“I’ve changed my mind,” I say. “There is something you can do for me.”

  “Emily, I would do anything for you. You know that.”

  “Actually, I do know that,” I say. “I’m a little too lovable for my own good.”

  Mike is nodding and smiling. I’m not sure he got the joke.

  “Okay. How may I help you, mademoiselle?” he asks.

  “I’ve gotta get back to work. And I’m just not feeling it. Have you got an amphetamine in that vault?” I ask.

  Mike’s eyes widen.

  “You’ve come to the right place, my lady,” he says.

  He reaches into the inside vest pocket of his stupid blue blazer. Then he smiles and says, “Emily, I’ve got a lid-popper with your name on it. How many you need?”

  “I need about forty of them. But I’ll settle for just one.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  THE HUGE MOLLY THAT Mike Miller sells me must be the amphetamine version of a 7-Eleven Big Gulp. I swallow it, and a shudder goes through me. This feeling is nothing like the reds that I popped when I was at Princeton and had to stay awake to finish a term paper, nothing like the ones that got me through a few deadly boring dinner parties that my folks insisted I attend.

  Now even with just one or two drinks inside me I feel myself going from buzz to blotto.

  Ted pulls me a nice big glass of ginger ale with a splash of bitters. That’s his way of saying that he knows what I’m going through. Okay. Good. I do have to get back to work, and I do have to deal with my irritating boss and my clients and my colleagues.

  My straw and I are playing with the ice cubes in my ginger ale when I have a visitor. A woman—my age, my height, my hair color—stops at my spot. I think she’s on her way to the ladies’ room.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she says.

  “Nothing hard,” I say. “No state capitals.”

  She pauses. She’s confused. I don’t blame her. So am I. Then she continues.

  “I was just wondering. What’s the name of that mascara you’re wearing?”

  Without even a second’s pause, I say, “I have no idea, ma’am.”

  She smiles and says, “Come on. What is it?”

  I consider telling her that I’m feeling so strange in my blurry little upper world that even if I knew the brand’s name, I might not be able to enunciate the word. The lady walks away. I think I hear her mumble the word bitch. Too bad she thinks that; I’d have told her if I could only remember.

  I look around the room. It’s filling up with people. Lunch-break people. People in neat jeans, people with good haircuts. In other words, people with real jobs, people who care about those jobs.

  The air is filled with the smell of broiling burgers and fries. One of Ted’s bartenders, Aviva, has come on. Ted is mostly making cocktails. Aviva is mostly pulling Allagash White on tap.

  Suddenly I’m feeling sleepy. The glass of ginger ale feels heavy, and I’m afraid that if I do manage to lift the glass, I won’t be able to find my mouth. My instinct is to rest my head on the bar, like a first grader who stayed up too late the night before. I am, however, somewhat aware that Ted probably doesn’t want anyone snoring on his bar.

  In a moment I see Aviva standing before me. She doesn’t look angry. She doesn’t look happy. She simply looks… professional. Yeah, professional. That’s the word. Why I decide to share this opinion with this annoyingly attractive bartender is a mystery to me. But things you think when you’re a wee bit drunk are often a mystery. I speak.

  “You look… you look like a real bartender, like a beautiful bartender in a movie or a TV show. Real professional. Like that girl on Cheers. The first girl. Shirley Long.”

  “I don’t know that. Is that a movie?” Aviva asks.

  “No,” I say, in a voice that even I know is way too loud. “It’s a TV show. You don’t know Cheers?”

  She does not answer my question. Instead she says, “Emily, how about you go to the back room and take a little nap. You rest, and I’ll stay here and help Teddy.”

  I think I just want to say no, but instead I say, “Teddy? Teddy? When did you start calling him Teddy? I never heard anyone call him that.”

  For reasons that I can’t explain (of course), I just want to leave the bar. I must get to the office. I really do have work. I have to return calls and texts and emails. I’m so very busy. And I’m so good at my job. And everyone likes working with me.

  I look at the guy sitting next to me, a middle-aged guy, fifty maybe. He’s dressed like a teenager from the fifties. Tight jeans and a white T-shirt and classic Stan Smith sneaks.

