“Do you want to call your other daughter?” Lindsey asked, and no, I didn’t, because it didn’t seem fair to Sadie, not if ten minutes from now I’d be telling her her dad was . . . was dead.

My throat was tight. I kept swallowing, but it didn’t help.

The doctor was waiting for me in the hallway of Lawrence and Memorial, which I knew wasn’t a good sign. I wondered if Westerly would’ve been a better choice. But maybe not. Maybe this place was better for unresponsive, not-breathing patients.

“Mrs. Frost, I’m Dr. Warren,” she said. “We’re going to have to chopper your husband to UConn, okay? He’s getting a CAT scan now, but I’m pretty sure he’s got a ruptured aneurysm with massive bleeding. His condition is grave, I’m sorry to say, and he’ll need surgery as soon as possible to relieve the pressure. We need you to sign these forms.”

Grave? Massive? Did she have to say massive? My breathing was loud enough that I could hear it.

“Just sign here, and here, and initial here.”

Forms. Yes, God forbid we just treated him. God forbid I got to stand by my husband and hold his hand and reassure him.

An old man was wheeled in on a gurney into a stall. Because the ER was like a barn. There were barns nicer than this, frankly, with all this beeping and noise and chaos and people in different-colored scrubs. Barns were beautiful, peaceful places. Sadie had taken horseback riding lessons, and the barn had been so gosh-darn pretty, but she lost interest after—

“You can see him now,” the doctor said.

Oh. The old man . . . the patient they’d just parked . . . that was John. I could barely see him amid all the people in there, the equipment. He was in a neck brace. Intubated, too. His face was bloody, his eyes shut. There were electrodes and wires and an IV, and he looked so unlike himself that I nearly told the doctor there’d been a mistake.

But those were his hands. Old man hands, but wearing the ring I’d put on it fifty years ago. He’d aged well, but his hands looked old now. Then again, they may have looked old for some time. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d noticed. We weren’t the hand-holding type.

People were talking, but I didn’t listen to what they said. They weren’t talking to me, anyway.

“He’s very healthy,” I said. “He’s been taking real good care of himself. Swimming, running, riding his bike. He wants to do a triathlon in the spring. I told him, ‘John, don’t be crazy, you’re seventy-five years old.’”

No one was listening. I didn’t blame them. He was massively bleeding. They had important things to do.