The EMTs were just about to load Mr. Gunderson into the back of the ambulance when Sully sat down on the porch steps with a loud huff.

“Dad?” Maggie asked.

Sully was grabbing the front of his chest. Over his heart. He was pale as snow, sweaty, his eyes glassy, his breathing shallow and ragged.

“Dad!” Maggie shouted.

If you tell the truth you don’t have
to remember anything.

—Mark Twain

Chapter 2

It’s different when it’s your father, when your father is Sully, the most beloved general-store owner in a hundred square miles. Maggie felt a rising panic that she hoped didn’t show. First, she gave him an aspirin. Then she rattled off medication orders to the EMT, though she wasn’t the physician in charge and it would have to be approved via radio. Poor Mr. Gunderson ended up in the back of Stan’s squad car and Sully was put on the gurney. The emergency tech immediately started an EKG, slapping electrodes onto his chest, getting an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.

Maggie was in the ambulance immediately, reading the EKG as it was feeding out. Beau was barking and jumping outside the ambulance door, trying to get inside.

“Beau!” Maggie yelled. “No, Beau! Stay!”

She heard a whistle, then a disappointed whine, then the door to the ambulance closed and they pulled away.

“Maggie,” Sully said, pulling the mask away. “See he didn’t follow. I don’t leave him very much.”

Maggie peeked out the back window. “It’s okay, Dad. He’s in front of the porch with that guy. That camper. Enid will see he’s taken care of.”

The driver was on the radio saying they were en route with a possible coronary.

“The lost guy with dementia?” the dispatcher asked.

“Negative, we got Sully from the store. Chest pains, diaphoretic, BP 190 over 120, pulse rapid and thready. His daughter is with us. Dr. Maggie Sullivan. She wants us to draw an epi and administer nitro. She stuck an aspirin in his mouth.”

“Is he conscious?”

“I’m conscious,” Sully whispered. “Maggie. I ain’t quite ready.”

“Easy, Dad, easy. I’m right here for you,” Maggie said. “Let’s start some Ringer’s, TKO.”

“Not you,” Sully said. “You’re shaking!”

“You want me to do it, Sully?” the young EMT asked.

“Better you than her. Look at her.” Then he moaned.

“We need morphine,” Maggie said. “Get an order for the morphine and ask for airlift to Denver. We have to transport to Denver stat. Gimme that IV setup.”

She got the IV started immediately, so fast the EMT said, “Wow!”

A few years ago Walter, her stepfather, had suffered a small stroke. Stroke. That was her territory and she handled him with calm and ease. He was treated immediately, the recovery was swift, his disability minor and addressed in physical therapy in a matter of weeks. A textbook case.

This felt entirely different.

“Gimme your cell phone,” she said to the EMT. She didn’t have hers, of course, because it was back at Sully’s in her purse. The young man handed it over without question and she called Municipal Hospital. “This is Dr. Maggie Sullivan. I’m in an ambulance with my father, en route to you. I don’t have my cell. Can you connect me with Dr. Rob Hollis? It’s an emergency. Thank you.”

It took only a moment. “What have you got, Maggie?” her friend Rob asked.

“My dad—seventy-year-old male,” she said, running through his symptoms. “The EMT is running an EKG and we can send it.” She looked at the EMT. “We can send it, right?”