“Will he be all right?” Steve shouted after them. “What is it?”
“Looks like a stroke,” they shouted back to him, but they were gone two minutes later, with sirens screaming, as Steve walked back inside with a slow smile, and closed the door behind him.
Chapter 21
GABRIELLA WAS PUTTING a stack of new books away when the phone rang at the bookshop. Ian was out picking up lunch, and she hurried down from a ladder to answer. She was still thinking about the books she'd been looking at when she heard Steve's voice, and she sensed instantly that something had happened. He sounded distraught and he was nearly crying.
“Is something wrong?” She had never heard him sound like that. Things had been a little strained between them recently. They were both upset that he hadn't found a job, and she didn't want him to think she was pressuring him, but having to make her income stretch to cover both of them had her constantly worried. “What is it?”
“Oh… oh God, Gabbie, I don't know how to tell you this…” He knew how much she loved the professor, and a knife of terror sliced through her heart as she listened. She couldn't even imagine what he was trying to tell her. “It's the professor.”
“Oh my God, Steve… tell me quickly…”
“I came home and found him on the floor in the living room… he looked as though he had hit his head… there was blood on the side of it, and he was lying near a table. I don't know if he got dizzy and fell, or tripped, or what happened.”
“Was he conscious?” she asked breathlessly… or worse yet, was he dead? She couldn't even dare to think it.
“Not really. He was incoherent when I found him, and then he passed out. I called the operator for an ambulance right away. The ambulance attendants thought he might have had a heart attack or a stroke. They didn't seem to know. He just left here, I called you the minute the ambulance left. They've taken him downtown to City Hospital.” It was a big public hospital and Gabbie wasn't sure he'd get the best care there. She'd been begging him for months to get some tests, as had Mrs. Boslicki and Mrs. Rosenstein. His health had been failing steadily since the previous winter. He never took her out anymore, he was hardly well enough to leave the house, even for short walks. And his wracking cough had been persistent.
“They said they'd call us the minute they know something. I'll wait here by the phone,” he said valiantly, and Gabbie was instantly grateful that he had called her.
“Thank God you were with him, or at least that you found him. I'll go down there as soon as Ian comes in. He just went out to get us lunch.” All she wanted to do was grab her handbag and go, but she didn't want to close the store while Ian was at the deli, without telling him what had happened.
“Maybe you should wait till they call us,” Steve suggested, but she wouldn't hear of it. She couldn't stay away from him. The professor was the only semblance of family she had, and she wanted to be with him.
“I couldn't stand waiting for the phone to ring,” she said anxiously. “Ill go the minute Ian walks in,” and as she said it, she saw him come through the door, and signaled him to hurry. “I'll call you from the hospital,” she said hurriedly, knowing that Steve would be as frantic for news as she was, as would be the others once they heard what had happened.
She told Ian the news hurriedly, and apologized for leaving him in the lurch, but he understood perfectly, and wished her luck as she ran out the door of the bookstore clutching her handbag. She hailed a cab right outside, and told him which hospital, and when she opened her wallet to pay him, she was surprised to see she had so little money. She was sure she'd had more than that the day before, and then with a nervous flutter, she wondered if Steve had once again helped himself to her wallet. He was so embarrassed to ask her most of the time, that now he just “borrowed” it without telling her, but sometimes it left her badly strapped when she least expected it. She barely had enough for the cab fare.