“I'll meet him there,” Peter told the paramedics and hurried to the men's room to see what he could do with his pants and jacket. He kept a clean shirt in a drawer, but the rest of him was a mess. Even his shoes were covered with what Frank had vomited on him. But even more than that, Peter still felt covered by the ooze of what he'd said to him just before that. The viciousness that he had hurled at him was so vile it had almost killed him.

And five minutes later, Peter emerged from the men's room in a clean shirt, pants that had been cleaned as best he could, a sweater, and clean shoes. He went to his office to call Katie. Luckily, she was still at home, she had been just about to go out and do some errands. And as she answered the phone, Peter almost choked on his own words. He didn't know how to tell her.

“Katie …I …I'm glad you're home.” She wanted to ask him why, he had been so strange with her lately, clingy in an odd way, and depressed. He had watched television a lot a few weeks before, and then not at all. He had been obsessed with CNN for a few days, and he had been so strange about wanting to take a vacation with her.

“Is something wrong?” She glanced at her watch. She still had a number of things to do for Mike before he left for Princeton in the morning. He needed a rug for his room, and she needed to get him a new bedspread. But she was suddenly caught short by the tone of her husband's voice when he answered.

“Yes …there is …Katie, he's all right now, but it's your father.” She almost stopped breathing when he said it. “He had a heart attack in the office.” He didn't tell her how close he'd come, or that his heart had actually stopped beating for a few seconds. The doctors could tell her that later. “They just took him to New York Hospital and I'm on my way there now. ? think you should come in as soon as you can. He's feeling pretty rocky.”

“Is he all right?” She sounded as though the bottom had just fallen out of her world, and it had, and for an ugly moment Peter couldn't help wondering if she would have sounded like that if it had been him instead of her father. Or was Frank right? Was he just a toy they had bought and paid for?

“I think he'll be all right. It looked a little grim there for a minute, but the guys from 911 were great. We had paramedics here and the fire department,” and there was still a policeman outside calming everyone down, and taking a report from Frank's secretary, though even she didn't know exactly what had happened. They were waiting to talk to Peter, but it all seemed pretty straightforward. But as Peter listened to his wife, he realized that she was crying. “Take it easy, sweetheart. He's fine. I just think you should come in to see him.” But he suddenly wondered if she'd be in any shape to drive. He didn't want her having an accident on the way in from Greenwich. “Is Mike around?” She sobbed into the phone that he wasn't. He could have driven his mother in if he'd been there. Paul only had a learner's permit, and wasn't a good enough driver to come all the way in from Greenwich. “Could you get one of the neighbors to drive you?”

“I can drive myself,” she said, still crying. “What happened? He was fine yesterday. He's always been in such good health.” He had, but there were mitigating factors.

“He's a seventy-year-old man, Kate, and he's under a lot of pressure.”

She stopped crying then, and her tone was hard when she asked the question. “Were you two having an argument about the hearings again?” She knew they'd been planning to meet about it.

“We were discussing it.” But they were doing more than that. Frank had been hurling abuse at him, but he didn't want to say anything about it to Katie. What her father had said had been too hurtful to repeat, particularly in light of what had happened after. If he died now, Peter didn't want Kate to know that had come between them.

“You must have been doing more than 'discussing' if he had a heart attack,” she said, accusing him, but he didn't want to waste time with her on the phone and he said so.

“I think you should come in. We can talk about all this later. He's going to cardiac ICU,” he said bluntly, and she started crying again. Peter hated the thought of her driving. “I'm going over now, and see what's happening. I'll call you in the car if anything changes. Make sure you leave your phone on.

“Obviously,” she said with a cutting edge to her voice as she blew her nose. “Just make sure you don't say anything to upset him.”

But Frank was beyond listening to anyone when Peter got to New York Hospital twenty minutes later. He had to talk to the police first, sign some forms the paramedics had left, and he got caught in endless traffic on his way to the East River. And when he got there, Frank had already been heavily sedated. He was being closely watched, and his face had gone from florid to gray now. His hair was disheveled, there was still dried vomit on his chin, and his bare chest was covered with wires and sensors. He was attached to what looked like half a dozen machines, and he looked both extremely sick and far older than he had an hour before. And the doctor told Peter honestly that Frank was by no means out of the woods yet. He had had a major heart attack, and there was still a risk that his heart would go back into fibrillation. The next twenty-four hours were crucial. And looking at him, it was easy to believe all of it. What was impossible to believe was that two hours before, he had actually looked youthful and healthy when Peter walked into his office.

Peter waited for Kate in the lobby downstairs, and he tried to warn her before she came up. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and her hair was a mess, and she had a wild-eyed look of panic as she rode up in the elevator with her husband.

“How is he?” she asked for the fifth time since she'd arrived. She was completely distraught, and unusually distracted.

“You'll see. Calm down. I think he looks a lot worse than he is.” The machines attached to him were frightening, and he looked like a body they were working on, more than just a patient. But Katie was in no way prepared for what she saw when she went to the CICU and caught a glimpse of her father. She started sobbing the moment she saw him, and had to force herself not to cry when she stood next to him and clutched his hand. But he opened his eyes and recognized her, and then drifted off to a drug-induced sleep again. They wanted him to rest completely for the next few days, in the hope that he'd live through it.

