Death by the Dozen

Author:Jenn McKinlay [McKinlay, Jenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9781471307683
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2010-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

Eighteen

“Angie!” Mel cried. There was a painful grunt from beneath the table. Mel turned to Grace and yelled, “Get help now!”

Mel dove under the table. Angie was slumped on the hard concrete, clutching her chest.

“I think I’m having a heart attack,” she said. “Oh, no, I’m going to throw up.”

Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she slumped into unconsciousness. The hostess for the café crawled under the table with Mel.

“An ambulance is on the way,” she said. “Let’s get her out from under there.”

“Angie, can you hear me?” Mel called anxiously. “Angie?”

Together they half lifted, half dragged Angie out from under the table. Mel pressed her fingers to Angie’s wrist. Her pulse was slow and irregular.

“They have to hurry,” she said to the hostess.

“I’ll go meet them outside and bring them right here,” she promised.

Grace crouched down beside Mel and frowned at Angie with worry. “Oh, dear, the poor thing.”

“What’s taking them so long?” Mel yelled. “Does anyone have a car? I’ll drive her to the hospital myself.”

Just then three burly EMTs stormed into the café. Two set to work, taking Angie’s vitals. They worked efficiently, which would have relieved Mel if they hadn’t looked so worried. The third one turned to Mel.

“Were you with her? What happened?”

“I was with her,” Mel said. “But then I went to the pool area. I was only gone for a few minutes, twenty maybe, but when I came back, she fell to the floor. She said she thought she was having a heart attack, then she thought she was going to be sick to her stomach.”

“Does she have a history of heart disease or any other illnesses?” he asked.

“No, Angie has nothing. She’s the strongest person I know,” Mel said. Her voice cracked, and she felt her throat constrict.

She watched as Angie was quickly strapped onto a stretcher, and the three men prepared to whisk her out the door. Mel ran after them, determined to ride with them. She wasn’t going to let Angie out of her sight, not for one second.

It was a short ride to Scottsdale Osborn Hospital, situated just down the street from the hotel. Mel hugged the side of the ambulance while the siren wailed and the lights flashed and they tore through intersections on their way to the emergency room.

With the skill of those trained to function in a crisis, the paramedics burst out of the back of the ambulance and hustled Angie on her stretcher inside. They didn’t wait to fill out paperwork but sped into a glassed-in room at the end of the ward, where a doctor was waiting. Mel went to follow, but one of the paramedics held her off.

“You’re going to need to wait here, ma’am,” he said.

“But—” Mel protested.

“We’ll do everything we can,” he said and then shut the door.

If Mel could have clawed her way through the glass window to get to her friend, she would have. Instead she stared helplessly into a room while a team worked on Angie. With every head shake between the masked personnel, she felt her body spasm in terror.

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