Shannon looks up, eyes feral. She points to her throat, then to her left hand’s ring finger.
I nod.
The nurse looks at Shannon’s plate, the glasses on the table, the setting. “It was in the Champagne?”
“No. The tiramisu, apparently.”
Sirens wind up in the distance.
Shannon grabs my throat. Her throat labors to get air into her. The doctor checks her other hand, examining her fingernails. She sounds like she’s breathing through a straw. Tears pour down her face and she looks half mad.
I did this to her.
Me.
Not a bee.
And no EpiPen is going to fix this.
Then the thin hiss comes to a brutal stop.
The doctor opens her mouth and looks in. “The ring is caught and it’s blocking air flow.” He holds Shannon’s face in his hands, forcing her eyes to look at him. “Cough.”
“Unng.”
The hissing begins. The sound is like a baby’s first cry to my ears. Relief floods me.
Chandra appears and says, “The paramedics are in the building and on their way up.”
“How big is the ring?” the doctor asks.
“Three carats.”
Two audible whistles come from the other diners.
“I think the ring is caught in such a way that as it moves, she gets some air flow from the band itself,” he explains. “The problem is that the ring could cause damage to the esophagus. We need to get her to a hospital immediately.”
Shannon’s frantic hand finds mine. Her lips are tinged with purple. But she’s breathing.
The elevator doors open and clattering in the foyer makes me turn and look. In walks a team of paramedics, one carrying a big tank of oxygen. The doctor visibly relaxes.
His wife rubs Shannon’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay. You’re going to be fine.” She looks at me. “Why was the ring in the tiramisu?”
“That is a good question,” I growl. “It was supposed to be in the Champagne, where she could see it! Not buried under a bunch of cream and rum-soaked ladyfingers.”
Shannon can’t even look at me. A paramedic straps an oxygen mask over her head and starts murmuring something to her in calm, dulcet tones. I should be comforting her. I should be fixing this.
I should have never put her in this position in the first place.
Chandra stands by, wringing her hands, and I march over to her. “Why the hell was the ring in her food?”
She looks shocked. “Those were your written instructions. The ones Giuseppe gave us! We thought it was unconventional, but you asked that we follow his specifications.”
“I never wanted the ring in her tiramisu!”
“Waste of perfectly good tiramisu,” some woman’s voice says from a distant table.
Grace’s call about Giuseppe sends a chill down my back. Damn. That must be what this was about.
The paramedics hustle Shannon out to the foyer. I follow, Chandra at my heels and apologizing profusely. I cut her off with a comment that we’ll deal with this later, and then Shannon disappears into a crowd of first responders, leaving me to merge my two selves back into one again and follow her to the hospital.
The string quartet appears, the violinist playing the carefully-arranged song “Such Great Heights,” the one that reminds me so much of us. Her eyes go feral as she watches the tuxedoed string player dip his bow in confusion, his note going flat as the elevator doors close.
Perfect.
Just perfect.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Emergency Room...
“I got your text!” Amanda says in a hushed tone as she pulls back the curtain to Shannon’s little room in the ER. The thin hissing sound has been steady now for the past hour, but Shannon’s lips and fingernails are a light shade of purple that fills me with unending fear.
“Thanks for coming,”
“She swallowed the ring?” Amanda asks in a tone of voice that somehow manages to bridge incredulity and defeatism. Not many people can pull that off.
“Ung ung ung,” Shannon says, giving Amanda raised eyebrows and a sad look. I think she’s saying I am here but it’s hard to tell given her ability to use only one syllable.
“Sorry.” Amanda can speak Ring, apparently, and looks at Shannon. “You swallowed it?”
Shannon nods sadly.
“It’s seriously stuck in your throat?”
Shannon widens her eyes and manages to say duh without saying the word.
“Why on earth would you do this to her!” Amanda says to me savagely.
Here it comes.
“This was never part of the plan, Amanda. The ring was supposed to be in the Champagne.”
“How original.”
Shannon folds her arms over her chest and she and Amanda share a knowing look.
“The tiramisu was a breakdown in communication.”
“How do you get from a ring in a glass to a ring in a layered dessert made of orgasmic perfection?” she asks. Shannon’s eyes widen and if she could speak, she’d say, I know, right?
“Once we get the ring out of Shannon I’ll deal with that. Right now we’re more concerned about her oxygenation than on pointing fingers of blame.”
Speaking of blame, in walks my brother. “Dude, I cannot believe you get her to swallow and it’s a—Oh.” He’s texting as he talks to me, eyes down, until he looks up and bangs into Amanda’s backside.
“Sorry. I—”
They both freeze. He doesn’t even look at her, can’t even see her face because he’s behind her, but he inhales deeply, eyes closing, and says quietly, “Amanda?”