Save the Last Dance Read online

  “Good, good.” Cindy stood and looked across the room at someone, tipped her head toward Kate, then dredged up an encouraging smile. “I need to get back in there. Just hang tight, Dr. Mathers. Your husband has the best of care, and he must be a fighter, or he wouldn’t have made it this far.”

  But a second surgeon was rushing to the hospital. There wasn’t time for transfer to a bigger hospital. And Jared’s heart had already stopped once.

  Kate paced the room. Dropped quarters in a coffee machine and swallowed the bitter brew, barely aware of the scalding heat. Seconds ticked slowly past on the bland white face of the old-fashioned clock above the waiting room door, mocking her rising anxiety. What could be taking so long? Had Jared already died? Were they waiting for a chaplain to come back to the E.R. to help deliver the news?

  At the sound of footsteps she whirled toward the door.

  Ralph Watson, who lived just a mile from their home and who was one of the local internal medicine docs, walked in and took one of her hands in both of his. “I’m glad I was covering the E.R. today, Kate.”

  The grim expression in his eyes told her more than she wanted to believe.

  “I’m taking you back to see him, but he needs to be transferred upstairs right away, because the surgeon is just fifteen minutes out. The anesthesiologist is up there waiting for you, so he can go over the release forms.”

  He murmured empty reassurances that she could barely hear over the buzzing in her brain. A clammy chill crawled down her back. Please God, let Jared be all right.

  She lunged out of her chair and followed close at Ralph’s heels as he went through the double doors of the E.R. and wound through a maze of curtained cubicles and gurneys to a trauma room at the end. Her heart battered against her ribs and her fear mounted with every step.

  Ralph pulled to a stop just outside the door. “Jared is unconscious, but we still take care what we say in hearing distance,” he said in a low voice. “He’s got a skull fracture and a lacerated liver causing internal bleeding. We might find more problems when we go in. And…” He took a slow breath as he rested a gentle hand on her shoulder. “He’s got some third-degree burns on his legs. This would be a good time for prayer, Kate.”

  Her knees buckled. The room swam. From somewhere far away, a gentle hand gripped her arm and a voice ordered her to sit down, but she pulled back and blinked hard, forcing away the pinpoints of light sparkling at the edge of her vision. “I’m okay…Just let me see him.”

  She looked past the doctor’s shoulder into the room. An orderly swiftly pulled up the side of the gurney with a clang, while another one gathered the chart and placed it at the foot of the bed.

  Oh, God.

  Jared was on a ventilator.

  On the other side of the bed, a nurse checked the flow rate of a bag of saline hanging from a stand, then pulled a white hospital blanket up over the heavy bandaging on his chest. A framework of some sort held the blankets away from his lower legs.

  A monitor beeped and blinked, its glowing green lines tracing the rhythm of his heart.

  Kate dealt with emergencies every day. She performed complex surgeries with a high degree of success and far less support staff than surgeons had in a hospital. But seeing Jared here, surrounded by tense staff and a jumble of high-tech hospital equipment, made her feel faint.

  She couldn’t stifle her sharp cry when the nurse shifted the monitor and its screen came into view.

  His pulse was racing, the rhythm irregular.

  His oxygen sats were dropping.

  He was in shock, and he was getting worse by the second.

  The orderlies angled the gurney toward the door and pulled it forward, with the nurse managing the portable electronic equipment and IV stands.

  They paused in front of Kate, though she could sense their tension. “Just a second,” she whispered.

  She took a half step forward and touched Jared’s cheek. His face was ashen, with a laceration from cheekbone to jaw, and white bandaging covered his forehead and hair. With every fiber of her being she wanted to hold him. Tell him all the things she should have said long ago. But the grim faces of the staff told her that every moment was critical.

  She brushed a kiss against his cheek. “I love you, Jared,” she whispered. “I’ll be waiting for you.” She straightened and watched the gurney rattle away toward the elevator at the far end of the E.R., taking with it a big piece of her heart.

