Too Close to the Sun (5 page)

*

When Gabby tried later to reconstruct the
rest of the evening, she found that she could summon few of the
details. Stella succeeded in spiriting Will away, but not for long;
because once all the guests were funneled into dinner, Gabby
noticed that he had been seated between her father and Cam and
Stella was way at the other end of the room, squeezed between Felix
Rodriguez and Bucky Forrester, a high-school friend of Max's.

Who was still nowhere to be seen. The second
great astonishment of the evening.

Gabby thought that Ava—always an inventive
hostess—had been truly inspired when she decided to serve dinner in
the tiny building that housed the French oak barrels where
Suncrest's famed vintages of cabernet sauvignon were aged. Built in
the nineteenth century of the same hand-cut sandstone as the
landmark winery building, it nestled in its shadow—a cozy refuge
that smelled of old wood and fermenting wine and the dust of two
centuries. The forty diners found themselves seated at a long,
narrow table draped with white Egyptian cotton, wine barrels
stacked ceiling-high all around them. Flickering candlelight from
eight wrought-iron candelabra provided the room's only
illumination, while baskets of white, yellow, and pink roses were a
gorgeous complement to Ava's delicate Worcester china and
glittering Venetian crystal. Three violinists at one end of the
room sprang into musical action once everyone was seated, a welcome
distraction for those awkward silences that invariably descended
from time to time during a five-course meal.

But nothing could disturb Gabby that
night—not the wine writer to her left she usually found too
snobbish for words, or Stella's father Robert Monaco to her right,
who didn't bother to look in her direction the entire evening.

What made the evening magic was Will Henley
seated half a table away. Will Henley catching her eye, or raising
his wineglass to her at a toast. Her keen awareness that he was
watching her during those moments when she refrained from watching
him.

They arrived at dessert. White-jacketed
waiters laid down plates of plum clafouti adorned with little puffs
of whipped cream, and poured coffee, tea, grappa, and port. Mrs. W
rose to speak, and all at once Gabby was reminded of the
extraordinary fact that Max had never shown up to his own
homecoming gala—
he'd never shown up!
—and the evening was
almost over.

Yet Ava Winsted stood at the head of the long
table looking unperturbed, smiling, winking at this guest and then
that. Gabby realized anew that this was a woman with incredible
self-possession. She appeared so at ease, so composed—yet had to be
churning inside. What public humiliation her son heaped on her, and
on Suncrest. What disrespect.

When the room had fallen silent, she spoke.
"I am so very proud of my son this evening. I certainly wish he
were here with us, but when I asked him yesterday, while he was
still in France, to handle an important meeting in San Francisco
this afternoon, he didn't hesitate for a second. He wanted to
plunge right into business. He is truly his father's son."

Applause followed that line and Gabby
dutifully clapped along. She tried to catch her father's eye down
the long table, but he had his head bent and was mopping his
forehead with a handkerchief. Gabby's heart ached for him. At least
she had Will Henley to distract her from the sickening truth that
Max Winsted, no-show or not, was taking over Suncrest. Her father
had nothing else to focus on. On either side of him sat Will and
Camella, both of whom had their gazes trained on their hostess.

"When tomorrow dawns," Mrs. W continued, "Max
will be here at Suncrest, bursting with ideas and excitement. I
only wish his father were here to witness his enthusiasm, for it
was Porter's fondest hope that his son take over the winery and
continue to lavish it with the loving care that has made it the
success we enjoy tonight."

Clapping followed that line, too, along with
a few
bravos
, and a man far down the table to Gabby's right
called out a hearty
Hear! Hear!
Gabby was just about to
raise her grappa to her lips for a sustaining sip when all of a
sudden she glimpsed a movement far up and across the table, not far
from where Mrs. W stood. Then, almost disbelieving, she realized
that the motion had come from her father, who was half rising from
his chair with a stricken look on his face and both hands clutching
his chest.

Then he toppled to the floor, slamming into
Will Henley on the way down.

