Mac took the blanket the paramedics offered and tried not to focus too intently on his father’s gray face as they worked to stem the bleeding on the back of his head. He wanted to call Maddie, but right now all his focus was on his father. “Can you tell if he’s hurt anywhere else?” Mac asked.

“His arm is clearly fractured, and his blood pressure is really low, so there could be internal injuries.” Mac watched them pull a warming blanket over his father, trying to raise his body temperature.

He squeezed his eyes shut and burrowed into his own blanket, hoping to stop the violent trembling. Please, God. I’ll do anything. Just don’t take him from us yet. Not yet.

Much to Mac’s dismay, the clinic’s emergency personnel treated him like he was the patient. He struggled against their efforts to remove his wet clothes and get him into scrubs. “I’m fine! I don’t need to be seen. I have to know what’s going on with my father!”

“Mr. McCarthy, you’re hypothermic, and your pulse is weak,” the nurse said. She examined Mac’s eyes with a flashlight. “You might be a bit shocky, too.”

Mac’s chest began to ache the way it had during an anxiety attack a year or so ago, but he didn’t dare tell them that. “I’m not the patient!”

“You are now,” the formidable nurse declared after poking a thermometer in his ear. “Your temp is ninety-four.” She tugged a heated blanket up over him. “We’ve got to get you warmed up.”

Mac didn’t want to admit that the heat felt really good. “Can you find out what’s going on with my dad? Please? And Luke Harris? He was brought in, too.”

The nurse patted his arm. “I’ll go check. Try to settle down.”

“I need to call my wife. Can you get me a phone? Mine got ruined in the water.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Continuing to tremble under the blanket, Mac waited a long time for the nurse to return. He had plenty of time to ponder life without his father and for the ache in his chest to intensify. The whole thing had happened so damned fast! One minute his dad was standing on the dock, the next minute he was seriously injured and fighting for his life.

Mac shuddered as the images ran through his mind like a horror movie he couldn’t escape: his father disappearing from the pier, floating facedown in the water, the pool of blood surrounding him.

The nurse returned. “Since I don’t own a cell phone, one of the other nurses is getting hers for you. They’re taking your dad for some tests. He’s hypothermic as well, so we’re warming him up. His arm is definitely broken. That’s all I know at the moment.”

“Is he awake?”

“Not yet.”