  “We’ll follow them in the next one,” Ralph said, clasping her arm and guiding her to a different elevator. Once inside he rested his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Look, I know this is really hard. But I promise you, he’s in the best possible hands. Dr. Jacobs spends the school year teaching thoracic surgery out East, but during the summer he lives here. If anyone can pull off a miracle, it’s him, and he should arrive any minute.”

  The elevator door slid silently open at the second floor. Ahead, wide double doors labeled Restricted Access were just swinging shut. To the left, a tall, gaunt man in surgical scrubs—probably the anesthesiologist—stood by a door marked Family Lounge, holding a clipboard. He and Ralph exchanged glances, then he eyed Kate with sympathy.

  Overhead, a loud speaker crackled, then blared, Code Blue! Code Blue! Thirty-four, East Wing. Thirty-four, East Wing.

  A white-faced young nurse burst through the double doors. “He’s seizing. Hurry!”

  The anesthesiologist and Ralph disappeared into the O.R. Other hospital staff seemed to appear out of nowhere, all racing in the same direction.

  The room seemed to fill with glaring light, then went dim at the edges…until Kate remembered to breathe. Jared wouldn’t even make it onto the surgical table. He was going to die.

  The enormity of this moment, of her overwhelming loss and regret and grief, hit with the force of a freight train. She sank against the wall to the floor and bowed her head.

  And began to pray.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Present Day

  SYLVIA MATHERS BRUSHED an imaginary bit of dust from her classic black Yves Saint Laurent coatdress, fixed a haughty smile on her face and strolled into the restaurant, well aware that she radiated Old Money to those seated at the tables.

  As well she should.

  The décolleté V of the lapels framed a string of perfect, creamy pearls inherited from Ellsworth’s mother, and the vintage couture dress itself was a wise purchase made in the eighties that would never go out of style. She hadn’t dared tell Ellsworth about this particular price tag—though back then, money had been of little consequence and image had been everything.

  Image and political alliances and the illusion of class that had lured even more benefactors into her late husband’s fold during his political campaigns.

  Not bad for a barefoot girl born to dirt-poor Oklahoma farmers who’d had too many kids, too many bills and little regard for education.

  She’d been the first to break the mold. After scrabbling her way through college, she’d made sure she found the right jobs, where she could meet the right people. Now, very few remembered that she’d ever been the young, sexy executive secretary in Senator Mathers’s office who had helped end his first marriage, because she’d carefully cut those unfortunate little complications from her address book the day after her own marriage to Ellsworth.

  Nanette Laughton set aside her water glass and lifted a brow at Sylvia’s approach. “My, you’re early, dear.”

  “A rare thing, I know. I went to the health club first, then the standing appointment with my hairdresser. Georgio was right on schedule today.”

  Sylvia settled into a ruby velvet chair opposite her friend, only slightly miffed at Nanette’s choice of position at the table. Early-evening sunlight filtered through the curtains at her friend’s back, highlighting her platinum blond hair and casting her face in subdued, ambient lighting.

  Sylvia, facing the low angle of the sun, knew it accented every wrinkle and line on her own face. She usually took care
to avoid the direct and unflattering lighting. “I’m so glad we were able to meet here for dinner. I haven’t been to Stillwater in years.”

  “And it’s such a lovely drive over here from the Twin Cities. We should do this more often.”

  After the waitress took their orders, Nanette leaned a little closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. “You’re lovelier than ever, by the way. I just knew Dr. Falk would do a wonderful job for you.” She touched a fingertip to the smooth outside corner of her eye. “I know I couldn’t have been happier.”

  Sylvia managed a faint smile, though her stomach twisted into a nervous knot as she thought about the money she’d spent and the stock she’d had to sell off last month.

  Life was still all about packaging, really…keeping up appearances, contacts and the impression that all was well, even though the family’s software company had gone belly-up years ago, amidst allegations of upper-level corruption and mismanagement. Downturns in the stock market had decimated what was left. The senator had died soon afterward while under a cloud of suspicion about his personal life.

