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condition momentarily, as they spoke to the nearest hospital on their radio, and Robert dialed Eric on his cellular, with shaking hands. It was four-twenty-five in the morning by then, and Eric answered on the second ring.
    “I"m in an ambulance, with Anne,” Robert said in a shaking voice, “she had a heart attack, and her heart just stopped. They just started it again, oh God, Eric, she's gray and her lips are blue,” he was sobbing incoherently, as Eric instantly stood up and turned on the light, and Diana stirred. She was used to the late-night calls he got from the labor room, and she rarely woke up anymore, but something about the tone of his voice was different this time, and she opened an eye, and squinted up at him.
    “Is she conscious?” Eric asked quietly.
    “No … I found her on the bathroom floor … I thought maybe she hit her head … I don't know … Eric, she looks like … she …” He could barely string the words together.
    “Where are they taking her?” “Lenox Hill, I think.”
    It was only a few blocks away for him. “I'll be there in five minutes. I'll meet you in the emergency room, or Cardiac ICU. I'll find you … and Robert, she'll be okay … just hang in.” He wanted desperately to reassure him, and hoped he was right.
    “Thank you” was all he could say, and he ended the call, as the paramedics held the defibrillator poised again, but her heart kept beating until they arrived at the hospital, and there was already a cardiac team waiting for her on the sidewalk there. They covered her with a blanket, and she was out of the ambulance and into the hospital before Robert could thank anyone, or say anything. The gurney virtually flew past him, and all he could do was run into the hospital behind her. They took her straight up to Coronary ICU, as Robert stood there feeling useless in his overcoat and pajamas. He suddenly looked and felt a thousand years old, and all he wanted to do was be with his beloved Anne. He didn't want to abandon her to strangers.
    Within minutes, a resident came to ask him a series of questions, and five minutes later, Eric was standing in the corridor beside him, and Diana was with him. She had woken up the minute she had heard Eric"s questions to Robert, and insisted on coming to the hospital with him. They were both wearing jeans and raincoats, and desperately worried faces. But Eric was at least outwardly calm, and knew to ask the right questions. He went inside the coronary unit, and left Robert with Diana. And when he came back, it was obvious that he didn't have good news.
    “She's fibrillating again. She's putting up a hell of a battle.” It was apparently the second time Anne's heart had stopped since they brought her into the unit. And the resident cardiologist had told Eric he didn't like the look of her vitals. She had been close to gone when they got her. “When did this start?” Eric asked Robert, as Diana held tightly to their friend"s hand, and Eric put an arm around him, while Robert cried pitifully as he told them what had happened.
    “I don't know. I woke up at four. She was coughing, and I thought she was vomiting by the way she sounded. I waited a few minutes, and then she got very quiet, and when I went in, she was already unconscious.”
    “Did she have chest pains when you got home last night?” Eric frowned as he asked, not that it mattered now.
    Whenever it had started, the attack had hit her hard, and there was clearly a doubt in the cardiologist's mind as to whether she would survive. It was not looking good.
    “She was just very tired, but she seemed fine otherwise. She talked about the house in the South of France, and going to a movie tomorrow.” His mind was spinning, and then he looked down at Diana from his considerable height, but his eyes seemed almost not to see her. He was in shock over everything that had just happened. “I should call the kids, shouldn't I? But I hate to scare them.”
    “I'll call them,”