The War of the Roses

3

Oliver felt the first stab of pain just as Mr. Larabee finished talking, a familiarization lecture, really, outlining the company’s special problem with the Federal Trade Commission. He had been taking notes on a lined yellow legal pad and now the pencil made jiggling swirls as if it were writing independently. They were sitting around a conference table in the chairman’s office in Manhattan and he’d already had more cups of coffee before lunch than was his custom.

At first he tried to dismiss the pain, but when he began to break into a cold sweat, a charge of panic gripped him and he put down his pencil and tried to cover up his discomfort with a cough. Then the chairman began to direct his remarks to Oliver, and the words sounded muffled, incoherent, and far away. He tried to humor the pain away, hoping to extract a laugh from the abysmal predicament. It was everybody’s dread to be struck down suddenly in the middle of some important event. Bladder and bowels would void. There would be vomiting and, worst of all, he would be inconveniencing everybody around him, all of whom couldn’t care less. And there was the perennial joke about clean underwear just in case, but that usually applied to women.

‘You feel all right, Rose?’ the chairman asked.

Oliver managed a nod but knew it was unconvincing. Someone poured him a glass of water from a silver pitcher, but he couldn’t get it down.

‘This is ridiculous,’ he whispered.

He was led to a leather couch, and he lay down and managed to open his collar and loosen his tie.

‘I’m sure it will pass,’ he croaked. That, too, seemed unconvincing. The stabs of pain were becoming an onslaught behind his breastbone.

‘His color stinks,’ someone said. He felt a hand on his forehead.

‘Cold as ice.’

He heard someone say ‘ambulance,’ and realized suddenly that his sensory powers were becoming numb. His heart seemed ready to break out of his rib cage. His mind raced back and forth in time and memory and he wondered if he was the proverbial drowning man watching his life pass across his mind like a film in quadruple time.

‘This is stupid,’ he heard himself say, knowing that the words had not been spoken.

‘You’ll be fine,’ Larabee said unctuously. Oliver had detested the man immediately and resented his concern.

I’m only forty, he thought as panic turned to pity, directed inward. He prayed he wouldn’t soil his pants, remembering old admonitions from his childhood. There they were, the first signs. What galled him, too, was the lack of planning, and he wondered if he had paid all his insurance premiums. If you died at forty, your family would get a million, the insurance man had assured him, and Oliver had snickered at that, choosing term instead of whole life.

How can I die? he thought. My parents are still living. My grandparents on both sides died in their eighties. Then he counted all the people he would be letting down and that only increased his panic and he wondered if he would soon lose consciousness.

He lost track of time as he lay there. Someone covered him with a blanket but he still felt icy.

‘You’ll be fine,’ the chairman said, his jowly face flushed with either concern or annoyance.

I’ve blown the first big interview with a new law client, Oliver thought, imagining the reaction of his colleagues in the firm. Poor old Oliver. Sorry son of a bitch. Two antiseptic-smelling, white-jacketed attendants lifted him to a wheeled stretcher, and he saw the oxygen mask coming quickly toward him. He also saw his own finger crooking in front of his eyes, beckoning. Larabee’s face came closer.

‘Call my wife,’ Oliver croaked. The oxygen mask was clapped over his face, and he felt the motion of moving wheels, then the swirl of outdoor sounds and the ear-splitting siren as the ambulance shot forward. An icy stethoscope startled his suddenly bared chest.

‘Who knows?’ a voice said as the stethoscope was lifted.

‘Am I going to die?’ he whispered futilely into his mask. He burped and for a moment felt incredibly relieved until the pain started again. His mind had momentarily cleared, then he felt insular again as he pictured Barbara’s tearstained face, and Eve’s and Josh’s, hovering over him, waiting for the exact moment of demise, a death-watch. I’ve let them down, he rebuked himself.

A flood of letdowns careened down the spillway of his anxiety-ridden mind. Who would feed Benny? Who would turn the wine, care for the orchids, wind the tall mahogany clock? Who would repair the broken appliances, watch over the antiques, the paintings, the Staffordshire figures? And who would tune up the Ferrari? How dare they separate him from his chores, his possessions? The idea was almost as unbearable as the pain.

He felt a pinprick in his arm and soon the pain eased somewhat, and he was floating in space, like an astronaut in a space capsule. Some horrible nightmare nudged at his consciousness. But he couldn’t remember it, only that it was horrible. Then he sensed the ground moving under him as the wheels bumped along a corridor. Above him, the ceiling was lined with fluorescent white lights. The glare hurt his eyes.

When they removed the oxygen mask, he whispered again.

‘Call my wife. Call Barbara.’

Vaguely, he could feel them hooking him up to something and, in the distance, he heard a rhythmical blip* ping and unfamiliar sounds. Nearby, he could make out whispered voices hovering somewhere in space. If they could get Barbara in time, he knew that everything would be fine. His life depended on Barbara. He would not die if Barbara came.