He ignored her, as if she had just said she was tired, or cold, or had a stomachache. Lily's thinking was very skewed. She didn't want to dial 911. It would just call attention to their chaotic life and marriage. Neighbors had called the police a few weeks earlier, after they'd been yelling into the night. “Everything is okay, Officer,” Edward had said. And Lily had done her part—smiling at the cops, both of whom she'd seen around their small town. “I'm fine,” she said. “Everything is fine.”

Domestic squabblers, she'd heard the neighbor woman whisper to a friend in the hall one day after that, while Lily stood on the other side of her apartment door, cringing with shame.

So, not wanting another siren to come to their apartment, she'd pulled on her coat and driven herself to the Shoreline Clinic. The closer she got, the worse she felt. The pain seemed hot, as if someone had stuck a piece of blazing coal right in the spot where her heart should be. She touched her sternum and felt pain radiating into her ribs. It felt as if someone had punched her, as if someone's knuckles had come slamming into her chest.

By the time she got inside the clinic, she could barely walk. Quivering, hand on her heart, she'd sat at the triage desk, silently weeping. She had been coming to this clinic since she was a baby. Her parents had brought her here for croup when she was a year old. She had come here at four, when she'd stepped on a rusty nail and needed a tetanus shot. She'd come here to get her blood test, the week before marrying Edward. They had her records—and they knew her by sight.

The desk nurse had bought needlework supplies from her. The ER attending had ordered several needlepoint pillows for her dining room chairs. They all knew Maeve, from years of living in the area. As she sat at the nurses' station, Lily thought she should have gone somewhere else. She should have driven to another clinic, where no one knew her, no one would recognize Edward and look at him with judgment the next time they saw him at the IGA.

“I think,” Lily said, trying to get the words out, “I'm having a heart attack.”

They were so kind. They took her right in—to a doctor she'd never met. She wanted to ask them to give her a woman doctor, but she didn't have the strength. She was afraid of a man laughing at her, thinking she was making something out of nothing. The doctor did an EKG. He sat beside her the whole time. He just gazed at her with kind eyes, and his presence was so restful and gentle, it made Lily cry all the more.