“You're a rotten little bastard,” the professor said in a fury. Steve was evil to the core, and he had taken full advantage of the kindness and naiveté of Gabriella. It made the professor sick to think it. “She doesn't deserve this. She was good to you. You've gotten all you could out of her. Why don't you leave her alone now?”

“Why should I?” Steve asked evilly. “She loves me.”

“She doesn't even know you, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Stevens… Mr. Houston. Who the hell are you, other than a small-time operator, a rotten little con man who preys on women? You're nothing.”

“It works for me, Grampa. You don't see me knocking myself out nine to five, do you? It's great work, if you can get it.”

“You hateful little shit,” the old professor said, advancing on him, but it was like facing a cobra. Steve was far too dangerous for the professor to win this one, but he did not yet know it. He still thought he could intimidate Steve into leaving, which was a fatal error. Without saying a word, Steve sprang forward and gave the old man an enormous shove and sent the professor reeling backward, until he tripped and knocked the side of his head against a table. There was blood at his temple as he fell, and he was more than a little dazed, as Steve bent down and picked him up by his collar.

“If you ever threaten me again, you pathetic old bastard, I'll kill you, do you hear me?” But in the face of his own rage, the professor began coughing fiercely, and suddenly he was fighting for air, as Steve continued to hold him there, choking him as he pulled back his collar. He fought desperately to catch his breath and couldn't, and then as he hung there, suspended in space, his entire face contorted. It was precisely what Steve had wanted, as he continued to hold him. A heart attack would have served his purposes to perfection. But instead, something even worse seemed to be happening as the professor choked and spluttered. He lost consciousness in Steve's hands, as Steve dropped him to the floor and he lay there seemingly lifeless. Steve righted the table then, walked slowly around the room, making sure that all was in order, and then dialed the operator very slowly. When she answered, he explained frantically that an old man in the boarding-house where he lived was on the floor, unconscious, and she promised to have an ambulance there in five minutes.

He picked the offending letters up off the floor, and put them in his pocket, and when the ambulance arrived, he told the attendants that he had found the professor on the floor, and the old man looked as though he had hit his head on a table. But they could see almost instantly that it was more than that. The problem they observed instantly was more likely the reason for his fall, rather than the reverse. They shone a light in his eyes, took his vital signs, and put him on a stretcher, wasting no time at all to talk to Steve about the details.

“Will he be all right?” Steve shouted after them. “What is it?”

“Looks like a stroke,” they shouted back to him, but they were gone two minutes later, with sirens screaming, as Steve walked back inside with a slow smile, and closed the door behind him.





Chapter 21




GABRIELLA WAS PUTTING a stack of new books away when the phone rang at the bookshop. Ian was out picking up lunch, and she hurried down from a ladder to answer. She was still thinking about the books she'd been looking at when she heard Steve's voice, and she sensed instantly that something had happened. He sounded distraught and he was nearly crying.

“Is something wrong?” She had never heard him sound like that. Things had been a little strained between them recently. They were both upset that he hadn't found a job, and she didn't want him to think she was pressuring him, but having to make her income stretch to cover both of them had her constantly worried. “What is it?”

“Oh… oh God, Gabbie, I don't know how to tell you this…” He knew how much she loved the professor, and a knife of terror sliced through her heart as she listened. She couldn't even imagine what he was trying to tell her. “It's the professor.”

“Oh my God, Steve… tell me quickly…”

“I came home and found him on the floor in the living room… he looked as though he had hit his head… there was blood on the side of it, and he was lying near a table. I don't know if he got dizzy and fell, or tripped, or what happened.”

“Was he conscious?” she asked breathlessly… or worse yet, was he dead? She couldn't even dare to think it.

“Not really. He was incoherent when I found him, and then he passed out. I called the operator for an ambulance right away. The ambulance attendants thought he might have had a heart attack or a stroke. They didn't seem to know. He just left here, I called you the minute the ambulance left. They've taken him downtown to City Hospital.” It was a big public hospital and Gabbie wasn't sure he'd get the best care there. She'd been begging him for months to get some tests, as had Mrs. Boslicki and Mrs. Rosenstein. His health had been failing steadily since the previous winter. He never took her out anymore, he was hardly well enough to leave the house, even for short walks. And his wracking cough had been persistent.