She heard a woman cry
"My God!"
then
understood with some shock that the words had erupted from her own
mouth. She was out of her chair then—in fact, she realized it had
toppled backwards behind her—and was scrambling around the table
toward her father. She was vaguely aware of men and women rising to
their feet, their voices raised in confusion. Thunder pounded in
her ears and two childish syllables beat in her head.
Daddy.
Daddy.

He was on the ground, panting for breath,
Will crouched next to him, trying to loosen the collar of his dress
shirt, leaning his ear close to her father's chest.

"Does anybody have an aspirin?" he yelled
out. "You . . ." and he pointed to a man next to him. "Call 911 and
run down to the gate to tell the paramedics where to come."

Somebody found an aspirin, somebody else a
glass of water. Motion, bustle—to Gabby all of it was a blur. She
saw only one thing in that horrible pandemonium: her father on the
stone cold cellar floor, a grotesquely weak reflection of the man
she'd always known him to be.

Will stood outside the emergency room of St.
Helena Hospital with Gabby and her mother and sisters knotted all
around him. They made an incongruous group, he knew, he and Gabby
and Cam in black tie and cocktail dresses, clearly ripped from a
gala and thrust into this antiseptic, fluorescent-lit corridor
where people hungered for news they often didn't really want to
hear.

Will feared this news wouldn't be good. When
Cosimo DeLuca had been strapped onto the gurney and rolled toward
the ambulance, its strobe lights painting red stripes on his face,
he had looked ravaged, a shadow of the hale and tanned figure he'd
been earlier in the evening.

Now, an hour later, Will tried to keep his
own manner quietly confident, tried not to let his worry channel
into Gabby's makeup-smudged, fearful eyes. But it was difficult.
Her gaze seemed to bore into him, to demand answers to questions he
hoped she wouldn't actually ask.
How is he doing? Why is it
taking so long to hear something?
And, when her eyes were most
frightened,
Is he still alive?

Oh, those eyes. Hazel, long-lashed, wide—very
wide. Eyes a man could drown in. Set in a lovely tanned face. Her
hair was wavy and the color of wheat, and was tied in a knot that
was getting looser every hour.

He tore his eyes away from her, with some
effort. He was about to give her body an even more in-depth
analysis than he'd already conducted, and this was hardly the
appropriate hour for such a perusal. He forced himself to stare
instead at the swinging doors of the ER, and eventually he saw a
doctor emerge.

He was black and maybe thirty—a little young
for comfort in a situation like this one—but fast moving and
clear-eyed and somehow reassuring. He spied their little group even
before Will could signal him, as though in residency he'd trained
in how to match patient and family with no wasted motion. He held
out his hand to Will. "Dr. John Hearst. Are you the
son-in-law?"

The words tripped off Will's tongue. "Friend
of the family."

Dr. Hearst switched his gaze to Sofia DeLuca,
a small, plump brunette who from the moment she arrived at the
hospital had looked every frightened inch the wife of the patient.
"Mr. DeLuca is having a large heart attack," he told her, and
Will's own heart clenched as he watched Gabby's face crumple and
her arm tighten around her mother's shoulders. "We're doing
everything we can to stabilize him."

Gabby spoke, her voice almost inaudible under
the sudden blare of the PA system calling some other hapless family
member to the nurse's station. "Is he going to make it?"

The doctor seemed to dodge that. "Everything
we know about a heart attack like this one tells us that his best
chance of survival is if we can get the blocked artery in his heart
open. What we'd like to do is give him thrombolytic therapy."

"What is that?" Gabby asked.

"Essentially it's a clot-buster drug. We
would administer it through an IV." The doctor turned again to
Sofia DeLuca. "Let me add that normally we would seek the patient's
consent. But though your husband is conscious, Mrs. DeLuca, he's
groggy, and I'm not convinced that he's competent right now to make
an informed decision."

"So you need my mother to give that consent,"
Gabby said. "Is that right?"

Dr. Hearst nodded. "Yes, it is."