  “I gotta get back to my office,” I say to him.

  “Uh-huh,” he says. Aviva is watching me closely. Then the guy speaks to me.

  “It’s Shelley,” he says.

  “What?” I say.

  I just discovered how to straighten my legs. I am convinced that I am finally standing up.

  “The woman on Cheers. The actress, her name is Shelley Long. Not Shirley.”

  I don’t mean to be rude, but I only have enough energy to say, “Oh… thanks.”

  No time for good-byes. I’m only slightly confused. I head toward the door. I’ve had this wonderful, glorious feeling a million times before. My boozed-up body decides its own direction. My brain is barely involved in my body’s decisions. I am like a mechanical rag doll. I push the door open. It’s not sunny outside, but it sure as hell is bright. I fumble in my pocketbook for my sunglasses. I can’t find them. Maybe I should go back. Maybe I left them in the bar. I turn. But my shoes simply do not move with my feet.

  My left shoulder explodes with pain, and just as suddenly it shoots down my left arm. I think the pain might burst through my fingertips. I shake. With pain. With fear. My chest begins to throb with pain, as if some powerful person five times my weight is squeezing me hard from behind. These are symptoms of what? A stroke? A heart attack? Some neurologic catastrophe? Does it matter? One thing is certain, I know I’m going to die.

  Again, I try to turn, and then I fall, a five-foot-six woman falling straight down on her face like a piece of wood. I am gone. I am out. I assume that I am dead.

  CHAPTER

  5

  ONE OF MY EYES is working. The other eye sees nothing. I am in a bed somewhere.

  This is not good.

  Two men who are wearing powder-blue scrubs are standing over me. Three women, I think, are standing with the men. Maybe it’s four women. Have I forgotten how to count? It is a great wall of powder blue. Nurses and doctors and all those eager little residents. Clearly, I’m in a hospital.

  This is not good.

  I tell myself, Let’s look on the bright side, Emily. At least one thing’s for sure. You’re not dead. Put more accurately, as I can figure by the voices coming from around me: You’re not dead yet.

  MALE VOICE 1: So, you’ve ruled out cardio?

  MALE VOICE 2: Yeah, sure. Unless we cut her open and see something we don’t like. The echo is good. The first two ECGs are good. The echo confirmed it. The enzymes are all good. The ankle pulse is still very fast.

  (I feel hands touching my ankles and legs. Then I hear people reading off a bunch of numbers and then responses.)

  MALE VOICE 3: Not terrible.

  MALE VOICE 2: Not great, either.

  Damn, why did this third guy have to show up to contradict the other guy?

  And damn, it turns out that he’s the one my body decides to go with.

  Suddenly there is a sharp pain in my chest, a pain so huge that I begin gagging. The back of my head throbs with pain. It feels as if I’m choking, really choking, a car tire is stuck in my throat, and the pain in my head will have to escape through my ears. I want to die, and I may just get my wish. Air. What the hell happened to my air?

  Alarms and screeching sirens go off. It’s just as I thought, that crappy little two-pronged plastic plug in my nose is totally useless. Somebody has read my mind. Somebody pulls it out.

  MALE VOICE 2: (yelling) Give her a tube!

  MALE VOICE 1: (yelling louder) No tube! It’s got to be her heart. Fuck the cardio results. I’m betting it’s the heart.

  Then I hear a woman’s voice. It is a calmer, more soothing voice. “Swab,” she says almost softly. Then, only a little louder, she says, “Double swab.” A moment later I feel a sharp stabbing pain just above my breastbone. Then I’m out.

  The next time I am conscious—I don’t know how much later—I hear the same woman’s voice. Maybe it’s a few seconds later, maybe a few hours, maybe weeks.

  “Ma’am,” the woman says. “It’s all right. It was your heart—it stopped for a moment but we got it going again. Dr. Calvelli is coordinating your recovery. He’s great, one of our best. He’ll be in to see you soon. Everything is going to be…”

  My body begins shaking, and the pain that I had in my chest has made a mad rush to my back. I am not nauseated. I am not gagging. Is this what labor feels like? Is this what death feels like?

