“Oh man,” Jake said. “I hate unexpected phone calls from Pauline. It’s never good news.”
Laura got up and let him sit on the edge of the bed. He looked at the directions on the phone, figured out that he could dial long distance without involving the hotel operator, and then dialed Pauline’s home number from memory. She picked it up on the second ring.
“Hey, Paulie,” he said, bracing himself for whatever shit was hitting the fan now. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Matt,” she said.
“What happened?”
“I got a call from Jim, his paramedic, a few minutes ago. Matt had a heart attack.”
“A heart attack?” Jake asked. “Jesus fucking Christ. Is he okay?”
“We don’t know yet,” Pauline said. “He started having pain while he was doing the sound check for the first Seattle show. He thought it was heartburn and chugged some Maalox, but the pain just kept getting worse. And then he started sweating and having trouble breathing. Jim hooked him up to his heart monitor thing and he realized what was going on. They called 911 and the ambulance took him to the hospital with lights and sirens. They did an EKG when they got there and confirmed he was having a heart attack, and a pretty bad one at that, according to Jim. They rushed him into the cardiac cath lab and that’s where he’s at now.”
Jake took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Son of a bitch,” he said softly.
The End of Book V