The Cherry Cola Book Club - By Ashton Lee Page 0,44
wife live up there and have plenty of room in their Brentwood house. I’ll give him a call, and he’ll put us all up. No problem.”
“And Justin will recover,” Connie added. “Dr. Oberlin says there are so many positive signs already. For one thing, Periwinkle’s 911 call got him to the ER within minutes. Time is always of the essence with any heart attack. As we speak, I’m sure they’ve reduced the size of the clot. He has had a slight allergic reaction to the streptokinase, though. They haven’t been able to remove the blockage completely, but he’s got some blood flow back in the artery and that’s the most important thing. He’s in no pain at this point, so we can all take a deep breath and think our best, healing thoughts.”
“And the rest of the blockage is why they need to take him up to Nashville?” Maura Beth asked.
“This is a very small, rural hospital,” Connie continued. “They don’t have the equipment or staff to do the next procedure he’ll require. It’s called a balloon angioplasty. They’ll thread a small guide wire with an inflatable balloon from an artery in his leg to his heart. They monitor the whole thing with a camera. Then, once they’ve inflated the balloon—bam! No more clot!”
Despite her sedation, Becca rambled on a bit. “The doctor said the procedure was safe. But is it really? It sounds so dangerous and complicated. What if I lose him? Just tonight we had this silly argument over nothing and everything. I even told him that I could get along without him. Is this God’s way of punishing me for such callous thoughts? Connie, please tell me the truth. Just how safe is this balloon thing?”
“Now, calm down, Becca. I’ve seen the procedure performed successfully so many times, I can’t count,” Connie said, stroking the back of Becca’s hand. “It’s far less intrusive than bypass, and the recovery time is usually a week or less. Some people are back at work in practically no time. This is a maximum recovery situation all around.”
It was then that Periwinkle walked off the elevator with crisp authority, making straight for Becca and extending her hand solicitously. Hugs for Connie and Maura Beth soon followed, and she acknowledged the others with a smile and a nod. “What’s the latest?” she asked, catching her breath. “I haven’t been able to think about anything else.”
Connie brought her up to date with a condensed diagnosis that only a medical professional could manage.
Periwinkle relaxed a bit from head to toe. “Well, I got to close up a little early. Nothing clears a dining room like someone on a stretcher.” Then she brought herself up short. “Oh, I didn’t mean to make light of the situation. Please forgive me, Becca. I run off at the mouth all the time.”
“Forgive you?!” Becca exclaimed, her eyes widening in disbelief. “You’ve got it all wrong. I can’t thank you enough for what you did, Periwinkle. Dr. Oberlin says the paramedics were there in record time. My Stout Fella probably owes you his life. How did you know what was going on so fast?”
“Call it instinct, I guess,” Periwinkle explained, her gum noticeably absent for once. “Your husband called me over to the table and asked if I had some Alka-Seltzer or something for his stomach. He was drinking coffee with his friend over there, but he looked really pale and sweaty to me. I like to keep my restaurant on the chilly side during all this summer heat, so even then I started to wonder what was happening.”
The tall, sportily dressed Winston Barkeley stepped up to add his own observations. “Yeah, I could tell something was wrong with him, too. He kept saying he had indigestion from the moment he sat down across from me. Said he’d eaten too much at a party he’d just come from. But I could tell the Alka-Seltzer wasn’t helping much by the way he kept rubbing his chest.”
Periwinkle nodded and continued, “Then he called me over to the table again and said he was really starting to feel much worse, like there were gears grinding somewhere inside. Well, that did it. I’m never pleased to see indigestion at my restaurant, but this was just way different from the usual drink water and belch, if you’ll excuse my language. ‘I’m going to call 911 right this instant,’ I told him. ‘I don’t like what’s going on here one bit.’ So I pulled out my