Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 309

13:57 Mon, Jul 20

Chapter 309

Chapter 309

Marie was in the middle of telling Josh Senior that his tea was going cold when the phone rang.

She almost didn’t answer. It was in her cardigan pocket, and she had to shift the cushion she was holding to reach it. For one small moment the thought that it could wait crossed her mind before she looked at the

screen.

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The number wasn’t one she had saved. But the prefix was one she recognized.

The prison.

She answered.

“Mrs. Lowe.” The voice had the careful quality of someone trained to deliver certain kinds of news, the pace measured, the spacing between sentences deliberate. “This is the administrative office. We’re calling about Margaret Hart Lowe.”

Marie’s hand found the arm of the sofa.

“Your daughter collapsed earlier this afternoon at approximately two fifteen. She was unresponsive when found by staff. She has been transported by ambulance to St. Michael’s Hospital and is currently in the emergency department.”

The call continued with details that arrived in pieces, some landing and some not, and when it ended Marie stood holding the phone with both hands, mouth slightly open, the room gone very quiet.

“Josh,” she said.

He had been watching her since the moment her expression changed, already half out of the chair.

“Margaret collapsed,” she said. “They’ve taken her to St. Michael’s.”

The front door opened. Josh Junior came through carrying shopping bags from an ordinary errand, and he looked at his parents standing there with the particular stillness of people who had just received something terrible, and understood before either of them spoke.

He set the bags on the floor. “What happened?”

They were in the car in four minutes.

St. Michael’s emergency department had the hum of a place where the work never stopped, the lights too bright, the floor clean, the desk busy.

Two prison guards waited outside the main entrance and moved toward the family when they saw Marie. Margaret had arrived by ambulance and been taken straight into the emergency ward. That was the extent of what they knew.

The family was led to a waiting area. Chairs, a small table, a window looking down over a parking lot where people came and went on ordinary business.

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Marie sat, then stood, then went to the window. Josh Senior took a chair, hands between his knees, head bowed. Josh Junior stood near the door, watching it move every time someone passed through.

Marie called Claire from the window.

Claire arrived thirty seven minutes later, still in the coat she’d grabbed on her way out, David a step behind her. She came through the doors looking for Marie first, and Marie held onto her daughter the way she hadn’t held onto anyone since Josh Senior had disappeared for those four days, the old fear now feeling like a rehearsal for this one.

“What do they know?” Claire said.

“Nothing yet,” Marie said. “We’re waiting.”

David stood near Josh Senior, and the two men occupied their chairs with the quiet of men who didn’t know each other well but were sharing a waiting room for reasons that mattered.

Behind the emergency doors, Margaret lay unconscious while nurses adjusted the monitors around her. A doctor reviewed her bloodwork again, frowned, and ordered another scan.

The minutes accumulated in the waiting room.

At one point Marie sat beside Claire, then stood again and returned to the window, thinking about the cough. Two visits ago Margaret had coughed during their conversation, and Marie had noticed and said nothing, because Margaret waved it off and Marie let herself be waved off, not wanting to interrupt whatever fragile thing they were building.

“It’s my fault,” she said, not quite to Claire, just to the air.

Claire looked up.

“She was coughing. I heard it. I told myself it was nothing.” Marie pressed her fingers briefly against her mouth. “I was so busy watching whether things were getting better between us that I wasn’t watching whether she was alright.”

“Mum,” Claire said.

“I know there’s nothing I can do about it now,” Marie said, still facing the window. “I just needed to say it.”

Josh Senior lifted his head from the floor.

“If anything happens to her,” he said, his voice low and rougher than usual, “I don’t know what I’ll do with it.” He pressed his fist against his knee. “I spent her whole life making her feel like she was less than the others. I finally said what I needed to say to her, and I thought we had time.” He looked toward the door. “We need her to be alright.”

Nobody argued with that.

Josh Junior had been circling since they arrived, desk to door to window and back, asking twice for an update and getting nothing new both times. He stood with his arms crossed and his jaw tight, a man used to moving toward problems and solving them, now facing one with no door to walk through.

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Chapter 309

He thought about his sister for a long time.

The clock moved from four fifteen to four forty to five oh three.

At five twenty the emergency ward doors opened.

All five of them moved at once.

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A doctor came through, a man in his fifties in a white coat, tablet under his arm. He looked at the group already converging on him, and something in his face told Marie, who had watched every set of doors open for the last three hours, that what he had to say was not simple.

“Mrs. Lowe?”

Marie stepped forward.

“I’m Dr. Peters. I’ve been treating your daughter.”

Everyone leaned in slightly.

“Is she alive?” Marie said, and the bluntness of it wasn’t rudeness, only the one question that mattered before any other.

“Your daughter is alive.”

A sound came out of Marie that wasn’t quite a word.

“But we have her test results,” the doctor said, “and we’ve found something concerning. I need to discuss it with your family.”

He looked at each of them in turn. The mother, the daughter, the son, the son in law, the man who had sat with his head down for three hours.

“Can you tell us?” Josh Junior said from the back, his voice less steady than he meant it to be. “What’s actually wrong with her?”

The doctor looked at the file in his hand.

The fluorescent light above them hummed. Below the window, the parking lot was still full of people going about their ordinary afternoon.

And the family stood together, waiting to find out what was inside the answer he hadn’t given yet.

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