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  For her health. Well. There was only one thing to do then.

  I got up from my chair, walked around to the other side of the bed, where Sharon was sitting, and extended my hand to her. “Truce?”

  She rose from her chair but merely stared at my hand for several seconds. It was beginning to cramp from all the tension when she finally reached out and grasped it. “Truce,” she said, a tad begrudgingly.

  “Give me a break,” my mother snapped. “I’m talking about a real kiss-and-make-up, not a business handshake. Do you girls want me to live or don’t you?”

  This time, Sharon and I did the deed. There were quick pecks on the cheek, followed by an honest-to-goodness hug, followed by several pats on each other’s back. My mother kvelled. It was a Kodak moment.

  And then, as if on cue, someone applauded.

  All three of us turned toward the nurses’ station, in the direction of the applause. Leaning against the desk, clapping his hands together and smiling broadly, was a tall, dark, bearded man in a white lab coat—a man whose kindly expression reminded me of my father.

  “Dr. Hirshon!” Sharon exclaimed, quickly disentangling herself from me so that she could have both hands free to fluff her hair.

  Dr. Hirshon, I mused, finding my mother’s cardiologist unexpectedly appealing at first glance and, therefore, giving my own hair a fluff or two.

  Chapter Six

  Jeffrey Hirshon wasn’t conventionally handsome, certainly not in the way Philip was. He was over six feet tall, like Philip, and had a similarly perfect, Chiclets smile, but his features were slightly out of proportion with his face—his nose too big, his lips too thin, his eyes a little droopy. Still, this doctor, whom I figured to be in his mid-fifties, was exceedingly attractive to me, perhaps because of his dark curly beard with its patches of gray, his broad shoulders and chest, his hearty, ho-ho-ho laugh—all of which lent him a jolly, avuncular air, as if he were someone I’d known for years, as if he were a person I could lean on, a person I could trust. Of course, the fact that he didn’t have a tan contributed to this perception. I’d assumed that the cardiologists in Florida spent more time hitting golf balls than they did diagnosing myocardial infarctions.

  “Isn’t this nice,” he said as he made his entrance, stethoscope around his neck, shirt and tie underneath his lab coat. “A hospital room where everybody’s smiling.”

  “It’s all because my two girls are by my side, helping me get well,” my mother said proudly.

  “That’s what I like to hear,” said Dr. Hirshon, “family members coming together to promote the patient’s recovery. Very important, in my opinion. Doctors can dispense drug after drug, perform surgical procedure after surgical procedure, but it’s the healing power a patient derives from his or her loved ones that truly makes the difference between sickness and health.”

  Ah, so he’s one of those touchy-feely holistic types, I mused, impressed that a small town like Stuart had such a forward-thinking doctor, a man of science who was also spiritual, soulful, sensitive.

  “Speaking of loved ones, you’ve already met my older daughter, Sharon,” said my mother, nodding at my sister.

  “Older?” Sharon chuckled but looked mortified. “You make me sound positively ancient, Mom.”

  My mother went right on. “And this is my younger daughter, Deborah.”

  “It’s a pleasure,” said Dr. Hirshon as we shook hands. He had a warm yet firm handshake, I noticed, and the droopy, puppy-dog eyes were a rather captivating velvety shade of brown.

  “Same here,” I said. “From what I’ve heard, you were a hero last night. Obviously, I’m very grateful.”

  “I had to tell Deborah the whole story over the phone, long-distance,” Sharon explained to the doctor, insinuating herself into our conversation. I expected her to finish the sentence with “Because she lives in New York where she writes for a soap opera.” But after glancing at my mother’s heart monitor, she said instead, “We’re very close, my sister and I. We tell each other everything.”

  “That’s as it should be,” said Dr. Hirshon. “I see so many siblings who allow petty misunderstandings to come between them. They hang on to these grievances and hang on and hang on, and before they know it they’ve stopped speaking to each other. It’s hard to imagine that kind of shortsightedness, isn’t it?”

