Heartbreaker by Diana Palmer Page A

door without a backward glance.

    Dawn and Brandi were pacing the waiting room in the emergency room at Jacobsville General Hospital while Dr. Coltrain examined their mother. They were quiet, somber, with tears pouring down their cheeks in silent misery when J.B. walked in.

    They ran to him the instant they saw him, visibly shaken. He gathered them close, feeling like an animal because he hadn’t even let Tellie talk when she’d walked in on him. She’d come to tell him that Marge was in the hospital with a heart attack, and he’d sent her running with insults. Probably she’d come to his office that morning because something about Marge had worried her. He’d been no help at all. Now Tellie was hurt and Nell was quitting. He’d never felt so helpless.

    “Mama won’t die, will she, Uncle J.B.?” Brandi asked tearfully.

    “Of course she won’t,” he assured her in the deep, soft tone he used with little things or hurt children.
    “She’ll be fine.”

    “Tellie said she was going to tell you about Mama. Why didn’t Tellie come with you?” Dawn asked, wiping her eyes.

    He stiffened. “Tellie’s not here?”

    “No. She had to go over to your house, because you didn’t answer your phone,” Brandi replied. “I guess the lines were down or something.”

    “Or something,” he said huskily. He’d taken the phone off the hook.

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    “She may have gone home to get Mama a gown,” Dawn suggested. “She always thinks of things like that, when everybody else goes to pieces.”

    “She’ll be here as soon as she can…I know she will,” Brandi agreed. “I don’t know what we’d do without Tellie.”

    Which made J.B. feel even smaller than he already did. Tellie must be scared to death. She’d been with her grandfather when he died of a heart attack. She’d loved him more than any other member of her small family, including the mother she’d lost more recently. Marge’s heart attack would bring back terrible memories. Worse, when she showed up at the hospital, she’d have to deal with what J.B. had said to her. It wasn’t going to be a pleasant reunion.

    Dr. Coltrain came out, smiling. “Marge is going to be all right,” he told them. “We got to her just in time.
    But she’ll have to see a heart specialist, and she’s going to be on medication from now on. Did you know that her blood pressure was high?”

    “No!” J.B. said at once. “It’s always been low!”

    Coltrain shook his head. “Not anymore. She’s very lucky that it happened like this. It may have saved her life.”

    “It was a heart attack, then?” J.B. persisted, with the girls standing close at his side.

    “Yes. But a mild one. You can see her when we’ve got her in a room. You’ll need to sign her in at the office.”

    “I’ll do that right now.”

    “But, where’s Tellie?” Dawn asked when they were alone.

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    J.B. wished he knew.

    He was on his way back from the office when he passed the emergency room, just in time to see a worried Grange stalking in beside a gurney that two paramedics were rushing through the door. On the stretcher was Tellie, unconscious and bleeding.

    “Tellie!” he exclaimed, rushing to the gurney. She was white as a sheet, and he was more frightened now than he was when he learned about Marge. “What happened?” he shot at Grange.

    “I don’t know,” Grange said curtly. “Her car was off the road in a ditch. She was unconscious, in a couple of inches of water, facedown. If I hadn’t come along when I did, she’d have drowned.”

    J.B. felt sick all the way to his soul. It was his fault. All his fault. “Where was the car?” he asked.

    “On the farm road that leads to your house,” Grange replied, his eyes narrowed, suspiciously. “Why are you here?”

    “My sister just had a heart attack,” he said