“The doctor says we can go in,” Frankie said. “But we can’t stay long. He’s exhausted, and he needs to rest.”
All the siblings were there, having received a panicked phone call from Aunt Kim in the middle of the night. The patriarch of their family, and sometimes villain, Joel Winslow, had had a heart attack, according to the doctors.
A bad one.
It should have killed him, according to the cardiologist, but Joel had never been a man who was easily defeated. He was a fighter, and he wasn’t going to let a little thing like a heart attack, they called “the widowmaker,” take him out of this world.
Their father, however, wasn’t out of the woods yet. It could still go either way.
Aunt Kim stepped into the waiting room, for once not looking chic and put together. Sam wasn’t her biggest fan, but she did appear to truly care about their father. Her face was pale and her eyes red-rimmed. She looked shocked, and perhaps for good reason. He assumed their dad had convinced her that he was indestructible.
“You ready?” Frankie asked. “Piper said she’s not going in.”
Piper held deep bitterness for their father, and even on his deathbed, she didn’t appear ready to forgive and forget. Frankly, he couldn’t blame her. His dad hadn’t been any sort of parent to them and had basically been extra shitty to Piper because he didn’t want to bother to understand his youngest child.
“I’m ready. Let’s go.”
The group of siblings moved toward the hospital room door, but Frankie stepped in front of Joel’s friend Henry and brother Rick.
“Just family,” she said, holding up her hand. “Dad needs his rest.”
“I’m family,” Rick replied angrily. “You can’t keep me out.”
If Frankie had truly wanted to keep Rick out, she would. She’d been determined as hell her entire life.
“I’m his best friend,” Henry whined. “I have to see him.”
Everyone hated and pitied Henry in equal measure. He’d made a life and career out of kissing Joel’s ass on a daily basis.
“No,” Frankie said. “But Rick, I guess you can. We only stay a minute. That’s all the doctors will allow. He’s not in stable condition.”
That statement had a fresh spate of tears rolling down Kim’s cheeks.
“If Dad is awake, don’t let him see you upset,” Frankie said. “We don’t want to worry him that things are worse than they are.”
Could they get any worse? It was life or death in the ICU ward.
“You letting Frankie run the show?” Sam whispered to Zack, the oldest sibling.
“What can I say? She loves to take charge. I’m happy to let her.”
Sam glanced over his shoulder where Jane, Cooper’s wife, and Lucy, Zack’s fiancée, stood apart from the group.
“They’re not going in?”
“I told Lucy she could, but both she and Jane think that it would be better for it to be just us. They don’t want to interfere. Maybe when Dad gets better.” Zack shook his head and rubbed at his tired eyes. “If he gets better.”
That was the giant question hanging over them. Joel was a strong man, but could he beat the Grim Reaper? He’d been drinking scotch, smoking cigars, eating rich food, and ignoringhis doctor’s advice for decades. Would it all finally catch up to him?
They stepped inside their father’s unit in the large ward. The nurse station was located in the middle, and all the “rooms” circled around it. Each room had a sliding glass door, but there was no real privacy. The nurses needed to be able to see the patients and the machines at all times.
There were no flowers or balloons allowed in the ICU, but there were plenty of those machines making beeping and blipping sounds every few seconds. His dad was hooked up to several, along with several bags of something being pumped into his veins, hanging over the bed.
Sam didn’t say it out loud, but his siblings had to be thinking the same thing.
Joel Winslow looked like death.
His complexion was gray and lifeless, his arms connected to long tubes that snaked behind the bed. A monitor on his right side displayed his heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen level. There were other monitors as well, but Sam couldn’t have named what they all did.
