The Half Heartbeat That Exposed What Ethan’s Brother Had Stolen

“I’m all right,” he said.

“You can’t breathe.”

“Been breathing seventy-two years.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

Frank’s mouth moved as if he had another remark prepared, but the effort of standing used it up.

Ethan guided him into the chair without forcing him. The rusted knife remained on the table. Ethan put the recovered half-pill in a clean saucer and slid it away from the grime.

“When did you last take a full dose?”

Frank glanced toward Margaret.

She said, “Monday.”

It was Thursday.

Ethan pulled out his phone.

Frank reached for his wrist, missed, and let his hand fall. “No ambulance. They charge you for breathing in those things.”

“I’ll pay.”

“That’s what started this.”

The words landed with more force than Frank intended. He turned his face away.

Ethan called anyway.

While they waited, he found the prescription bottle in a cabinet above the stove. It had been filled forty-three days earlier for thirty tablets. Four remained, each cut unevenly. The label instructed Frank to take one daily.

Ethan held the bottle toward Margaret.

“Why didn’t you tell the pharmacy?”

“We did.”

“And?”

“They said the card wouldn’t go through. Grant said he’d handle it.”

“Did you call me?”

Her eyes moved toward the notebook on the table.

Ethan stopped asking.

The paramedics arrived in eight minutes, bringing cold air and the smell of rain into the kitchen. One of them, a woman with a red braid tucked under a navy cap, knelt beside Frank and attached leads beneath his shirt. Frank apologized each time she touched him, as though his illness were an inconvenience he had created for her personally.

The second paramedic looked into the refrigerator while searching for juice.

“Is there anything with sugar?”

Margaret said, “There might be jelly.”

There was no jelly.

Ethan stood near the sink, answering questions about Frank’s medical history and discovering how little he knew. He knew his father had suffered a mild heart attack three years earlier. He knew there had been a stent. He knew Grant took him to appointments.

He did not know the name of the cardiologist.

He did not know Frank’s dosage.

He did not know Frank had lost twenty-one pounds.

When the paramedic asked how long the chest pressure had been occurring, Frank said, “Off and on.”

Margaret said, “Six weeks.”

Frank looked at her.

“What?” she said. “It has.”

The monitor did not show an acute heart attack, but the paramedics would not leave him there. Frank resisted until the woman with the red braid told him that refusing transport meant signing a form stating he understood he might die.

“That’s dramatic,” Frank muttered.

“No,” she said. “That’s the form.”

He signed nothing. He allowed them to place him on the stretcher.

As they carried him through the living room, he pointed toward the kitchen.

“Don’t leave that knife where your mother can grab it.”

Margaret watched him go. “I’ve used a knife before.”

“Not that one. Handle’s loose.”

It was such an ordinary argument that Ethan nearly laughed. The laugh rose into his throat and stopped there.

He rode to the hospital with Margaret in his car. The unopened condominium documents lay on the passenger-side floor beneath her shoes. Ethan had closed on the unit that morning, a glass-and-brick place overlooking the river in Columbus. He had bought it after his divorce because the old house had felt too large and too quiet. The keys had been delivered to his office in the envelope he carried into his parents’ kitchen.

Margaret picked them up when they stopped at a light.

“New place?”

“Yes.”

“Nice?”

“Too nice.”

She placed the keys in the cup holder. “That sounds like you.”

He glanced at her.

She stared out the window. A city bus pulled alongside them, its windows fogged by the breath of passengers. Margaret watched a boy in a red hood draw circles on the glass.

Ethan said, “What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“You said it like it meant something.”

“I’m tired.”

He let the question go, though he knew she had not answered it.

At the hospital, Frank was taken behind a curtain and then into a room. Blood was drawn. A chest X-ray was ordered. A nurse brought Margaret crackers and peanut butter after noticing the way she looked at the vending machines.

Margaret ate one cracker and folded the second into its wrapper.

“You can have more,” Ethan said.

“I know.”

“Then eat.”

She slid the cracker into her purse.

Ethan looked away. Across the waiting room, a television showed a daytime judge scolding a man over a damaged lawn mower. Nobody watched it. A toddler slept across two plastic chairs while his mother filled out forms with a pen chained to a clipboard.

Ethan called Grant.

The call went directly to voicemail.

He called again.

This time Grant answered.

“What did you do?”

“I told you not to call the bank.”

“Dad’s in the hospital.”

A pause followed. Traffic whispered behind Grant’s voice.

“Is he stable?”

“Don’t pretend.”

“I asked if he’s stable.”

“You knew they had no food.”