This part of the drama Will understood. This
was the cold, hard, make-a-tough-decision part. "What are the risks
of this therapy?" he asked.

"It's a powerful medication. There are
potentially serious side effects." Dr. Hearst turned his gaze to
Gabby. "For example, serious internal bleeding. A fatal bleeding.
Or a bleeding stroke."

In other words
, Will thought,
he
could die
.

Clearly Gabby also understood the
implications. She blanched, though she made no move and no sound.
Her mother whimpered the word
stroke
and shuddered. One of
the two sisters—Will had forgotten her name—started crying in
earnest, sobbing and choking and clutching her mother's hand.

"We want to administer the drug sooner rather
than later," the doctor added.

So there was time pressure, too. Of course.
Emergencies didn't allow the luxury of considering life-and-death
questions from every angle.

Will watched Gabby murmur to her mother and
sisters, the four of them a tableau of a family in trauma. He
couldn't make out her words, but it was obvious that she was
discussing the drug. Or trying to discuss it, because it was just
as obvious that no one else was saying a thing. Her mother and
sisters all seemed in too much of a state to weigh in.

She's going to have to push her mom to
give the go-ahead
, he realized, and his heart went out to her.
She would have to take responsibility for the decision that could
save, or end, her father's life.

He could see the weight of that burden etched
on her face. He shook his head, his worry now tinged with
frustration. He'd come to the hospital to help this woman and her
father, yet was stymied at her moment of greatest need. It would be
presumptuous of him, essentially a stranger here, to declare what
the right course of action was, though it seemed fairly clear. Then
again, right and wrong were easy for him in this situation, he
knew. It wasn't his father behind those swinging doors.

"Dr. Hearst, what are the risks if you don't
give Mr. DeLuca the drug?" he asked.

The answer was immediate. "The risks of doing
nothing are much greater. At best Mr. DeLuca will be left with a
severely weakened heart. At worst we won't be able to stabilize him
at all."

"And if his heart is weakened," Will said,
"there's a greater danger of more of these episodes down the
road?"

"Absolutely. And the next episode may be even
more serious than this one."

In other words, the next heart attack might
well kill him. If this one doesn't.

Gabby bent her head toward her mother.
"Mom?"

Silence. No one spoke. No other DeLuca seemed
to have what it took to say yes or no.

"Mom, we've got to do this," Gabby said.
"You've got to give the doctor your consent. I really think it's
the right thing to do."

Finally, her mother gave a barely perceptible
nod. That was all it took. "We'll know more within the hour," Dr.
Hearst said, and he went back the way he had come, the emergency
room's swinging doors slapping back and forth behind him.

Good for you, Gabby
, Will thought. He
watched her lead her mother to a wooden bench against the wall,
beneath a poster with pastel flowers that tried to strike a
cheerful note in this otherwise grim setting. The sisters followed,
then sat on either side of their mother and leaned in close. It
looked as if they were setting up a human cordon around her, though
the sad fact was that the danger they all feared couldn't be
guarded against. It would appear silently, suddenly, as a shadow in
Dr. Hearst's eyes, or in a grim set of his mouth, when next he
emerged from the ER to hunt down the DeLuca family.

Gabby broke away from her family and
approached him, high heels clicking on the highly polished linoleum
floor. Funny how affecting he found this woman. And it wasn't just
the sex appeal. In this short while, he felt he'd learned a fair
amount about her character. And found it damned impressive.

She halted in front of him. "I really
appreciate your coming to the hospital and staying all this time,
Will, but you should go. It's getting so late, and we don't know
how long it'll be before we hear something more. And besides . . ."
She stopped.

Will finished her sentence. "You feel weird
about my being here when I really don't know your family."

She seemed relieved that he'd gone ahead and
said it. "I feel like I'm imposing."

"You're not imposing. I'm here because I want
to be." He realized he must truly be exhausted, because he was
saying what popped into his head without thinking it through first.
He tried another tack. "I just want to help if I can."
Even
though you don't know me from Adam. Even though we just met
. "I
don't know, call me a Boy Scout."