“Oh my God,” she said, nearly collapsing into Peter's arms as she left the room. He had to get her into a chair as quickly as he could, and a nurse brought her a drink of water. “I just can't believe it.” She couldn't stop crying for the next half hour, and Peter sat with her. And when the doctor finally came back to talk to them, he said that Frank had about a 50-50 chance of surviving.

His words sent Kate into hysterics again, and she spent the rest of the afternoon crying in a chair outside the CICU, and going in to visit him every half hour for five minutes, when they let her. But most of the times she went in, he was unconscious. And by the end of the day, Peter tried to get her to leave to get something to eat, but she absolutely refused. She said she would sleep in the waiting room for as long as she needed to, but she wasn't leaving, not for an instant.

“Kate, you have to,” Peter said gently. “It won't help anything if you get sick too. He'll be all right for an hour or so. You can go to the apartment and lie down, and they'll call you if they need to.”

“Don't waste your breath,” she said stubbornly with the look of a child who would not be moved. “I'm staying with him. I'm sleeping here tonight, and for as long as I have to till he's out of danger.” In truth, it was nothing more or less than Peter had expected.

“I should go home and check on the boys at some point,” he said thoughtfully, and she nodded. Her children were the last thing on her mind as she sat in the bleak hallway. “I'll go out and settle them down, and then I'll come back later tonight,” he said, making a plan while he talked, and she nodded. “Will you be all right while I'm gone?” he asked her gently, but she scarcely looked at him. She already looked bereft as she stared out the window. She couldn't even imagine a world without her father. For the first twenty years of her life, he had been all she had in the world. And for the next twenty, he had been one of the most important people in her life. Peter thought Frank was a land of love object to her, a passion of sorts, almost an obsession, and although he would never have said it, she seemed to love him more than her own children. “Hell be all right,” he said softly, but she only cried and shook her head as he left, and he knew there was nothing more he could do for her. All she wanted was her daddy.

Peter drove home as quickly as he could in the Friday night melee, and fortunately all three boys were home when he got in, and he told them as gently as he could about Frank's heart attack, and all three of them were deeply worried. He reassured them as best he could, and when Mike asked, he said only that they'd been having a business meeting when it happened. Mike wanted to go into town to see his grandfather, but Peter thought it was better to wait. When Frank was feeling up to it, his oldest grandson could come in to see him from Princeton.

“What about tomorrow, Dad?” Mike asked. They were supposed to take him to Princeton the next day, and as far as Peter knew, almost everything was ready except for the rug and bedspread Kate hadn't been able to get that afternoon, but Mike could make do without them.

“I'll take you in the morning. I think your mom is going to want to stay with Granddad.”

Peter took them out to a quick dinner, and by nine o'clock he headed back to town, and called Kate from the car. She said there was no change, although she thought he looked worse than he had a few hours before, but the nurse taking care of him had said that was to be expected.

Peter got back to the hospital at ten, and stayed with her till after midnight, and then he went back to Greenwich to be with the boys. And he took Mike to school with all his trunks and bags and sporting gear at eight o'clock the next morning. He had been assigned a room with two other guys and by noon Peter had done everything that was expected. He gave Mike a hug, wished him well, and headed back to New York to see Kate and her father. He got there just before two, and he was astonished at what he found there. Frank was sitting up in bed, looking weak and tired. He was still pale, but his hair was combed, he had clean pajamas on, and Kate was spooning soup into him like a baby. It was a huge improvement.

“Well, well,” he said as he walked in. “I'd say it looks like you turned a corner,” he said, and Frank smiled. But Peter was still cautious with him. He couldn't forget the things he'd said, or the tone with which he'd said them. But in spite of that, he didn't begrudge him his survival. “Where'd you get the fancy pajamas?” He certainly didn't look like the same man who'd lain on his office floor, covered in his own vomit only the day before, and Kate smiled brightly. She didn't have those memories to contend with, nor the ones of his vicious attack on Peter about having been bought and paid for.

“I had Bergdorf messenger them over,” she said, looking pleased. “The nurse said they might move Daddy to a private room tomorrow if he keeps improving.” Kate herself looked exhausted, but she didn't falter for a moment. She would have given him all her strength, all her lifeblood, if it would have helped him.

“Well, that's good news,” Peter said, and then told them both about Mike's arrival at Princeton. Frank looked extremely pleased, and a little while later, Kate gently helped him lie down again for a nap, and she and Peter walked out into the hallway. But she didn't look nearly as animated as she had when she was spooning soup into her father. And Peter knew instantly that something had happened.

“Daddy told me about yesterday,” she said with a pointed look as they wandered down the hallway.

“What does that mean?” He was tired himself, and had no interest in playing games with her. He found it hard to believe his father-in-law had confessed how vicious he had been, or repeated what he'd said to and about Peter. Peter had never known him to apologize, or admit a mistake, even when it was blatant.

“You know what it means,” she said, stopping to look at him, wondering if she even knew him. “He said you threatened him about the hearings, almost to the point of violence.”

“He said what?” Peter almost couldn't believe it.