“They said they'd call us the minute they know something. I'll wait here by the phone,” he said valiantly, and Gabbie was instantly grateful that he had called her.

“Thank God you were with him, or at least that you found him. I'll go down there as soon as Ian comes in. He just went out to get us lunch.” All she wanted to do was grab her handbag and go, but she didn't want to close the store while Ian was at the deli, without telling him what had happened.

“Maybe you should wait till they call us,” Steve suggested, but she wouldn't hear of it. She couldn't stay away from him. The professor was the only semblance of family she had, and she wanted to be with him.

“I couldn't stand waiting for the phone to ring,” she said anxiously. “Ill go the minute Ian walks in,” and as she said it, she saw him come through the door, and signaled him to hurry. “I'll call you from the hospital,” she said hurriedly, knowing that Steve would be as frantic for news as she was, as would be the others once they heard what had happened.

She told Ian the news hurriedly, and apologized for leaving him in the lurch, but he understood perfectly, and wished her luck as she ran out the door of the bookstore clutching her handbag. She hailed a cab right outside, and told him which hospital, and when she opened her wallet to pay him, she was surprised to see she had so little money. She was sure she'd had more than that the day before, and then with a nervous flutter, she wondered if Steve had once again helped himself to her wallet. He was so embarrassed to ask her most of the time, that now he just “borrowed” it without telling her, but sometimes it left her badly strapped when she least expected it. She barely had enough for the cab fare.

As she hurried into the emergency room, she forgot about it, and had to ask several people for directions. She gave them the professor's name, and it was very confusing trying to find out what was going on. It was nearly an hour before they told her anything, but at least they didn't tell her he had died on the way to the hospital. But when she saw him, finally, she was shocked at his condition. His face was gray, his eyes were closed, there were monitors attached to him everywhere, and a full team was working on him, struggling to keep him going. In order to get in to see him at all, she had to tell them she was his daughter.

No one seemed to realize she had entered the room, and they were talking to each other in staccato phrases. He was getting oxygen and an IV, and they were doing an EKG on him as Gabriella stood silently in the comer. It was a long time before any of them noticed her, and they asked what she was doing there. They had no idea how long she'd been there. And she just stood there with tears coursing down her cheeks, terrified that they were going to lose him.

“How is he?” she asked the nurse who approached her.

“Is he your grandfather?” the woman asked, curt but sympathetic.

“My father.” She decided she'd better stick to the same story, and knew that the professor would be flattered. He always said to her how much he and Charlotte would have loved to have a daughter like her.

“He's had a stroke,” the trauma nurse explained. “He's got a fair amount of paralysis on the right side. He can't speak, and he has no motor control on the right side, but when he's conscious, I think he hears us.” Gabriella was shocked at what the woman told her. How could something so terrible have happened to him? And so quickly?

“Is he going to be all right?” She barely dared to whisper the words, but she wanted some kind of reassurance.

“It's a little early to say, his EKG isn't looking great, and he got quite a blow when he fell, which compounds it.”

“Can I talk to him?” Gabbie said, fighting panic.

“In a few minutes,” the nurse said, and then went back to the others.

But the minutes turned into hours as they did more tests, attached more machines, and by the time they wheeled him into ICU, Gabbie was frantic. She had seen what they were doing, and they were obviously having a rough go of it trying to keep him breathing. But at last, in the ICU, they let her see him.

“Don't say too much to him, and don't expect him to answer you. Keep it short,” the nurse in charge said, as Gabriella approached his bedside. His hair looked wilder than usual, and his eyes were closed, but they fluttered open slowly the moment he heard her.

“Hi,” she said softly, “it's me… Gabbie…” He looked like he wanted to smile at her, and his eyes recognized her instantly, but he couldn't move and he couldn't say anything to her. She gently took his left hand in her own, and lifted it to her lips, as a lone tear rolled down his cheek and onto his pillow. “Everything's going to be okay,” she tried to encourage him, willing him to live. “The doctors said so,” she lied, but he didn't look as though he believed her. And then he frowned as though he were in pain, and scowled at her. She had the feeling he wanted to say something to her, but there was no way he could do it. He was trapped behind a stone wall, and all he could do was hold her fingers. He made little grunting sounds then, and he looked agitated, and the nurse assigned to him spotted it immediately and said she'd have to go now.