PrimeDefender Read Online Free

narrow corridor outside the CCU. The tiny waiting room made him feel as
though the walls were closing in on him.
    He hated hospitals. He’d hated them since
he was twelve years old and watched helplessly while his mother lay battered
and dying in a dingy room at a soot-stained Brooklyn hospital. Fuck, he’d never
forget the sucking, whirring sounds of the machines or those sickening smells
of antiseptics and disinfectants. Cries of grieving family members around the
trauma unit still rang in his ears, and the picture of his mom’s bruised, torn
features stayed with him now, twenty years after she’d passed away.
    This place, a new, white-brick hospital set
in the middle of lush grounds, at least looked clean. Green grass, bright
flowers and stately oak trees provided a more cheerful view from the windows
than the tired industrial buildings and run-down businesses he remembered
staring at from the small, sooty window in his mother’s room. With its
determined neutrality, stark white walls and gray and black furniture, this
small, Southern hospital reminded Matt of an oversized mortuary. Come to think
of it, he hated funeral homes, too. He associated both places with pain and
death and loneliness.
    “Mr. Rubin?”
    He whirled around and saw the slim,
gray-haired female doctor who’d been snapping out orders to the nurses taking
care of Keisha in the CCU. His breath caught in his throat when he tried to
talk. “Yes?” he finally managed.
    “Your wife has regained consciousness.” She
held up her hand when he started to charge back into the unit. “Don’t panic.
She’s resting well for the moment, but we need to talk. Shall we go to my
office?”
    * * * * *
    Candace Stein, MD, the placard on her door
said, told Matt to sit down and then leaned over her desk, her hands steepled
in front of her as she focused intense brown eyes on his face.
    “I assume you’re aware your wife is killing
herself,” she said bluntly.
    Matt blinked, unnerved at the doctor’s
words. “I certainly wasn’t until you told me. She seemed fine when I spoke with
her on the phone. That was less than two hours before I got home and found her
passed out on the floor.”
    “Has Mrs. Rubin always been so heavy?”
    Dr. Stein, whom he noticed was skinny
almost to the point of anorexia, asked that question as if it were an
indictment, and Matt didn’t like her attitude one bit. “Keisha has been
voluptuous ever since I’ve known her, and that’s been more than six years. I
guess she probably has put on a few more pounds in the past year.”
    “Well, she needs to take off considerably
more than a few of those pounds if she wants to stay alive for long. This
episode can be just a warning, or it can be the first of many, one of which
will certainly kill her.” The doctor went on to explain that the decreased
blood oxygen that had caused Keisha to pass out was just one condition that frequently
accompanied what she called morbid obesity. “She’s diabetic, something that
apparently wasn’t diagnosed until now. Her blood pressure is out of control.
And I imagine you may have noticed her suddenly gasping for breath at night
when she’s been sleeping.”
    “Some.” Though Matt was a pretty sound
sleeper and Keisha usually made him sleep on a yoga mat beside her bed, he’d
been wakened several times lately by her labored breathing. “When I asked her
about it, she shrugged it off, saying she’s allergic to the spring pollen. Come
to think of it, though, you’re right. What she’s been doing lately sounds more
like gasping than the wheezing she’s always had in spring and fall.”
    The doctor nodded. “You said she’d gained
more weight recently. Has she been depressed?”
    Depressed? Keisha was the least depressed
woman he’d ever known. “Not at all. I’ve noticed that she’s cut back lately on
a lot of the activities she used to enjoy, though. We’ve been dieting together
during this offseason, but I’m afraid she may have