?"
"I don"t know. Owen was in the south fields when she called, and I was down at the cattle barn getting this week"s feed order straight with Jimmy. The ambulance had to leave before we could get to the house, but Emerson"s with him. They should be at the hospital by now, and we"re but five minutes away."
Hunter tried like h.e.l.l to make sense of the words, to pull the calm that never failed him into place, but his brain, his heart, his legs all refused to budge.
This cannot be happening.
"O-okay," he finally sc.r.a.ped past the snarled knot of his vocal chords. f.u.c.k, he had to get it together. He had to stay calm, to think. "I"m going to the ED right now to see what I can find out. I"ll meet you there."
On a delayed reaction, Hunter"s legs finally got the message and kicked into motion. His boots slapped over the heat-cracked sidewalk in a sloppy run, the automatic doors of the emergency department hissing open as he approached. Although a tiny voice in the back hallway of his brain called out that it was less than polite, he didn"t wait for the scrubs-clad nurse on the other side of the triage desk to speak-or, h.e.l.l, even look up-before he huffed out, "My father was brought in by ambulance from Millhaven. Tobias Cross. I need to see him."
The nurse looked up, her eyes kind but her stare firm. "I"m sorry, sir. We don"t allow family members in the trauma rooms while patients are being a.s.sessed. But if you"ll wait right here in chairs, I"ll be sure to let the doctors know you"ve arrived."
Hunter"s pulse went ballistic, panic surging in the back of his throat. "No, you don"t understand. I need to see him. I need-"
"Hunter!"
The sound of Emerson"s voice whipped him around on the heels of his Red Wings, his chest filling with both confusion and relief.
"Em." He reached for her just as she flung her arms around him, pulling him close. A bolt of pure emotion shot through his blood, and even though some primal, selfish part of him wanted to stop time to make this one safe moment last just a little longer, he pulled back to look at her.
"What"s going on? Christ, Em, I just got off the phone with Eli, but I don"t know anything other than my dad is sick, or hurt, or . . ." No. No. He forced himself to swallow any other possibility. "He said you were with my father in the ambulance?"
"Yes." She led him to a bank of plastic chairs in the waiting area, keeping hold of his hand as she sat beside him. "I went to the house to do a little work before heading to the PT center, and your father was there. At first, everything was fine, but then he turned pale and said he felt tired."
"G.o.d dammit." Hunter had known his father hadn"t seemed quite right for the last few weeks. He should"ve said something. Done something.
Squeezing his hand, Emerson continued. "By the time I realized something was really wrong, he"d blacked out. He only lost consciousness for a few seconds," she added, likely in response to the way Hunter had just flinched. "I called nine-one-one right after that and let your brothers know what was going on after the ambulance arrived. But the paramedics said they couldn"t wait for Owen and Eli, so I rode with your father instead. We came in through the ambulance bay about five minutes ago, but the doctor wouldn"t let me go back with him."
Questions swarmed Hunter"s brain, all of them vying for answers. "Was he awake in the ambulance?"
She nodded, the harsh overhead lighting of the waiting area illuminating the worry lines that bracketed her eyes. "For a little while, yes, but the paramedic sedated him to try to make him more comfortable."
"Okay, but awake is good, right?" he asked. If his old man was conscious, that had to be a decent sign.
"I don"t know. The paramedic . . ."
Emerson trailed off, and Hunter"s stomach swan-dived toward his knees. "What? Please, I need to know."
"Look, there are a lot of things this could be, Hunter, and the paramedics and doctors have to err on the side of caution." Although her bright-blue gaze never faltered, her tone fell just short of hiding her concern, and f.u.c.k, he wanted to cling to her like a life raft right now.
"What do you mean? What aren"t you telling me?"
Her lips pressed together as if the words behind them tasted sour. "One of the things your father was complaining of just before he collapsed was left arm pain. Coupled with some of the other symptoms . . . the paramedic said they couldn"t rule out a heart attack."
Hunter"s stomach lurched, his breakfast threatening a repeat appearance. No way. No, no, no. "My father had a heart attack?"
"He didn"t say that definitively. The doctor and nurses are giving your father all their attention to figure out what"s making him sick," Emerson said. "He"s in great hands."
Great hands, he thought, turning toward her with his emotions filling his chest. "He was in your hands. If you hadn"t acted so quickly, if you hadn"t been there with him-"
"But I was." Emerson cut off the path of his gut-twisting thoughts with a shake of her head. Before Hunter could work up any other questions, the automatic doors whooshed open to reveal his brothers, both looking equally wild eyed and panicked.
"Hunt!" Owen spotted him first, cutting the s.p.a.ce between the entryway and the alcove in just a few lumbering strides. Worry lines creased hard over his forehead, his dark hair sticking up in about six different directions as if he"d been pulling on it without mercy, and Hunter returned his brother"s rough embrace.
"Please tell us you know what the h.e.l.l is going on," Eli said, his request as unsteady as his expression as he divided a stare between Hunter and Emerson.
s.h.i.t, he wished with all his might that he had something to offer other than the lame headshake he was currently sporting. "Nothing other than he"s here and they"re working on him. The nurse said she"d tell the doc we"re waiting."
