The Path to Sunshine Cove (Cape Sanctuary #2) - RaeAnne Thayne Page 0,91

afraid you do, honey. You passed out and fell down. You’ve been out of it for at least three minutes now. You need to be checked out.”

“I’m just tired.” Eleanor tried to get up, but Jess rested a hand on her shoulder.

“That’s what you’ve been telling me for days now. But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

Eleanor was quiet, breathing deeply, then she met Jess’s gaze, raw fear in her eyes. “I think I might be dying.”

Damn it. She should have called 911 first. She quickly dialed the number and spoke quickly into the phone. “Yes. Hello. I’m with a seventy-year-old woman, Eleanor Whitaker, who just passed out. She’s awake and conscious now but still pale. She’s having chest pain. You are having chest pain, right?” she asked Eleanor, who nodded. “Yes on the chest pain. Please hurry. We’re at Whitaker House, just above Sunshine Cove. Twenty-one thirty-five Seaview Road.”

“Confirmed. We have identified your location. Please stay on the line while we dispatch emergency crews to your area. I’ll be back with you momentarily.”

“Please hurry,” Jess said.

Sophie and Nate couldn’t lose Eleanor, too. Not when they were still grieving for Jack Whitaker.

Jess vowed to do everything within her power to make sure that didn’t happen.

34

Nate

An ambulance. His mother passed out. Sick.

Nate listened to the message from Jess that he had missed after turning off his ringer during a meeting. When had she sent it? Only ten minutes earlier, he saw quickly.

Still, that was ten minutes when he had been unavailable. Anything could have happened in that time. He rose quickly.

“I have to go,” he told his team of project leaders in the room. “Apparently my mother is on her way to the hospital.”

“What can we do?” his second-in-command, Kevin Hall, asked instantly.

Just pray, he wanted to say. “I don’t know what’s going on yet. I’ll keep you posted.”

He hurried out of the room, trying to call Jess’s cell phone. Each time it went to voice mail. He tried a third time as he was sliding behind the wheel of his truck and she finally picked up.

“Hi. Sorry. The ambulance just arrived.” She sounded breathless and afraid, which ratcheted up his own anxiety. Jess always seemed so contained, so in control. If she was this upset, he knew the situation had to feel serious to her.

“What’s happened?”

“I don’t know, to be honest. She passed out and she’s got chest pain. They are treating it as a possible cardiac arrest and are taking her directly to the emergency room of the Cape Sanctuary hospital.”

Cardiac arrest. Good Lord.

“I’m at a meeting in the next town. It will take me about twenty minutes, but I’ll meet you there.”

He peeled out, heart racing. This couldn’t be happening! He couldn’t lose his mother, not just months after his father. He still hadn’t figured out how to deal with the huge void in his life left by Jack Whitaker’s death.

Sophie.

If something happened to his mother, Sophie would be devastated. She still mourned her grandfather, but he feared that losing Eleanor, who had been more of a mother than a grandmother to her, would crush her.

Nate wasn’t sure how he made it safely on the coastal road to the regional medical center on the other side of Cape Sanctuary, especially as he likely broke just about every traffic law in the county. When he rushed into the waiting room, he immediately spotted Jess talking at the nurses’ station.

“Nate!” she exclaimed. “I just arrived. They didn’t have room for me on the ambulance, so I followed them. They’ve taken your mother back to a treatment room. I was just explaining to the nurse that you would be here shortly to answer questions about advance directives and the like.”

Advance directives. He couldn’t think about that now. All he could do for those first frenzied seconds was grab hold of Jess and pull her into his arms. She was his rock, the one secure thing to grab onto amid the seething tumult.

She wrapped her arms around him and held on before stepping away. “You should go back and see what’s going on. They wouldn’t let me because I’m not family.”

She spoke calmly but he saw how difficult it was for her to be excluded. “That’s bull,” he snapped. “You likely saved her life. You were the one who called for help.”

“It’s fine. You’re here now. What about Sophie? Should I get her from school?”

“I called her friend McKenna’s mom and explained what has happened. For now, I’m going to leave her