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Diana said quietly. “Do you remember their numbers?” He reeled off a series of numbers as Diana jotted them down, and left Robert with Eric when she went to call them. She knew them well enough to assume the responsibility of bearing bad tidings.
    “Oh my God,” Robert rambled as Eric forced him to sit down, “what if …”
    “Just wait. People do survive things like this. Try to stay calm. It's not going to help her if you fall apart or get sick.
    She's going to need you to be strong, Robert.”
    “I need her,” he said in a strangled voice, “I couldn't live without her.” Eric was silently praying he wouldn't have to, but that didn't look like a sure thing by any means. He could only imagine how hard this was for him. He knew how devoted they were to each other, and how happy they had been for nearly forty years. Sometimes, like all people who had lived together successfully for that long, they seemed like two halves of the same person.
    “You just have to hang on right now,” Eric said, standing close to him, and patting his shoulder, as Diana rejoined them. She had reached all three of their children, and they said they would come immediately. Both boys lived on the Upper East Side, and their daughter Amanda lived in SoHo, but at that hour, it would be easy to get cabs, it was five o"clock in the morning by then. It was nearly an hour since Robert had found her, and the nightmare had started.
    “Will they let me see her?” Robert said in a voice filled with panic. He had never felt so weak, so unequal to any task. For all intents and purposes, he had always thought of himself as a strong man, as had Anne, but without her, he suddenly felt his whole world, his life, crumbling around him, and all he could think of was how she had looked, lying on the bathroom floor, gray and unconscious.
    “They'll let you see her as soon as they can,” Eric said reassuringly. “I think they"re working pretty hard now, and there's a lot going on. Your being in there will only add to the confusion.” Robert nodded, and closed his eyes as Diana sat down on the couch next to him and held his hand tightly. She was praying for Anne, but she didn't want to say as much to Robert. She hadn't even stopped to comb her hair before running out with Eric.
    “I want to see her,” Robert said finally, with a frantic air, and Eric volunteered to go into the depths of the Coronary ICU and see how Anne was doing. But when he got there, what he saw wasn't a reassuring sight. They had intubated her, and she was on a respirator, and there were half a dozen monitors beeping frantically all around her.
     
    They had an IV line in by then, and the full team was working on her, and the head of the team was shouting commands to the others. Eric knew with one glance that there was no way they were going to let Robert in to see her, and for the moment, he thought it was just as well that they didn't. It would have terrified Robert.
    When Eric went back out to him again, in the waiting room, both Robert's sons had arrived, with worried faces, and Amanda arrived only a few minutes later. Everyone seemed to have talked to Anne in the past few days, and all of them were stunned. She had seemed fine, healthy, busy as usual, and completely in control, and now, in one instant, she lay fighting for her life, and they were all helpless to save her. Mandy put an arm around her younger brother and cried as they stood in the hallway, and Robert's older son was sitting next to him, as Diana sat on the other side, still holding his hand. But there was nothing any of them could do as they waited.
    It was just after seven o"clock when the head cardiologist came to tell them that she had had another massive heart attack, without regaining consciousness, and he didn't need to tell them how grave the situation was, they all knew it. And Robert put his face in his hands and cried. He was completely undone by what had happened, and not ashamed to show it. If loving