  “Call it!” someone shouts.

  A screeching alarm begins. A red light over my bed begins to flash. A voice on a loudspeaker: “Patient emergency! Patient emergency! Patient…”

  CHAPTER

  6

  SURPRISE! THE NEXT DAY arrives, and I am still here.

  I am actually a living, breathing part of the world. For all I know, I’m barely living and barely breathing, but here I am in a hospital bed. There are plastic tubes and noisy monitors connected to my arms and my neck. There is a persistent but small amount of pain in my chest. There is a woman in a sort of white pantsuit sitting in a visitor’s chair. The woman in the white suit seems to be studying me as if I were a painting hanging in a museum.

  “I see we are wide awake,” the woman says.

  Because she uses the plural pronoun we, I am sure that the woman is a nurse. In the next few minutes I learn that she is relentlessly sweet, kind, and cheerful. But her eyes are deep, strong. I’m smart enough to realize that she’s going to be in charge of me, not the other way around. I will come to learn that this woman is the impossible combination of strength and sweetness, muscle and mercy.

  “For someone who’s been through what you’ve been through, you are looking excellent,” she says as she straightens my top sheet and blanket.

  There is no mirror nearby, so I don’t know for certain how I look. But I’m pretty sure that the word excellent does not apply. Yet my sense is that this is a woman who is pretty much addicted to the truth. Then she speaks again.

  “Now, before I prattle on and on, I’ll introduce myself. I’m Betsey Brown. I’m a surgical nurse. If there’s anything you need, just…”

  But she won’t be finishing her sentence. We both hear a man’s voice, a voice that sounds both New York City tough yet nice-guy gentle.

  “Sorry to interrupt you, but can I come in?”

  Both the nurse and I look toward the doorway. Hmmm. I’m thinking that I truly must be alive, because this is one sweet-looking just-tall-enough short guy: longish dark hair, glasses in nerdy black frames, jeans, all topped off with a doctor’s white coat.

  “I’m Doctor Calvelli,” he says. “And you are…” He doesn’t know my name. He glances down at his iPad. “And you are Ms. Emily Atkinson, who, I could add, has miraculously survived a heart attack and a severe lung infection.”

  “Wow, I did both those things?” I say. Dr. Salvatore (it says so on his ID badge) Calvelli smiles at my little joke.

  Dr. Calvelli (who in my mind has already become “Dr. Sal”) looks at Betsey Brown and then says, “Is it my imagination or did I see you listed for renal TP this morning, Betsey?”

  “I am so talented that I can be in two or three places at once,” Nurse Brown says. Then she adds, “I’ll say good-bye so you can talk to Ms. Atkinson privately.”

  “No, please stay,” I say. “That way, when the doctor leaves and I can’t remember anything he told me, I’ll be able to ask you.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  MY BUDDY DR. SAL pulls up a chair, and my buddy Nurse Betsey stands at the foot of my bed.

  But I can sense that although this scenario has all the trappings of a children’s story (Dr. Sal and Nurse Betsey Help Emily Get Better), this is going to be something serious. My guess is confirmed as I watch the doctor’s sweet little smile transform into a sort of blank-faced seriousness.

  “So, Emily,” he begins, “I’m the doctor who took care of you when they brought you in yesterday. And, to put it mildly, it was touch-and-go, as we say, from the moment you arrived… unconscious. To begin with, you were having a heart attack. You had a blockage in one artery and a thickening of the aorta wall. It was necess…”

  I really think I’m being helpful when I interrupt and say, “My father and my grandfather both had bypass procedures, three arteries each…”

  “Okay. Fine. That’s helpful to know,” he says, “but the tests show that your coronary problem—which could very well be hereditary—was exacerbated by alcohol and drugs.”

  My self-defense mechanism kicks right in.

  “Like I said, it’s got to be hereditary. But I’ll be honest. I do have one or two drinks every day. I admit it, and I occasionally do some recreational weed. So there you go.”

  Calvelli is listening to me, but I can see he’s not buying it. Or he doesn’t care. Or (most likely) he’s heard this song a million times before. Betsey Brown remains looking on, but she is looking on quite seriously. Calvelli continues.

