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“Okay. I’ll do that. Harry—”
“Make the call, Sam.”
Her hands shook as she called 911 and requested an ambulance. In the hallway, she said to Darcy, “I called rescue for Nick. He’s unresponsive.”
“Oh my God! I’ll let them know downstairs.”
After nearly dropping the phone in her haste, Sam found Tracy’s number and willed her sister to answer the phone. “Trace! I need you to come over here. Hurry. Nick and Scotty are sick, and I have to take Nick to GW—”
“What? Okay, I’m coming. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“You have to stay with Scotty.” Her voice broke and tears flooded her eyes. “I can’t wake him up, Trace. Nick. He won’t wake up.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Sam went to Nick and shook him again, looking for something, anything. “Please,” she whispered. “Wake up.”
But like before, he didn’t move.
She laid her hand on his chest where the strong beat of his heart was the best thing she’d ever felt. Then she noted the rise and fall of his breathing. Those were good signs, weren’t they?
It seemed to take hours for the paramedics to arrive when it was probably only minutes. Everything moved very quickly. They had him on an IV and strapped to a gurney in a matter of seconds and were whisking him out of the house, escorted by the Secret Service.
Sam was torn in two very distinct directions—go with Nick or stay with Scotty until Tracy arrived. She looked in on Scotty, who’d gone back to sleep. The fact that he was sleeping through this cemented her decision.
“My sister Tracy is coming to stay with him,” Sam said to Darcy. “If he wakes up before she gets here, tell him I took his dad to see Harry. Don’t say anything about ambulances or paramedics.”
“Of course. I hope the vice president is okay.”
“So do I.”
Sam ran out of the house without a coat and bolted down the ramp to the back of the ambulance. The sight of Nick, unmoving and strapped to a gurney, his face ghostly pale, made Sam stagger under the weight of her fear. Thankfully, Brant took hold of her arm and helped her into the ambulance before she tripped and fell.
“Why won’t he wake up?” she asked the paramedics when they were on their way to GW.
“We think he’s severely dehydrated. We’re pumping fluid into him, which ought to help.”
Dehydrated. She could work with that.
“But he’s going to be okay, right?”
“He should be.”
Sam clung to those three little words on the rapid trip to the hospital, where he was taken straight into an exam room. One of the nurses put an arm around Sam’s shoulders and guided her out of the room. “Let me find a place for you to wait where you won’t be bothered, Mrs. Cappuano.”
“I want to be with him.”
“Give us a chance to get him stable, and we’ll get you right in with him.”
“He’s not stable now?”
“We’re still assessing his condition. It’ll be a few minutes.”
Harry came rushing in, and Sam had never been so happy to see anyone in her life.
“They’re telling me I can’t stay with him.”
“I’ll get you in there as soon as I can.” He gave her a quick hug. “Go with Nancy. She’ll get you settled somewhere to wait.”
“Harry, please... Please.”
“He’s going to be fine. I promise.”
Those were, without any doubt, among the best words she’d ever heard. While Brant and another member of Nick’s detail stood watch outside the exam room, Sam let Nancy lead her to a private waiting room. She wanted to ask why the agents could stay but she couldn’t, but she already knew the answer to that.
“Is there someone you could call to come sit with you?” Nancy asked.
The only person Sam wanted was Nick. “I, um, I could call my sister.”
“Would you like me to do it for you?”
Angela would freak out if she got a call from a nurse at the GW Emergency Room. “Thank you, but I’ll do it.”
“Is there anything I can get you? Water, coffee?”
“A stiff drink?” Sam said with a small smile.
“Wish that was on the menu.”
“I’m fine, thank you. Please let me know the second you hear anything.”
“We will. I just want to say... All of us here, we think you and the vice president make for a beautiful couple, and we admire you both so much.”
Sam blinked rapidly, overcome with emotion. “Thank you. That’s very nice of you.”
“He’s young and strong and healthy. Have faith in all those things.”
Sam nodded because she didn’t trust herself to speak.
Nancy left her alone, and Sam took a moment to get herself together before she called Ang.
“Hey, what’s up? I was going to call you later.”
“Ang.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Can you come to the GW ER? Please? Nick is here, and he’s really sick. I don’t know what’s wrong with him—”
“I’ll be there. Hang tight.”
“Thank you.” Thank God for her sisters, Sam thought. They always came running when she needed them. Her phone dinged with a text from Tracy saying she was at Sam’s house, and Scotty was still sleeping.
Let me know when you hear anything about Nick.
I will. Harry is with him now.