  Sharon and I agreed that yes, indeedie, it was very hard to imagine it.

  Dr. Hirshon smiled and moved closer to the bed. “Now, how are you feeling this evening, Mrs. Peltz? Any pain? Shortness of breath? Tightness in the chest?”

  “No, nothing like last night,” she answered. “I think I’m just nervous, you know, about having another heart attack. I feel very fragile all of a sudden.”

  “That’s perfectly normal,” said Dr. Hirshon, who patted my mother’s arm and then spoke of the psychological aftershocks she would likely experience, of the support groups available to her, of the fact that he would be available to her. Eventually, he asked Sharon and me to step out of the room while he examined her.

  “Dr. Hirshon seems like a caring person,” I commented as my sister and I sat together in the visitors’ lounge.

  “Very caring,” said Sharon. “You should have seen how he watched over Mom during the night. He was so competent, yet so gentle. He was clearly in charge of the situation, but he didn’t club anybody over the head with that God-almighty-authority-figure bullshit. He reminds me of Daddy in that way.”

  “I had the same impression the minute I saw him,” I admitted. “Daddy with a beard.”

  Sharon was pensive. “I didn’t see a wedding ring, did you?”

  I shook my head in amazement. “You’re incorrigible, Sharon. Mom is lying in a hospital bed and all you think about is marriage. Checking men for wedding rings is probably a reflex action for you at this point.”

  “Oh, spare me the marriage lecture for once. I’m as worried about Mom as you are—I’m the one who spent the entire night at this place, remember?—but I’m not comatose. When an attractive man—and a Jewish doctor to boot—walks into my life, I pay attention. Tell me you didn’t look to see if he was wearing a ring, Deborah.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Sure,”

  “I didn’t. Honest.”

  “But you think he’s attractive too. You blushed when he came into Mom’s room. And you turned even redder when he shook hands with you.”

  “Did I?”

  “Beet.”

  Beet? Well, I did feel a quickening of my pulse when I was introduced to Jeffrey Hirshon, but I figured that I was just overwhelmed by what had happened to my mother, that my emotions were out of control, that I was so relieved that she was alive that I was ready to deify the man who had saved her.

  “Let’s change the subject,” I said quickly. “We promised Mom we wouldn’t argue.”

  “You’re right,” she agreed. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  Something else. There was an awkward silence. We’d spent so many years feuding that we were at a loss how to talk to each other without feuding.

  Finally, I asked Sharon how her wedding-planning business was doing. She said, “Great. We’re scheduled through the summer.” I asked her if she still liked living in Boca. She said, “Of course. It’s home.” I asked her if she had read any good books lately. She said, “No. Who has time?” She wasn’t exactly effusive in her answers, but at least she wasn’t cursing me out. It wasn’t until I asked her how Norman was handling military school that she managed to string several sentences together.

  I should have remembered that he was the key to her heart, the secret to getting her to loosen up. For all her neurotic nonsense—her martyr complex, her perfectionism, her impulsive, self-destructive behavior when it came to men—she was a surprisingly good mother, a devoted single parent who showed her son the affection she had such difficulty showing me. Whenever she opened up about Norman, her face softened, lost its pinched, burdened quality.

  And so it was on
this occasion. Her usual tightness melted as she told me laughingly how freshmen at the Citadel are called knobs; how their dreadful haircuts are called knobcuts; how she missed Norman terribly now that he was out of the house, shaved head or no shaved head; how having a son like him more than made up for the hell she went through with his polygamist father.

  She was a different Sharon when she spoke of her child, a sharing Sharon, a woman I could relate to. For a few moments in that hospital visitors’ lounge, I forgot that for most of our lives we were at war. For a few moments there, I actually liked my sister.

  Eventually, though, she brought up Dr. Hirshon again.

  “You know,” she said, “even if he is single and available, I won’t act on my attraction to him. Not if you want him.”

