Forbidden Guest House novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Hedy

"Hedy!"

I was on my knees before I knew I'd moved.

Her skin was cold and wet. Her eyes opened and found me.

"Don't yell," she whispered. "I'm right here."

Leif turned off the burner and called 911 with the phone on speaker.

The dispatcher told me to give her an aspirin and make her chew it.

Hedy chewed it and glared at me the whole time.

"It's my arm," she said. "And my jaw. Like a mule kicked me."

"That's your heart, Hedy."

"I know what it is. I watched your Gran's."

The ambulance took twenty minutes.

I held her hand the whole time.

They ran her to Grand Rapids, and Grand Rapids put her in a helicopter to Duluth.

Leif drove me there faster than the road allowed.

At midnight a cardiologist came out to the waiting room in paper shoes.

"One artery was ninety percent closed," she said. "She has a stent now. She's going to be fine if she listens to me."

"She's never listened to anyone in her life."

"Then she can start."

Hedy was awake when they let me in, gray against the pillow, furious.

"Who's doing dinner tomorrow?"

"I am."

"You can't do sixty covers alone."

"I'll be fine."

I was not fine.

On Monday I ran the kitchen by myself.

I burned the first walleye. I forgot the wild rice entirely.

Tickets piled up on the rail.

At seven forty, table eight asked for the check before their entrees came.

At eight, two tables walked out.

I stood at the stove with five pans going and cried into the hollandaise, and that broke too.

Leif found me after close, sitting on the walk-in floor with a bag of frozen peas on my burned wrist.

He sat down next to me.

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