He’s in very good hands.
Sam tried to take comfort in that, in knowing Harry cared about him as much as anyone did, anyone other than her, that is. No one cared more about Nick than she did. She couldn’t sit still. She paced from one end of the small room to the other, worried about Nick, worried about Scotty waking up to Tracy rather than her. If anything happened to Nick...
That thought had her dropping into a chair because her legs were too wobbly to support her. If this was what he went through every time she walked out the door to go to work or got herself into a jam on the job, it was a wonder he could function.
Her phone rang and she took a call from Nick’s dad. “Hi, Leo.”
“Hey, Sam, I tried to reach Nick, but his phone goes right to voicemail. I know how busy he is, so I figured I’d call you about coming up for dinner this weekend.”
“Oh, um, he’s sick, Leo. He’s got the flu. In fact, I’m at the GW ER with him right now. They think he’s severely dehydrated.”
“Oh no! I just talked to him yesterday.”
“It came on him and Scotty out of nowhere.”
“Should I come down?”
“I don’t think you need to,” she said with more confidence than she felt. “They said he’s going to be fine, and I can keep you posted. No sense exposing you or Stacy and the kids to what they’ve got.”
“If you’re sure...”
“I’ll tell him you called, and I’ll text you.”
“Tell him...” Leo hesitated, but only for a second. “Tell him I love him.”
“I’ll do that.” She wiped tears from her eyes. Under normal circumstances, tears pissed her off. Today she couldn’t care less about them.
Angela arrived twenty minutes after Sam called her. Wearing yoga pants and a sweatshirt without a coat, she rushed into Sam’s outstretched arms.
“Thank you so much for coming.”
“How is he?”
“I haven’t heard anything since I talked to you. I’m losing my mind.”
“So what happened?”
Sam relayed the story of how Nick and Scotty had come home sick the day before, and while Scotty seemed a tad bit better after a rough night, Nick was worse. “I couldn’t get him to wake up, Ang. I’ve never been so scared in my life.” Even when she’d been at Stahl’s mercy in that basement, she hadn’t been nearly as frightened as when she couldn’t rouse Nick. Being scared for herself was a whole lot different than being scared for him.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_e39b4537-6c73-58ee-bf8f-b26ece1f163a)
TIME SLOWED TO a crawl. Sam experienced every minute as if it were an hour. Her heart ached with worry and fear and the agony of being separated from him when he needed her. If the roles had been reversed, he’d be raging at anyone who tried to keep him away from her. She headed to the door to start raging, and nearly ran into Harry.
“How is he?”
“He’s conscious but badly dehydrated and a little confused due to the dehydration. We’re pumping him full of fluid, and he should be much better in a couple of hours.”
The flood of relief was so profound that Sam ended up in Harry’s arms sobbing.
He held her until she got it all out.
“Sorry,” she said, embarrassed by her meltdown.
“Don’t be. I was pretty freaked out myself when you said he was unresponsive.”
“Glad it wasn’t just me.”
“It definitely wasn’t just you. You want to see him?”
“Yeah.” The understatement of a lifetime.
“Come on.” He gestured for Angela to join them as they walked through the ER to Nick’s room, where Brant and one of the other agents, whose name escaped her at the moment, were standing watch.
“Good to hear he’s doing better,” Brant said.
Sam nodded in agreement. In the room, a nurse typed on a computer. Nick was asleep, and when she looked extra close, she saw a tad bit more color in his cheeks than he’d had earlier.
Her cell phone rang, but she ignored it to go to him, to run her hand over his face, to brush the hair back from his forehead so she could kiss him there. “How’s his fever?” she asked the nurse.
“It was down to 102.5 the last time we checked it. He’s getting something for that in the IV.”
“Good, that’s really good.”
“He’ll be fine,” the nurse said. “It’s just going to take a day or two.”
Sam’s phone rang again, and since Nick was sound asleep, she looked at the caller ID. Terry O’Connor. She took the call from Nick’s chief of staff. “Hi, Terry.”
“What’s going on? I heard from the Secret Service that he’s in the hospital.”
Sam filled him in on what’d happened.
“Jesus. I was with him when it came on yesterday. Never seen anyone go down that hard or that fast. Scared the shit out of me and everyone else around here.”
“Scared me too. I’ve never seen him with a cold, let alone something like this.”
“The press is going crazy wanting to know what’s wrong with him. What would you like me to tell them?”
“Do we have to say anything?”
“I’d recommend we give them a little something to stop the feeding frenzy. I saw one comment online that people are speculating he was poisoned.”
