to his chest, while the other gripped the door frame. Startled by his stance, I was instantly alert and sat up.
“What’s goin’ on?” I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
“Something’s wrong,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t feel right.”
“What doesn’t feel right?” I threw back the sheet and climbed out of bed. “Your chest? Your heart?”
“I—” He shook his head and furrowed his brow. “I, I don’t know.”
The old man would never admit that he needed to go to the hospital. Years ago, when he had his heart attack, it was Jenna who’d had to talk him into going. But, I reminded myself, this time he had woken me up. He was alarmed enough to inadvertently ask for help, and so, I grabbed a shirt and a pair of sweatpants and told him we were going.
“I don’t think I need to—” His words were stopped with a wince and his fingers dug into his chest. I quickly made the decision to get him on the bed while I grabbed the phone and called 911.
The paramedics came. Pops protested weakly as they got him onto a gurney and rushed him down to the ambulance. I took the ride with them to the hospital, speeding through New York City traffic, and once we were there and he was admitted, I called Zach and Jenna to tell them where we were.
Of course, they wanted to know what was wrong, but I didn’t know. They wanted to know if it was his heart, but I didn’t know. They wanted to know if he was stable, if he was okay, but I didn’t fucking know. It angered me that they would ask, and it infuriated me even more that I was too useless to have any answers for them.
The beeping monitors put my worried mind on a fast train back to his heart attack. When he had been in Intensive Care and everything was so touch and go. Jenna had sat Zach and me down and told us we needed to make some decisions that none of us were prepared to make, in the event he took a turn for the worse. But Pops had been given his second chance at life, and now, I worried he wouldn’t be granted a third.
“Junior.”
With my thumb nail between my teeth, I took a glance at him, laying in his bed, so alert and aware. “Yeah?”
“You’re scarin’ the shit out of me, boy.”
Lowering my hand, I forced a pained smile. “Sorry.”
He lifted a hand slightly, as to not disturb his IV, and waved toward the door. “Get outta here.”
“What?” I asked, taken aback.
“You heard me. Get outta here. Go smoke or somethin’.”
With jaw slack and eyes wide, I shook my head. “What are you, crazy? I’m not leaving you here.”
“I’m not sayin’ to leave,” he groaned, rolling his eyes. “I’m just sayin’, get some air. You’re makin’ me nervous.”
I pulled in a deep breath and released it as I stood up, eyeing him warily. Pops rolled his eyes again and said, “I’m not gonna die if you leave, Vinnie.”
Alarmed by the D word, but not wanting to show it, I chuckled and turned toward the door before I could get choked up. “You better not,” I managed to say, then left the room.
As much as I didn’t want to leave, the moment I was outside in the hallway, I exhaled, unaware that I’d been holding my breath. My shoulders felt just a little lighter and my chest felt just a little less constricted. There was still a fear in walking away, as though his life was dependent on my being there at his side, but I resigned myself to moving down the hallway and to the elevator in the waiting room.
I stepped into the small room, and just as I pushed the button to call the elevator, the sliding doors opened and out stepped a woman in scrubs, looking down at her phone as she bumped into me.
“Oh!” she exclaimed and took a step back, looking up past her thick-framed glasses and into my eyes. “I’m so—” Her words were abruptly cut short as she cocked her head, her gaze flooding with recognition. “It’s you.”
As I shot an arm out to stop the elevator doors from closing, I raised an eyebrow. “Me?”
She looked at me as if I should know her, as if I should’ve immediately recognized her, the way you would with an old friend. But I didn’t, and when she realized that wasn’t going