I point to my house, and he flies in, going straight for Stella.
The other thing that happens is Elle’s father starts profusely sweating when he sees the cars, likely thinking they’re here to arrest him. But then he grabs his chest and starts wheezing before falling to his knees. His wife shrieks, but he doesn’t stay on his knees for more than a few seconds before he collapses to the grass, unconscious because he’s likely having a heart attack.
“Dad,” Elle screams, still standing, frozen in place, her expression aghast despite what just transpired between them. The wife collapses on top of him, yelling his name (Paul) and shaking him, slapping his face, doing anything she can think of to wake him up.
“Elle, go with Stella and the security team to the compound,” I tell her as I run to her father, practically shoving his wife off. She starts to yell at me, trying to rip me away, when Elle springs into action.
“Mom, let him go. He’s a doctor.”
Elle pushes her mom away, and the woman falls into the grass, staring at me with wide, unblinking, anxious eyes. Elle takes a few steps back, and I get to work, checking his carotid and listening for breath sounds. He has a pulse, but it’s thready, and his breathing is barely there. Any second, he’s going to code, and I’d rather him not do that in front of his daughter.
“Elle, go with Stella and Mr. Fairchild,” I command again, twisting up and forcing her gaze. “Now. No arguing. I need to know you’re somewhere safe. I’ll take care of your father. Go!”
I nod at Fairchild, and he’s there, grabbing Elle’s arm. Stella is watching me as she climbs in the back of one of the SUVs, a security guy on either side of her. I can’t do much about that now, but I need Elle to go too.
“Landon…”
“I’ve got it. Please, Elle. Go.”
She swallows and bobs her head, casts a fleeting glance at her mother, then back to her father, over to me, and runs for the SUV.
“I’ve called paramedics,” Fairchild informs me. “They’re en route.”
“Thank you. Keep them safe.”
“With my life, sir.”
I know he will. My father saved his life once, and he’s spent his life returning the favor.
Just as they pull away, I lose Paul’s heartbeat, immediately starting CPR. I swear if he dies on Elle’s grass…
“What medications is he on?” I ask his wife, whose name I still haven’t gotten.
“Nothing,” she sobs. “He doesn’t take anything. You have to save him.”
Of course he doesn’t. But I’d bet my license he has high cholesterol, hypertension, and possibly type II diabetes. “How much does he drink a day?”
I glance over at her as I internally count to thirty compressions in my head, then tilt his chin up, plug his nose, and give him two rescue breaths before immediately going back to chest compressions. She doesn’t answer, and that’s not a good sign.
“Is he going to die?”
Now it’s my turn not to answer, but luckily, I don’t have to. Within seconds the ambulance arrives, taking over CPR for me and getting the defibrillator on him to deliver a shock. But this day is far from over.
Paul comes to in the emergency room. It only required one shock in the grass to get his heart going again, plus a boatload of IV drugs and some oxygen. Once he was stabilized, we sent him straight up to the cath lab, and it took them not even ten minutes to figure out that three of his major coronary arteries are blocked and unable to be stented or treated medically.
Now we’re back in the trauma room, keeping him here because his heart rate likes to flirt with V-Tach despite the meds we’re giving him to stop that from happening. He catches my eye, noting that I’m running the show in the trauma room, and doesn’t say anything.
“His wife just arrived,” Linda, the head nurse in the trauma room, informs me. I made his wife take an Uber—I paid for it—to the hospital because there wasn’t enough room in the ambulance, and doctor trumps wife.
“Perfect,” I tell her. “I’ve got this.” I nod to all the nurses, the resident, and his med student. No one argues. No one questions. This is my hospital. I don’t typically work in the emergency department all that often unless I’m on call and am needed down here. Mondays and Thursdays I round on the floors. Otherwise I’m in the office seeing patients, but they all know me.
More importantly, they know my name, and they know my dad.
Everyone clears out just as… “What’s your name?” I ask Elle’s mother.
She gives me a wide berth as she cautiously enters the room, her wary gaze flipping back and forth between her husband and me until she’s standing up by his head. “I’m Betty.”
“I’m Dr. Landon Fritz, but I know you already know that.”
Paul is on a gurney with an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose, hooked up to IVs and telemetry. I can see every move and twitch his heart makes.
“Is he going to be okay?”
This woman, who seemingly cares so much for her husband, even for her other daughter, cares nothing for Elle. I can’t even fathom it, but I see it all over her. The hard glint in her eyes. The steel rod of her spine. The animosity and spite that is pouring off her in waves.
I stand on the other side of the gurney, bearing down on them and making my power and presence felt. “I saved your life today,” I tell Paul first and then Betty, not bothering to answer her directly. “Everyone in this room knows it. Your heart is beating, and you are breathing because of me. Because I didn’t let you die. If you ever come near Ellery, my daughter, me, or any of my family again, you’ll quickly learn I’m capable of a whole lot more than saving lives.”
I let that threat hang heavy in the air between us.
Then I take a step back and plaster a smarmy smile on my face. “And because I’m positive you won’t dare challenge that, I’m bringing my father in to perform your coronary artery bypass graft surgery.”
Betty gasps, covering her mouth, and then reaches for Paul’s hand. He coughs into his mask, his heart giving a few extra charged beats before it reluctantly goes back into sinus rhythm.
“Lucky for you, he’s one of the best cardiothoracic surgeons in the world. But, like me, he doesn’t suffer threats against his family or loved ones well, so I wouldn’t try anything. Certainly not with him cracking your chest open to repair your heart. Once you’re in recovery and healing, I’ll be sure to check in on you prior to your discharge. After that, I expect we’ll never see or hear from you again.”
Betty licks her lips—Elle does that, so it throws me for a second—then nods resolutely. “You won’t.”
“I didn’t think so.”
I catch movement outside the trauma room and leave the two of them here to deal with all I just dropped in their laps. Pushing through the door, I find my father leaning against the opposite wall, reviewing the chart on the computer, dressed in scrubs.
“I haven’t gotten to meet her yet, but your mother tells me she’s lovely,” he says by way of a greeting.
I collapse against the wall beside him. “She is.”
“You’re keeping me from dinner with my wife and granddaughter, as well as the woman who stole my son’s heart. I hope these people are worth it to you.”