CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JENNIFER
“Seth.” I say his name quietly.
He doesn't hear me. He's got his phone on speaker now, pacing and typing simultaneously. “Pull the backup from forty-eight hours ago. Yes, I know that means losing two days of transactions, but it's better than losing everything. How long will the restore take?”
I move closer. “Seth.”
He holds up one finger, telling me to wait.
More people are joining the call. Voices overlapping, all urgent, and all demanding his attention. While he’s on the call, his phone begins to buzz angrily with text and email alerts.
As if I’m an outsider looking in, I see everything happening with a sort of odd detachment. His shoulders drawing up toward his ears, his jaw clenching and unclenching as a vein in his temple pulses angrily as he continues to bark out orders and stress.
“No, that's not acceptable,” he snaps. “I need a timeline. I need to know when this will be fixed so I can call our clients and... what do you mean you don't know? Figure it out! This is your job!”
His voice is rising as his normally pale face turns red, and his breathing is getting faster and faster, sounding like a locomotive straining to crest the hill.
That breaks me out of my almost trance, and I rush over to him, a sense of impending doom making my own heart pound furiously. “Seth, you need to-”
“Not now, Jennifer!” he snaps not even looking at me. “Allen, conference in the legal team. We need to assess liability. If this was a hack, we need to know immediately. If it was hardware failure, I want to know why our redundancies didn't kick in. Someone screwed up, and I want to know who.”
He's fully into it now. The panic, the need to control, the drive to fix it himself. I can practically see his blood pressure rising with every word.
“Seth, please,” I beg, touching his arm, trying to ground him and pull him back to me before it’s too late. “You need to step back. Let them handle-”
He shakes me off. “I said not now! This is a crisis. I need to... we need to...” He's typing and talking and pacing all at once. “Get me the system logs. All of them. I want to see exactly when this started and-”
He stops mid-sentence. His hand going to his chest.
“Seth?”
All the color drains out of his face, leaving it a sickly gray as fat beads of sweat break out across his forehead. The phone slips from his limp fingers to clatter on the shiny wood floor.
“Seth!” I'm at his side instantly.
“Can't...” His breath comes in short, shallow gasps. “Can't breathe. Chest... Jennifer...”
No. No! This is it. This is what I was afraid of.
“Sit down.” I guide him to the couch, my heart hammering as I try my best to remain calm. His skin is clammy under my hands. “Sit down right now. Where's your nitroglycerin?” I ask needlessly, even as I’m running toward the bedroom for it.
In the bedroom, I grab the small bottle off his nightstand and race back to find him slumped on the couch, his face still that horrible gray color as his fingers dig into his chest as if he could massage the pain away.
“Under your tongue.” I shake one out and cup his jaw as he slowly opens his mouth as his blue eyes roll to lock with mine. I push the pill under his tongue and grab my phone from my back pocket.
“9-1-1, what's your emergency?”
“My... my boyfriend. He's having chest pain. He has a heart condition. He can't breathe properly.”
The dispatcher's voice is calm, professional. “How old is he?”
“Thirty-six. He collapsed three months ago. He's on blood pressure medication, blood thinners...”
I answer her questions while watching Seth. His eyes are closed now, and his breathing is still labored. On the floor, his phone is still connected to the conference call. I can hear reedy voices asking where Seth went and what happened.
The urge to stomp on it nearly overtakes me. Instead, I pick it up, end the call without a word, and then toss his phone onto the other end of the couch.
“The ambulance is five minutes out,” I tell him, kneeling in front of him and rubbing his legs and arms. “Stay with me. Just breathe. In for four, hold for four, out for six. Remember? Like you learned.”
He tries. I can see him trying. But his breath keeps hitching, his fingers still digging into his twisted shirt.
“Hurts,” he manages.
“I know. I know, baby. Just hold on. They're coming.”
The five minutes feel like five hours. I stay on the phone with the dispatcher, monitoring Seth and keeping him conscious. When I finally hear sirens, I nearly sob with relief, my legs shaking as I rush to the door to open it for the paramedics.
The three men who come in are efficient and professional.