  “Sharon,” I said, forcing my tone to sound benign, unprovocative. “It’s really premature to—”

  “Face it, Deborah. The issue is going to come up sooner or later. As you pointed out before, we promised Mom that we wouldn’t fight with each other over anything or anyone, so I’m simply saying that if it ends up that Dr. Hirshon isn’t married or gay or otherwise spoken for and that he’s as interested in us as we are in him, I’ll bow out and let you have him. To keep the peace.”

  “You’ll let me have him?” I laughed.

  “Yes. I’m your older sister. It should be my decision whether or not to step aside and let you have him.”

  I shook my head again. “That’s very generous of you, Sharon, but since you’re the one who seems obsessed with him, I think you should take him.”

  “Obsessed? You’re the one who practically swooned when he walked into Mom’s room. No, Deborah. You take him.”

  Jesus. Now we were bickering over how to avoid bickering.

  “Why don’t we just relax and let the situation play itself out,” I suggested. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of Dr. Hirshon over the next few weeks, what with having to drive Mom to his office for her follow-up tests once she leaves the hospital and consulting with him if she runs into problems. Maybe, as we get to know him, we’ll both decide he’s not what we want.”

  “What do you mean, we’ll be seeing a lot of him over the next few weeks?” asked Sharon. “I’m the one who’ll be seeing a lot of him. You’re going back to New York as soon as Mom is feeling better, to that soap opera you write for.”

  “Wrong. I’m staying in Florida. I’ve quit the show and I’m taking a job in Stuart, with the Historical Society. I’m the one who’ll be seeing a lot of Dr. Hirshon, Sharon. He’s going to be my neighbor.”

  When he was finished examining my mother, Dr. Hirshon stopped by the visitors’ lounge, to fill us in on her condition.

  “Your mother’s doing reasonably well, considering what she’s been through,” he began, stroking his beard. “The tPA appears to have dissolved the clot that caused the heart attack. Tomorrow morning, we’ll send her down the hall for an angiogram, so we can find out which of the coronary arteries is clogged or narrowed. If all goes well, she’ll spend another night or two in intensive care, then we’ll move her to telemetry.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Telemetry? It’s on the fifth floor,” he said. “There’s a little room there—we call it ‘Heart Beat Central’—where technicians sit in front of computers that monitor the heartbeats of every single patient on the floor, whether they’re taking a walk, being transported down to X-ray, or sitting in the lounge. Think of it as air traffic controllers monitoring incoming and outgoing planes.” He ho-ho-ho-ed. “Your mother can be completely ambulatory, yet the technicians will be able to pick up the signals from the electrodes she’s hooked up to, wherever she is in the hospital.”

  “How long does she have to stay there?” asked Sharon.

  “Two or three days,” he replied. “We’ll start her on a cardiac rehab program—exercise, diet, new medications. On the fifth day, we’ll put her on a treadmill for a stress test. If there’s no pain or shortness of breath, we’ll send her home.”

  “Just like that,” I said, marveling at how quickly a life-threatening illness can be treated.

  “Over the short term, it is pretty routine,” he agreed. “The artery is like a pipe, and removing what’s clogging the pipe is like putting Drano in your sink. The problem is, people who have clogged arteries are subject to recurrences. I’ve explained that to your mother.”

  “How did she react?” I asked. “She’s not used to being incapacitated. She’s always been very independent.”

  “And she will be again,” said Dr. Hirshon. “But she’s bound to experience some depression at first. She’ll have to face her own mortality. She’ll probably be angry—the ‘Why me?’ syndrome. She’ll wonder why she was cursed with a bad family history. She might even blame herself for holding in her emotions for so many years. And, of course, she’ll have to learn to live freely without a cloud hanging over her head. But I’ll be there for her. All three of us will be there for her, won’t we?”

  Dr. Hirshon reached out and placed his left hand on my shoulder and his right hand on Sharon’s, a coach huddling with his star players, urging them on.

  “We will,” Sharon and I told the doctor, who then continued his touching and talking and coaching, reminding us that we were a team and that, together, we would restore Lenore Peltz to good health.

