CHAPTER59
TANNER
“I’m sorry, Frank,” I said to my financial advisor as I glanced down at my phone lying on the conference room table in front of me. “I need to take this. It’s my mother.”
He waved his hand graciously toward the phone and got up. “I’ll give you some privacy for a minute. Let me know when you’re ready to continue. I’ll be right next door in my office.”
As he strode toward the door, I answered the call and pressed the phone to my ear. “Hey, Mom. How are you?”
“Tanner?” Her voice wobbled, sounding thin and strained when she said my name. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I need you to drive me to the doctor. I’m having chest pain. I don’t know what’s wrong, but it’s not going away.”
My extremities went ice cold and I was grabbing my stuff and jogging out of the conference room before she’d even finished her sentence. “I’ll be right there. Just try to stay calm, okay? I’m on my way.”
“I’ll be ready to go when you get here, but Tanner?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t speed. I’ll be fine. It’s just been coming and going for a while and I think I need to be checked out.”
“I’ll be there soon,” I promised but didn’t make any comment on the speeding thing. If she thought she could tell me that she was having chest pain and then expect me to meander over there at any pace other than full speed, she was dead wrong.
After we hung up the phone, I found Frank in his office and quickly explained the situation. Our meeting wasn’t an urgent one—unlike the situation with my mother—and he told me we could finish our discussion via email if I couldn’t come back in later in the week.
The drive to my mother’s place went so slowly that it felt like I was being tortured. She didn’t complain—ever. If the pain was so bad that she’d actually called me to give her a ride to the doctor, that meant it was terrible and had been going on for longer than she might want to admit.
When I finally arrived at her house, she was waiting on the porch. She waved when I pulled up and made her way down the stairs with her hand pressed to her chest. I raced over to her, taking her free arm and frowning as I looked her over.
“Let me help you,” I said when I noticed how pale she was. “Jeez, Mom. Why didn’t you call me earlier? How are you feeling now?”
She swatted lamely at me. “I’m fine. I didn’t call because I thought it would go away. At my age, I can’t go racing to the doctor for every little ache or pain. If I did that, I might as well move into a hospital.”
I opened my mouth to argue as I helped her into my car, but she shot me a glare. “Don’t you dare lecture me about it, young man. I called you, didn’t I? As soon as I realized it wasn’t going away, I called you. That’s all there is to it.”
I grumbled a little, but I also knew that now wasn’t the time to put her under more stress by pointing out that moving into a place with a clinic or a doctor on site wasn’t the worst idea. In fact, it was what I’d been working toward for months now, but she was still holding firm about staying in her own house.
Sticking to the speed limit now that she was in the car with me, I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel and willed her to be okay until I could get her to a doctor. She turned to face me, smiling as she reached out to poke me in the ribs.
“Tell me what’s going on in your life. That’s far more interesting than talking about a little heart pain and how I didn’t call you about it right away.”
I tightened my grip on the leather but nodded and glanced at her to assure myself that she hadn’t started looking worse in the last few minutes. “There’s not so much to tell. Frank is still talking to me about diversifying my investments and I’ve been running a few ideas past him, so that’s where I was when you called. We haven’t decided on anything yet, though, so there’s nothing much to talk about it. The only news I have that you might like to hear is that I’ve started dating Larisa. Do you remember that girl I told you about?”
“Sure,” she said. “She’s an architect or something, right?”
“Interior designer,” I corrected gently, impressed that she was at least in the right industry. That was saying something for her these days. “She’s great. You’d like her.”
“Well, when will I get to meet her? I’d love to get to know the girl who’s finally gotten you to date her. It’s been a long time since you’ve been in a relationship.”
I cocked my head, thinking it over. “I’ll plan a dinner for the three of us sometime soon. How does that sound?”
Mom’s jaw dropped open. “You’re actually going to introduce her to me? You haven’t done that since you were fifteen and went on your first date. When I asked when I’d get to meet her, I thought for sure you were just going to knock the idea down.”
I chuckled as I glanced at her. “You don’t have to look so shocked. I’ve always told you that if I met someone worth introducing you to, I would do it. There just hasn’t been anyone who I thought might be around in the long term.”
“This sounds serious,” she teased. “Is it? Has my boy finally found the girl he’s going to settle down with for good?”
“I think she might be it for me,” I said. “It’s new, so I’m not going to pop the question anytime soon or anything like that, but I might just have found the girl that I will eventually settle down with, yes.”
She cooed with delight, but then she fell silent and a pinched look of pain passed over her features. My own heart almost seized up in response. Applying more pressure to the gas pedal, I pushed the car to the very edge of the speed limit and gritted my teeth.