They put a blood pressure cuff around his arm, hook up EKG leads, and strap an oxygen mask to his face as they load Seth up on a stretcher.
I hover around uselessly, answering their questions while wringing my hands and wanting to touch Seth and ensure he’s still here.
“Has he taken any medication this morning?”
“Yes, his regular meds. Blood pressure, blood thinner, aspirin. And nitroglycerin just now when the pain started.”
“Any history of heart attack?”
I shake my head and then nod. “No, but he collapsed three months ago.
Stress-induced cardiac event. He's been here recovering, following doctor's orders, and then...” I gesture around the room.
“There was a crisis at his work.” Tears fill my eyes as I remember it all. “He got stressed, and this happened.”
One of the paramedics looks at the other, and I see understanding pass between them.
“We're going to transport him to County Memorial,” the lead paramedic tells me. “You can follow in your vehicle.”
“Can I ride with him?”
“Are you family?”
“I'm his...” What am I? I said he was my boyfriend when I was on the phone with 911, which makes me his girlfriend. But that title feels too small for what we are. “Yes. I'm family.”
They let me ride in the back. Seth's glassy blue eyes find mine over the oxygen mask, and I can see the fear there. The same fear that's choking me.
“You're okay,” I tell him, gripping his hand. “You're going to be okay.”
I don't know if I'm lying.
***
The ER doctor is a woman in her fifties with kind blue eyes and a no-nonsense demeanor that I immediately appreciate.
“It's not a heart attack,” she tells us after what feels like hours of tests. “The EKG shows no damage, and your troponin levels are normal. But your blood pressure spiked to one sixty-five over one hundred and two. For someone with your history, that's extremely dangerous.”
Seth is sitting up in the hospital bed. His face is no longer gray, but he looks almost as pale as the white hospital gown he’s wearing, though he clutches my hand tightly as I sit in a chair beside the bed.
“What happened?” he asks, his voice rough.
“You had what we call a hypertensive crisis.
Your blood pressure got so high, so fast, that it caused acute symptoms- chest pain, shortness of breath, near syncope.
If you hadn't taken the nitroglycerin when you did, if you'd pushed through and kept working...” She pauses.
“You could have had a stroke. Or a heart attack. Or your heart could have simply stopped.”
The words hit like punches. I feel Seth's hand tighten around mine.
“But I've been doing so well,” he says. “My numbers have been perfect for two weeks.”
“And you threw it away in twenty minutes.” The doctor sits on the stool near the wall, her expression firm but not unkind.
“Mr. Donovan, I've reviewed your chart. I see you were sent here for cardiac rehabilitation after a severe stress-related event.
I see your doctor's notes about lifestyle modifications, work restrictions, and stress management. And I see that today, you ignored all of it.”
“It was an emergency at my company-”
She quirks a gray eyebrow. “Is your company worth dying for?”
The question hangs in the air.
“No,” Seth says quietly, his gaze falling to his lap. “No, it's not.”
“Then you need to make a choice. Really make it, not just pay lip service to it.” She looks between us. “You have people who can handle emergencies. That's what executives and managers are for. Your job right now is to stay alive. That's it. Stay alive.”
She stands and makes a note on her tablet. “I'm keeping you overnight for observation to ensure your blood pressure stabilizes. If it does, you can go home tomorrow. But Mr. Donovan? This was your warning shot. Next time, you might not be so lucky.”
After she leaves, the room is silent except for the beep of the heart monitor and the hiss of the blood pressure cuff inflating automatically every fifteen minutes.
“I'm sorry,” he says, his voice rough as he squeezes my hand. “Jennifer, I'm so sorry.”
“Shhh. Don't apologize. Just rest.” I keep my voice calm and soothing. The last thing he needs right now is more stress. I’ll stress enough for the two of us. “Everything's okay. You're okay.”
His blue eyes glisten as he swallows hard. “I could have-”
I cut him off before he can finish, “But you didn't.” I squeeze his hand. “You're here. You're safe. That's all that matters right now.”
He closes his eyes, and I watch a tear slip down his cheek. I wipe it away gently.
“I was so scared,” I whisper. “But you're okay now. Just breathe and rest.”
I stay like that, holding his hand, until he falls asleep.