  He’d certainly chosen an unfortunate time to die, given the family’s financial disaster and the fact that Jared was just starting college.

  But now, with Julia left to marry off, Sylvia had a last chance to make the right connections for one of her children.

  Sylvia had counted on Jared. Tutored him. Worked at carefully managing the right introductions so he could marry well and provide his mother and sister with the elegant, comfortable lifestyle they deserved.

  Sylvia’s modest stock portfolio and rigid attention to the market had kept them afloat, but even now, twenty years later, Jared’s selfishness burned.

  Maybe his tacky little wife had lured him into an unfortunate marriage all those years ago, but this time, with Julia, Sylvia wasn’t going to let anything go wrong.

  Nanette took a delicate sip of her raspberry iced tea. “And how is your daughter?”

  “She’s still out East, but she’s nearly done with her thesis. After that, well…” Sylvia made a graceful, offhand motion with her fingertips, carefully dismissing the years Julia had spent trying to “find herself” in college. “She’s still thinking about medical school or a Ph.D. in biology. And your son?”

  “Robert’s still leaning toward family practice.” Nanette shook her head, obviously distressed. “I keep telling him that plastic surgery is the way to go, with all the baby boomers sliding into old age, but he says he’d rather work with the disadvantaged. Can you imagine? I’m sure he’ll come to his senses, though…once he finds the right woman and settles down. He has no idea how much it costs to raise a family these days.”

  The perfect opening. “So true. Those responsibilities do bring things into focus.” Sylvia idly toyed with a mandarin orange in her salad. “Our children seem so alike.”

  “Perhaps we can try arranging another meeting. They seemed to like each other rather well at the club on the Fourth of July.”

  The Laughtons were an old, moneyed family, with a sprawling estate on Lake Minnetonka and a palatial home on a cliff overlooking Lake Superior. The possible connection was definitely enticing.

  Sylvia imagined Robert and Julia living on an equally grand estate with a pleasant little mother-in-law cottage, and urging Sylvia to move there. The vision filled her with a sense of warmth and security she hadn’t felt in a long time. “That would be lovely. I can just imagine—”

  From inside Sylvia’s vintage Gucci handbag came the soft trill of her cell phone. She swiftly reached into the bag, glanced at the caller ID on the screen and pressed a side button to mute the ring, irritated at the interruption. Whatever Kate had to say, she could certainly leave it as voice mail.

  Sylvia had noticed three other messages when she walked out of the salon—calls she’d missed due to the constant chatter and the noise of hair dryers. She’d simply have to catch up on all of them later.

  Nothing was as important as this conversation with her friend.

  “Sorry. As I was saying, just imagine our two together.” Sylvia gave Nanette a conspiratorial smile. “Wouldn’t Robert and Julia give us the most adorable grandchildren?”

  THE VISION of Jared’s ashen, damaged face kept crowding into Kate’s thoughts as she sat curled up at one end of a couch in the waiting area by the operating room. The television was blaring in the corner, but she had no idea what the newscasters were saying.

  The longing to touch Jared, to talk to him, welled up inside her, her emotions swinging between hope and fear as she fought to stay in control.

  Two other families had filed in, settled down to wait, then left—one overjoyed, the other overwhelmed with sorrow. And still, there’d been no word about Jared since the anesthesiologist had come out with his release forms.

  Jared had suffered that second cardiac arrest just inside the O.R., but he’d rallied and had now been in surgery for almost an hour. An hour that seemed like a lifetime, marked by the inexorable ticking of the second hand on the clock.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  Kate’s fingers itched, flexing involuntarily as she imagined holding the same surgical instruments. She remembered the broken hips and backs and legs she’d operated on—snaking rods up through the marrow on femurs and tibiae; using screws and pins and wires to draw fractured shards together into a solid, functional structure.

