He headed out into the early dawn without waiting for Saul. He knew his Master needed to get to his apartment, change, and get to work. Troy marched across the park, shivering as he forced himself to hurry.
About halfway there, he frowned, a crushing pain slamming through his left arm. He reached for his phone, but somehow he couldn’t reach it from where he was on the grass.
Oh.
“Please. I need…” Help. He needed help.
21
Saul stood in the middle of Troy’s living room for a long while just looking around and running his fingers over the house key.
When that didn’t seem to lend him one ounce of clarity he got in the shower. He had a key now, he could lock up any time.
This situation was seriously screwed up. Carter still only had one weekend cook? And after twenty years of coming in every single day without ever calling out, Carter didn’t understand Troy wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t the real deal.
Giving the guy the benefit of the doubt, maybe Carter was panicking and when he got a good look at Troy he’d realize his friend really needed to be in bed. Right? There was still that chance.
It wasn’t his place to interfere with Troy’s livelihood. He understood that. But this was something else. Carter had strong-armed his boy, something he felt was way beyond an employer’s right to do.
Kind of more like what a Dom might do.
And where exactly did that leave him? Did he need to set Carter straight?
His shower was long, and when he got out, he pulled on some clean shorts and a T-shirt he’d stuffed into one of the drawers Troy had cleaned out for him, then headed downstairs to have another cup of coffee before he left.
He was about halfway through it when the door to the condo started shaking violently, someone banging on it hard.
What the fuck?
“Who’s there?” he shouted through the door, hand hovering over the deadbolt. “Troy?”
“It’s Troy’s fucking boss! Where is he? Open the damn door!”
Wait. What?
He flipped the lock and yanked the door open. “What the hell is your problem, Carter?”
“He hangs up on me and doesn’t open the restaurant? He could have at least told me to fuck off.”
“Oh, bullshit Carter. He left like forty minutes ago. He’s there.” He held his ground and didn’t let Carter over the threshold.
“What? I just left the place. He’s not there.” Carter frowned at him. “Are you sure he’s not here?”
“He has to be.” Had to be. Where else would Troy go? “He hurried out of here, left me his key. He was headed straight there, I swear. If he’s not there, where is he?” The expression on his face must have convinced Carter because the man’s expression changed. Saul’s heart started pounding. “He… he was really sick, Carter. Really sick.”
“Call the hospitals. I’ll trace his path. Maybe he passed out.”
“I’m calling.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket so fast he dropped it, reached and missed it, and finally just sat on the floor as he picked it up.
He called several hospitals and had only just found Troy when Carter came back through the door. “He’s… it’s Anderson Medical. They said he’s there.” His hands were shaking. “They wouldn’t tell me anything else.”
“Let’s go. Geoff will meet us there.” Carter reached down for him. “Come on. Geoff has his power of attorney. We’ll get you in.”
He let Carter help him up and took a deep breath once he got to his feet. Lock the door, right? He needed to lock the door. He dug out the key. “He had a migraine. A really bad one. He could hardly sit up.”
“He’s never had a migraine. Never in twenty years.” Carter sighed. “I didn’t believe him. I thought he had been up too late, playing.”
“No, Carter.” He locked the door and turned to glare at his boy’s boss. “We don’t usually see each other on Saturday nights because he knows how tired he gets, and I respect that. But Troy had a shit-ass day at work yesterday and needed me, so we had a very quiet evening watching TV. I guess that’s shocking to you, huh?” He pulled the truck keys out of his pocket.
“You can chew my ass after we go see Troy. I fucked up. Let’s go.” Carter was pale as milk, eyes wide and bloodshot.
“Sure, if that’s more convenient,” he muttered as Carter looped around the truck to get into the passenger seat. He was worried sick, and he was pissed off. He really didn’t know which one was winning at the moment.
And he was mad that the lady on the phone refused to tell him anything. Next of kin? Troy didn’t fucking have kin. Troy had him.
He opened the garage, started the truck, and tore out of the driveway. “Arapahoe, right?”
“Yeah.” Carter put his phone to his ear. “Babe, bring Troy’s paperwork to the heart hospital. I don’t know. Saul says a bad headache.”
“He took a bunch of Excedrin. Like four.” He hadn’t even given that a thought. He took four Advil all the time. Maybe he shouldn’t have let Troy take so many?
Shit, maybe he should have ordered Troy to stay home. Or insisted on giving his boy a ride. If he’d given Troy a ride to work maybe—
“Right, Saul! It’s a right here.”
“Shit.” He hauled the wheel over and the tires sang at them as they took the corner.
“Jesus!”
“Sorry. I—” He puffed out a breath. “Sorry.”
“No worries. Breathe. I’m sure he’s fine.”
Right, because people who were fine got taken to the hospital all the time.
“It was a bad headache, maybe he just passed out.” That was plausible. Sure. He took another hard turn into the hospital entrance and through to the emergency room parking.
“Geoff is right behind us. He’ll bring the paperwork. They might talk to you, but…”
He screeched into a parking lot and threw the truck into park. He needed to see Troy.
“We’ll see what they say. Come on.” He jumped out of the truck, ready to stand up for himself this time, like he should have done when Carter was ordering his boy in to work. He didn’t wait, he stormed in through the ER doors and stopped at the desk. “Where did they take Troy Finch?”
The girl behind the desk blinked at him. “I’ll have to check. Do you want to have a seat?”
“No. I don’t.”
She shook her head, and he leaned over the counter. “Please. Please, I’m scared. He left for work and he never showed up.”
“Oh. Oh!” Her eyes went wide. “He’s in emergency surgery. He had a heart attack.”
He had a heart attack.
He stared at the nurse, frozen. “Surgery?”
Carter rested a hand on his shoulder. “Where do we wait? We have power of attorney.”
“MedSurg, second floor. I’ll tell them you’re coming, just stop at the desk.”
“Thank you.” Carter steered him away from the desk, stopping near the elevators. “We’ll go on up. I’ll text Geoff.”
A heart attack? He was pretty sure people died from heart attacks all the time. “He can’t have had a heart attack. He does yoga and walks everywhere. He’s healthy.” Jesus, he felt young and dumb all of a sudden. Broken bones and concussions he understood, but he didn’t know anything about hearts or scary things like that.