Emerson quietly recounted everything she"d told Hunter so his brothers could get up to speed, and while he didn"t glean any new information in the retelling, the reminder that she"d been with his old man when he"d collapsed at least kept Hunter from losing every last marble in his jar. The four of them sat in stony silence, Hunter"s fingers locked over Emerson"s, Owen with his forearms braced across the thighs of his dirt-streaked Wranglers, and Eli prowling over the linoleum so many times Hunter was sure he"d leave a permanent footpath on the shiny tiles. Sounds rushed together to form indistinct white noise in his ears, blurring all of his thoughts until only one thing remained.
His father had to be okay. He had to.
Christ, he should"ve said something-no, he should"ve taken action, pushed his old man to take it easy when he"d first noticed his fatigue at the Watermelon Festival. If Hunter had insisted his father get more rest, or go see Doc Sanders, maybe none of this would"ve happened. But he"d been too afraid to rock the boat, too worried about the status f.u.c.king quo to point out his father"s overexertion.
And now his father was lying in a hospital bed, possibly having a heart attack.
Please G.o.d. Don"t let him die because I kept quiet. Please.
Time pa.s.sed, although whether it was minutes or hours or G.o.dd.a.m.n months, Hunter had no clue. Finally, the automatic doors leading into the belly of the ED buzzed open to reveal a muscle-bound man in green scrubs, a stethoscope looped around his neck and a serious expression in his dark eyes. "Cross family?"
Hunter"s pulse stuttered. "Yes," he and his brothers said in unison, the three of them and Emerson moving forward to meet the man in less than a breath.
"I"m Dr. Ortiz, and I"ve been working with your father. Thanks for your patience while we figured a few things out."
"So you know what"s wrong? Is he okay?" Owen asked, and the doctor gave a tentative nod, gesturing them back into the alcove, presumably for some privacy from the bustling waiting area.
"Your father has had a h.e.l.l of a morning," Dr. Ortiz said slowly, and Eli cut in with a frown.
"That"s not a yes."
For a split second, their eyes locked, but before Hunter could step in, the doctor shook his head and took a step back.
"I know this is stressful. Although it took some doing, right now your father is stable. The good news is his initial blood work and his ECG indicate that he didn"t have a heart attack."
Relief slammed into Hunter so hard, his knees nearly quit, and beside him, Emerson murmured a quiet "oh, thank G.o.d" that echoed everyone"s expression.
"I"ve ordered a few more tests just to be sure," Dr. Ortiz qualified with a lift of his hand. "But regardless, your father"s still looking at a potentially serious diagnosis. I believe he collapsed from heat exhaustion."
Hunter and his brothers bit out various curse words. They knew-they knew how dangerous the heat could be. How could he have missed something so obvious as his father working too hard and not hydrating enough?
From beside him, Emerson"s soft exhale equated to a wordless of course. "The arm pain was muscular cramping," she said. "With the profuse sweating and dizziness, that makes perfect sense."
Dr. Ortiz lifted a shadowy brow. "Are you a doctor?"
"Physical therapist," she corrected. "I was with him when he collapsed."
"Well, your quick thinking might"ve made all the difference," Dr. Ortiz said, allowing himself a small smile before returning his gaze to Hunter and his brothers. "We"re treating your father with IV fluids, and we"ve managed to stabilize his body temperature somewhat. He"s still a bit disoriented and weak, but that should resolve as he rests. I"ll be honest. He got d.a.m.ned lucky."
"How"s that?" Eli asked, his brows shooting up in clear disbelief.
But the doctor met it head-on. "Heat exhaustion can become heat stroke in a matter of minutes, and your father looks to have been well on his way. He"s not out of the woods entirely, but at least now we can see the tree line. He"s fortunate he got immediate care."
"So he"s going to make a full recovery?" Hope uncurled in Hunter"s chest, rising up past all the other emotions churning through him, and Dr. Ortiz lifted his stubbled chin.
"As long as he responds to treatment and his chest X-ray is clear, he should be able to go home later today."
"Can we see him?" Owen asked.
"Of course. I"ll have to ask that you visit in pairs, and only briefly, until he rests some more. But he"s been asking for you."
"You two go," Hunter said, because really, his brothers looked about as shaky as his legs felt right now. He needed to buckle down, to find his calm, G.o.d, even just to manage these emotions and think clearly.
"Are you sure?" Uncertainty colored Eli"s tone, and even though Hunter nodded, he didn"t meet his brother"s stare.
"Yeah. Absolutely."
He watched Owen and Eli disappear behind the double-wide automatic doors. Desperate to strong-arm all the feelings cranking down on his chest like an iron band, he sc.r.a.ped for a breath, but the attempt was flimsy at best. Dammit, he needed to keep it together. He needed to be calm, composed. He needed . . .
"Hunter."
The one word, the soft, strong voice that whispered it, broke him right down the middle, and without thinking, Hunter turned to let Emerson gather him close.
"I"m sorry. I just . . . I need . . ."
"It"s okay. You don"t have to say anything," she said. Her arms circled around his shoulders, her closeness filling his lungs with the scent of lavender and an overwhelming sense of safety, and he gave in. All the emotion-the fear, the confusion, the reality of what he could"ve lost-everything rushed up from beneath his easygoing cover, and he let go with a broken exhale.
Still, Emerson didn"t waver. "I"ve got you," she said.