Because 2 days later, on a gray Monday morning, his phone rang while he was up on the eaves of a new job site, and it was a number he didn't recognize. And the voice on the other end said the words no man who'd already lost one person he loved ever wanted to hear again. "Mr. Johnson, this is Piedmont, General. We have you listed as an emergency contact for a Harold Bennett." Marcus's blood turned to ice.
"He collapsed this morning," the voice said. "You need to come now." Marcus was already moving before the woman on the phone finished her sentence. "I'm on my way," he said. And he was down off the eaves and across the site and shouting for Terrell to take over.
And then he was in his truck with the engine roaring and his hands shaking on the wheel in a way they hadn't shaken since a hospital hallway 5 years ago. Not again. The thought hammered at him the whole drive. "Not again. Not another one."
He knew that phone call. He knew that flat, careful voice hospitals used. He'd gotten that exact call about his wife, and he'd learned that afternoon that the calm in a stranger's voice was the calm of a person delivering news too big for the person receiving it. He called Emily from the road. She didn't pick up.
He called again. Voicemail. His stomach dropped further, and he left a message that came out cracked and rushed. "Emily, it's your dad. He collapsed. They called me."
"I'm going to Pedmont General right now. Call me, please. Please call me." And then he threw the phone on the passenger seat and drove faster. Then it hit him.
Emily didn't know. Emily was probably at some coffee shop with terrible reception or on the phone with Chicago or a hundred other ordinary things people do on ordinary Monday mornings that turn into the worst day of their lives. And her father was in an emergency room and she had no idea. And Marcus was the one who'd been called. He was the emergency contact.
That fact hit him somewhere around the third red light he ran. Harold had listed him, a man he'd known for 2 months. A man he'd met on the side of a road, as the person to call when everything went wrong. Not a lawyer, not an old friend. Him.
And Marcus didn't have time to feel the full weight of what that meant. But he felt the edge of it. And the edge alone nearly undid him. He got to the hospital in 19 minutes. He parked crooked across two spaces and left it there.
He ran through the sliding doors and hit the front desk at almost a full sprint. "Harold Bennett," he said. "He was brought in this morning. He collapsed. I'm hisโ" He stopped.