  Boy, this guy’s not like any doctor I’ve ever been to, I thought. No abrupt bedside manner. No playing the Lord of the Manor. No running off to escape the patient’s family. He’s everything you could want in a physician, maybe even everything you could want in a man.

  Stop that! I scolded myself. You’re not going to do anything to blow the truce you’ve made with Sharon, no matter how delicious Jeffrey Hirshon’s hand feels on your shoulder.

  “So, you two can go back in and see your mother now,” he advised us. “I’m going home, but I’ll look in on her in the morning.”

  “What if she feels worse during the night?” I asked.

  “Not to worry. The hospital will call me,” he said.

  “Or you could give us your home number and we could contact you directly,” Sharon said brazenly. “Although we wouldn’t dream of disturbing your wife and children.”

  Dr. Hirshon smiled as he shook his head. “No wife. No children. Just a big house in Sewall’s Point that I got to keep in the divorce. My wife got the place in Aspen.”

  I refused to make eye contact with Sharon.

  “Still,” he went on, “it’s best if the hospital calls me. What’s more, I don’t expect your mother to have any major problems during the night. And as for you two”—he nodded at Sharon and me—“I’m prescribing a good night’s sleep. You’ve both had a lot to deal with over the last twenty-four hours. The saving grace here is that you’ve got each other.”

  “You betcha,” I said, giving old Sis a pat on the back.

  “Without a doubt,” she echoed, elbowing me in the ribs.

  “Your mother’s a lucky woman to have such loving daughters,” he said, appraising us. “Loving—and lovely-looking, I might add.”

  Chapter Seven

  Sharon and I spent another hour with Mom. At some point, Vicky, the nurse who had thrown us out of the room for our bad behavior, came in to inform us that her shift was over, that she was going off duty, and that the night nurse would be taking over. We thanked her profusely for attending to our mother and said we’d see her bright and early on Monday morning.

  Not long after that, we decided it was time to let Mom get some rest. We kissed her goodnight and left the hospital. We were both exhausted, drained, starving, and so before heading home, we stopped for dinner at the Prawnbroker, a popular Sewall’s Point eatery.

  The restaurant was packed—typical for Florida in February—but we were seated within twenty minutes and served our meals within another twenty. Too pooped to talk, we ate in virtual silence, except for the flurry of conversation regarding my move to Stuart. I told Sharon about the job Melinda Carr
had offered me. She was shocked that I was abandoning a career in television to babysit “some broken-down building on the beach,” as she referred to the House of Refuge. I explained that I needed a change of scenery, that the keeper job had fallen into my lap, and that I was glad to be settling in Stuart because I’d be closer to Mom in case she got sick again. Well! The part about being closer to Mom provoked a mini hissy-fit. Sharon said that she was the one who’d always looked after Mom while I was the one who’d always looked after myself and what did I know about looking after anybody, anyway? What she’d meant, of course, was that I was a threat, barging into town and usurping her longstanding role as the Good Daughter.

  The woman is terrified, I realized, as I listened to her do her martyr number. You’d think she would have welcomed the chance to share the burden of caring for our mother, but she was scared to death that after years of having Mom practically to herself, I would be horning in.

  God, I thought. It’s the competition for Daddy all over again.

  It was close to nine o’clock by the time we paid the check and got up from the table. We were walking toward the exit, past the restaurant’s handsomely appointed bar, when Sharon nudged me.

  “What?” I said.

  “Over there,” she said, pointing at the two people sitting at the end of the bar, a man and a woman who appeared to be having a heated argument of their own. The man was gesturing wildly and the woman was dabbing at her eyes with a cocktail napkin and neither of them was drinking the champagne in front of them.

  I squinted. “I can’t see—”

  “It’s Dr. Hirshon,” she said, nudging me again.

  Sure enough, there was our mother’s cardiologist, minus the lab coat. There, too, was Vicky, our mother’s nurse, wearing a rather fetching red dress.

  “And he told us he was going home,” said Sharon as we stood together by the door, observing.

  “Looks like he and Florence Nightingale are seeing each other,” I said.