  But it was her husband on the other side of those double doors…the father of her daughter, the man who’d been a part of her life all these years. It was still almost impossible to wrap her mind around the thought that any moment could be his last, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  “Dr. Mathers?”

  She swallowed hard against the fear rising in her throat and looked up to see a somber chaplain with an equally grim-faced nurse at his side. Her heart stuttered. “Jared—”

  “Oh, my dear,” the elderly gentleman said quickly. “We didn’t come with bad news. As far as we know, he’s still weathering surgery very well. How are you holding up through all of this?”

  Kate looked down at her knotted hands and willed herself to relax. “I wish our daughter was here…I haven’t heard a word from her yet. Has anyone been able to reach Jared’s mother or sister?”

  “We’ve left several messages for his mother, but we did reach his sister, Julia,” the nurse told her. “She’s trying to arrange a flight home from New York.” The woman pulled a slip of paper from her pocket. “Also, the receptionist in the E.R. took a message from a friend of yours. Deanna, is it?” She unfolded the note. “Your daughter’s plane was held up in Denver due to bad weather, so she missed her connection from Minneapolis to Madison. The next open seats wouldn’t get her to Madison until late tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Oh, no,” Kate breathed. She imagined Casey trying to find a shuttle to a hotel, or simply camping out in the airport for the night. Either way she was all alone, a young college student who felt independent but who’d always be Kate’s baby. And she’d be so devastated if she didn’t have a chance to say goodbye….

  The staggering thought blindsided Kate, sending a gut-deep wave of grief rushing through her.

  “But your friend and her husband are already driving to Minneapolis to get her,” the nurse continued. “They figure they’ll make it back here by early morning.” She handed over the note, the handwriting nearly illegible. “I thought I’d better decode Marie’s handwriting for you.”

  When the nurse’s voice finally registered, Kate sagged against the back of her chair in relief. “Thank God.”

  The two staff members exchanged awkward glances, then pulled up a couple of chairs to face Kate’s and sat down.

  The chaplain’s brow furrowed as he reached out to take her hand. “There’s something else, dear. The sheriff wants to talk to you, but we asked him to wait until after your husband is out of surgery.”

  “Why? He wants to deliver a ticket?”

  “It’s reg
arding the other person in your husband’s car.”

  “Who?”

  “The deceased.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t know?” The chaplain frowned and looked at the nurse, but she lifted a shoulder and shook her head in response. “I’m so very sorry if this person was a friend or relative, Dr. Mathers.”

  “Someone was with him?” Kate thought back to when she’d called the law office, after Jared didn’t answer his cell.

  Tom had said Jared was on his way north to a meeting, so Tom couldn’t have been in the car, and their legal secretary was on a Canadian fishing vacation this week. There’d been no mention of anyone else.

  And Jared had been found on a road going south out of town, not north.

  “Your husband was extricated just in time, but the other person was badly tangled in the wreckage and was dead at the scene. The EMTs and officers weren’t able to get her out fast enough, and the body was badly burned.”

  Kate’s stomach roiled at the thought. That could have happened to Jared, too. Guilt followed her flash of relief. Her husband had been spared, but another family would be facing a terrible loss.

  “She appeared to be a young woman,” the chaplain continued. “Slender. The investigators will need to use dental records for a positive identification, but it would save them time if you knew who she might be.”

  Young. Slender.

  The old, nagging uncertainty, dormant for so many years, flared to life. The late nights…the working weekends…Did this add up to a situation she’d never imagined facing again?

  But just as quickly, Kate tried to extinguish her doubts.

  “I…really have no idea who she is. Call Tom Williams, my husband’s law partner.” She rattled off Tom’s cell phone number. “She was probably a client.”

  The chaplain jotted down the number. “I’m sure that must be the case,” he murmured. He handed the slip of paper to the nurse, who then left the room. “I hope that’s all the sheriff needs. If not, he may be calling on you later.”