Chapter 4: Who the Hell Are You

"Gus. Gus, look at me."

His face was gray. His lips were going blue at the edges.

One of the sewers was already on the phone with 911, reading out the address in a shaking voice.

I knelt on the concrete and pushed the bottle of aspirin from the first-aid kit into his hand.

"Chew it. Don't swallow it whole. Chew."

He chewed.

"Bench," he said through his teeth. "Board fell. Check the solder."

"I swear to God, Gus, if you die talking about solder."

His mouth twitched.

The ambulance took ten minutes.

I rode in the back in my canvas apron with a pencil still stuck in my hair.

They took him straight up to the cath lab.

A blocked artery, the cardiologist told me two hours later. A stent. He'd been lucky.

"Are you family?"

"Yes," I said.

The cardiologist looked at the chart. "It says here you're his health care proxy. Elsie Calvert?"

"That's me."

"He's sedated. You can see him in an hour."

I sat in the waiting room and finally did the thing Gus had asked me to do years ago, if it ever came to this.

I opened his phone and found the number under F.

It rang four times.

"What."

A man's voice. Low and flat.

"Is this Fletcher Dempsey?"

"Who's asking?"

"My name is Elsie. I work with your dad. He had a heart attack. He's okay. He's at the hospital on Thomas Road."

Silence.

Then the line went dead.

Two and a half hours later a man came through the waiting room doors.

Broad shoulders. Brown beard. Sawdust all down the front of his jeans.

A carpenter's pencil behind one ear.

He went straight to the desk.

"Gus Dempsey. I'm his son."

The clerk pointed at me.

"His proxy's right there."

He turned around and looked at me.

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