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want a driver and an escort to Valley Hospital. June, start compressions. I’ll get the intubation set up and bag her.”
    June started compressing her nurse’s chest, counting aloud as she did so. “One, two, three, four…”
    The sound of squeaking wheels announced the arrival of the cart. It held the EKG machine, emergency drugs, paddles, everything necessary to treat cardiac arrest. John, with great speed, knelt at Charlotte’s shoulders, tilted her head back, got the intubator down her throat and began squeezing the bag.
    June stopped her compressions long enough to quickly open Charlotte’s white uniform and begin attaching electrodes to her chest. “Jessie, after you call the police, call my dad and Bud Burnham.” The girl was running down the hall again. “Those goddamn cigarettes,” June muttered.
    “Hurry up,” John said. “Do we have sinus rhythm?”
    The EKG machine was old. Slow. June was in agony waiting for the first strip of wet graph to feed out. “She’s flat,” June said, reaching for the paddles. She squirted them liberally with gel, pressed them against Charlotte’s chest and yelled, “Clear!” John lifted his handsfree of the bag. The jolt lifted Charlotte’s heavy body off the floor. There was no change. June increased the voltage, pressed the paddles again to the woman’s chest and said, “Come on, old girl! Clear!” She watched the tape. Flat.
    “I’ve got lidocaine ready,” John said.
    June moved aside while John made the injection directly into Charlotte’s chest. The second he finished, June increased the voltage and pressed the paddles to Charlotte’s chest again. “Sinus rhythm,” she said with huge relief.
    “That’s our girl,” John said. “Stubborn. Start an IV of Ringers TKO. I’ll dose Lasix and beta-blockers. She have a chart?”
    “Jessie’ll find it. John, this is going to upset my dad. Charlotte was his nurse for thirty years. At least.”
    “It’s going to upset all of us, June,” he said. Though John had been with the clinic for only a few months, he was already attached to the gruff but extremely skilled old nurse. “I’ll back the ambulance up to the door and get the gurney out, if you think you can handle this now.”
    “Go. The sooner we get her to Valley’s cardiac unit, the better her chances.”
    John ran down the clinic hall to the back door. June, kneeling beside her nurse, gently stroked the woman’s forehead. “When I said I needed a distraction, I didn’t mean anything as dramatic as this.”
     
    June and Elmer spent the evening at Valley Hospital with the Burnham family. Charlotte was conscious andholding her own, but this heart event had not been a warning. It was the real McCoy—a myocardial infarction. The only question was the extent of damage. The best-case scenario was that Charlotte would recover, but she could not go back to her old ways. And that included nursing.
    “She always said that was the best part of her life,” her son, Archie, told June and Elmer.
    June took his hand. “She always told us that raising you kids was the best part.”
    “She’ll have more time for the grandkids now,” Elmer said. “Within reason.”
    “She’s going to make it, isn’t she, Doc?” Bud wanted to know. “I mean, I know she’ll have to watch it, but she’s going to make it, right?” He looked back and forth between June and Elmer, not specifying which doctor he was asking.
    “Bud, we don’t know too much right now,” June said. “Her heart took a bad whack. But medical science is amazing, and what might’ve killed her ten years ago is just a setback now. The good thing is, it hit at work. We were on her right away. She was resuscitated and medicated immediately. That helps in the recovery.”
    “I don’t know how we’ll ever thank you,” he said.
    “Perish the thought!” June said. “Wouldn’t Charlotte have been there for either of us? And hasn’t she been, a hundred times?”
    As Elmer and June left