“Mary said he bought a house in Courage Bay.”
“Lucky us.”
“And that must be another new face in town,” Callie said, nodding toward a very handsome man standing beneath a palm tree a few yards away, looking exceedingly bored. “I’ve never seen him before.”
“Looks like an aging surfer to me. I hate those new T-shirt looking things that pass for dress shirts.”
“It’s the style.” Callie had no idea if the stranger surfed, but she thought he was aging quite nicely. Probably near forty, he was still lean and sun-bronzed, with short sandy hair and a great body. The kind of guy Callie’s best friend Mikki would classify as a hunk.
Too bad Mikki hadn’t been available to attend the party. She’d have made certain the guy wasn’t bored, unless he happened to have a ring on his finger. Mikki’s claim was that every good-looking guy in southern California was gay, married or divorced and carried more baggage than a 747. Callie wasn’t totally convinced she was wrong.
“Think I’ll go introduce myself,” Henry said. “Then I’ll have to search for my social butterfly wife. It’s getting late, and I’ve got a full day tomorrow.”
“Are you working on Saturdays now?”
“Too many of them, but not by choice. The workload seems to have doubled over the last year. Unfortunately our staff hasn’t.”
Callie nodded and finished her second glass of champagne as Henry walked away. She spent the next few minutes chatting with various guests, then decided she was too tired to make small talk. It was nearing midnight, and like Henry, she was feeling the strain of a long, busy week. Most of the doctors on staff at Courage Bay Hospital who’d attended the event had already called it an evening.
Callie headed toward the area where she’d seen Mary and Bernie a few minutes earlier, wanting to thank her hostess one last time before cutting out. She stopped short when she heard a ruckus break out beneath the canopy to her left. She spun around just in time to see Bernie Brusco fall against one of the small tables. Another guest tried to break his fall, but the table collapsed, and both men fell on top of it.
“We need a doctor,” someone yelled.
Callie rushed over, along with everyone else in hearing distance. She ordered the anxious crowd back and knelt in the grass beside Bernie.
“Can’t…breathe. Chest…hurts.”
“Call 911 for an ambulance,” Callie ordered, directing her comment to Mary. She reached for Bernie’s wrist to check his pulse. It was dangerously accelerated.
“Do something.” Bernie’s voice was a hoarse whisper.
Callie put the flat of her hand on the man’s chest and felt the rapid, irregular beating of his heart. “Has this happened before?”
“No.”
His shallow gasps weren’t getting much oxygen to his lungs, so she slipped her arm beneath him and placed his head at an angle that should have made breathing easier. He clutched her arm and held on tight.
“Don’t let…me die.”
“I won’t.” Not if she could help it. “Try to take a deep breath.”
“I’m…trying.”
He gasped then went limp.
“Is he dead?” an onlooker asked.
Callie didn’t bother to answer, just leaned over and gave a sharp whack to Bernie’s chest with the side of her hand, then pressed his heart between the sternum and the spine with rhythmic motions. Thankfully the heart responded and started beating again on its own. The pulse remained high, inconsistent with a typical heart attack.
The ambulance arrived in short order. “His pulse is near 180,” Callie told the paramedics as they loaded him onto the stretcher. “Squirt some procardra under his tongue when you get him in the ambulance. I’ll call the E.R. and alert them you’re on the way and to have an IV setup for a nipride drip.”
Bernie managed to murmur his thanks to Callie as the medics hurried him to the ambulance.
Mary was waiting at Callie’s side when she finished the phone call to the E.R. “Will he be all right?” she asked, her voice shaky.
“The hospital E.R. is one of the finest in the state. He’ll get excellent care.” It was the best she could promise.
Mary blinked and flicked the back of her hand across her eyes. “Poor Bernie. One minute he was really enjoying himself, wolfing down hors d’oeuvres as if he hadn’t eaten for days and drinking some kind of specialty cocktail the bartender had mixed for him. The next he was gasping for breath.”
“Which bartender mixed his drink?”
“One of those young men,” Mary answered, motioning to the portable serving area set up at the back of the tent.
“What was he eating?”
“The seafood canapés—you know, the ones served on the shrimp-shaped crackers. He’d piled a dozen or so on his plate. Couldn’t stop raving about how good they were.” Mary slapped her hand against her cheek. “Oh, dear. You don’t suppose they made him sick, do you? My caterer insists on the freshest ingredients. I’m certain the seafood wasn’t tainted.”
“If it was tainted, we’d have a lot more people than Bernie affected. But it’s possible he had an allergic reaction to one of the ingredients.”
“It looked like a heart attack to me,” Mary said, “but then he’s only forty-five, and he seemed perfectly healthy before he collapsed.”
Callie scanned the immediate area for his glass or perhaps a half eaten seafood canapé but found neither. No doubt both had been removed by one of the attentive waiters.
“I guess I’d better get back to the guests and try to salvage what’s left of the party spirit,” Mary said, clasping and unclasping her hands. “I don’t feel much like it, though. I thought Bernie was going to die right here in the grass. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been here.”
“But I was here, and he didn’t die,” Callie said, taking one of Mary’s hand in hers and giving it a comforting squeeze. “The party was lovely, and what happened to Bernie wasn’t your fault.”
“Will you call me as soon as you know something? I can come and stay with Bernie if you think he needs me.”
“I’ll call, but he’s probably better off without company tonight.”
Callie waited until Mary walked away, then went to the large serving table, took a couple of the seafood canapés and wrapped them in a paper napkin. She stopped and had the young bartender write out the ingredients he’d used in Bernie’s special drink, as well.
Avoiding as many of the guests as she could, Callie walked to the front lawn of the sprawling estate and waited for one of the attendants to get her car. The bored stranger was waiting for his as well.
“You were impressive,” he said, stepping closer. “I noticed you earlier but would never have taken the beautiful woman in red for a doctor.”
“Difficult to recognize us when we’re not wearing our white coats,” Callie said. “I don’t think we’ve met.” She extended her hand. “I’m Callie Baker, chief of staff at Courage Bay Hospital.”
“Jerry Hawkins.”
“Are you new to the area?”
“Visiting my mother, Abby Hawkins.”
“I didn’t know Abby had a son.”
“I’m the black sheep of the family. Mother usually keeps me hidden away when