  “Our tests show that your blood alcohol was point-two-five. That’s severe intoxication. Much higher than that, you might not still be alive and breathing.”

  And speaking of breathing, what Calvelli says next is almost as frightening as the cardiac info.

  “You also presented with a serious lung infection.”

  “Imagine that,” I say, but, wow, this flirtatious-funny approach of mine is not working with Dr. Sal. If anything, my act may actually be pissing him off.

  “Lung infection? It’s a big bad day for me if I even share one Marlboro Light with a friend.” There is a dead silence in the room. So I jump right in.

  “I was at a nasty little party the other night. And you know the old saying, ‘If you do coke or crack at a party, it’s not really doing drugs.’”

  “My instincts tell me that you know this is serious, Ms. Atkinson.”

  Why am I not listening? Why are the doctor’s comments not registering for me? What the hell is wrong with me? Other than heart disease and a lung infection?

  Calvelli stands up.

  “I don’t want to give a sermon. I’m a doctor, not a preacher. But the fact is, Ms. Atkinson, that there’s the truth we tell ourselves and others, and then… well, there’s the actual truth.”

  I say nothing, but, damn it, I feel my eyes welling with tears. Holding the tears back is making my chest hurt worse. And I know my hair is greasy. And I know I’m lying like a five-year-old.

  I cannot keep the tears inside of me. I dab at my eyes with the top of the bedsheet. I do the best I can at taking a deep breath. Then I say, “Truth or not, what are we going to do about all this? The heart? The lung?”

  Betsey walks from the front of my bed to the side of my bed. She takes my hand in hers.

  “For the lung infection, all I can do right now is prescribe medication. I started you on a steroid regimen last night. But the best thing to be done is something only you can do.”

  Stand aside, Emily. Here it comes. I’ve read about it. I’ve thought about it. And, God knows, my friends have mentioned it a few times.

  So I say it. “An alcohol recovery program. Great. Wonderful. I’ll sign up today. Now. What about my heart? Bypass? Replacement? What?”

  “We ballooned the worst artery last night. But in your condition, we have to postpone cardiac surgery. I’ve already discussed it with Dr. Mullen, head of cardiology.”

  “My condition? If I clean up my act a little, I’ll be fine,” I say. As gentle and charming as Dr. Calvelli is, I am becoming some awful combination of angry and sad. Ridiculous, I know, but that’s how I’m feeling.

  “Ms. Atkinson, listen to me. At the moment, we’re somewhat limited in recommending both medication and surgical procedures for you.” I must look a little confused, because then he adds, “due to your condition.”

  I know I’m woozy. But this is starting to not make any sense. Because of my heart condition? They can’t do anything about my heart condition?

  He and the nurse look at each other for a second. He takes a step closer to the bed.

  “Something that invasive… at this point… well, there could be a risk to the fetus.”

  Say what? That’s what I’m thinking. And while my shock and confusion don’t seem to register with the doctor, they do with the nurse.

  Betsey Brown leans in toward me and smiles gently. Then she speaks.

  “Emily, you’re pregnant.”

  I react like a dumb teenager.

  “I can’t be,” I say. “I’d feel it. I’d know it.”

  I think this doctor has grown very tired of me. And why not? Hell. Even I’ve grown tired of me.

  Calvelli takes a few steps toward the door. Then he speaks.

  “It’s very early, but your blood work has spoken. You are definitely pregnant.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  MY HOSPITAL ROOM IS filled with baskets of tulips and buckets of carnations and vases of white roses and sprays of lilacs. Work colleagues. Ted. My friend Quinn. The nurse who checked my vitals this morning said, “Smells like a rich man’s funeral in here.”

  Cheerful way to start the day.

  Although the room is filled with flowers, at my own request, the room has not been filled with visitors. Everyone’s been told to stay away. I really like a lot of people (and I think that a lot of people return the feeling), but I don’t have the energy or the interest to be “good old charming Emily.” Plus, I’ve got to absorb… the… surprise… the shock of my… What did the doctor say? Condition? I even have trouble thinking about the word… pregnancy.