CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

VEGAS:

Present day…

"My grandson, Axel, was, and still is a handful. He lives for sports, the more extreme the better. Matter of fact, he IS rock climbing in Sedona right now."

The server came to our table, breaking off her story. He offered to take our drink orders—hot tea for me and water with lemon for Mrs. Ehrenberg. Mrs. Ehrenberg picked up my menu, studied it for a moment, and asked for the Cobb salad. I switched my order from the chicken wings to the same.

I didn't think a greasy meal would go well with what she had to say.

The server left and Mrs. Ehrenberg picked up where she left off. "As I said, my grandson has always been fond of sports. When he was fifteen, he wanted to play varsity football. All summer he... what do the young people call it?" She snapped her fingers when the word came to her. "He wanted to 'beef up.’" Mrs. Ehrenberg rolled her eyes. "That sounds more like a cholesterol problem than getting into shape." I giggled, and she gave me a small smile. "He went to the gym, every day, week after week. On this one particular day, he was there for over four hours, lifting weights nonstop."

Unease crept in. I had a feeling where the conversation was going, but I still couldn't connect how her grandson, and even herself, had anything to do with Terrence and me.

I would soon find out.

"When he came home that day, his mother said he'd stumbled from his jeep, nearly collapsing on the driveway. She had to call a few of her staff to help him into bed. She said he looked like a giant, his muscles swelled up to almost twice their normal size. He said his lower back hurt. He'd been doing a lot of abdominal work and these side-twisty things." Mrs. Ehrenberg mimicked a gym-body twisting to the side, arms up high, and her hands holding a phantom medicine ball. She lowered her arms and folded them across her narrow chest. "He'd thought he'd overdone it, but it was... much worse than that."

"Was it Hairdo?" I asked. Hydrolysis is when broken down muscles, usually from exercise, release a muscle enzyme into the bloodstream that can ultimately cause kidney failure if it not caught and treated. It is a rare syndrome and only detectable by a blood test.

The server appearing at our table prevented from Mrs. Ehrenberg from answering. He set the tea down, told us our meal would be out shortly, and asked us if we needed anything else to which Mrs. Ehrenberg replied, "Privacy, please."

The server nodded and scurried off. I bit back a laugh at his surprised expression. Mrs. Ehrenberg was a feisty Ola gal.

As my tea seeped in the pot, she confirmed my suspicions. "Yes, it was. We rushed him to St. Vincent's right away." She took a sip of water. Setting the glass down, her lips curled. "I'm sure by now you've guessed who his doctor was."

"Dr. Caldwell?"

"Yes!" Her arms flew wide and a feral look came into her eyes. I shrank back. Mrs. Ehrenberg, this diminutive woman, had morphed into a 90-pound gremlin. Her dark expression put fear into my soul. I'd pressed so far into the cushions of the booth, I thought I'd indent.

"That dumb bitch misdiagnosed him at first—fair enough, it was easy to do — but when another doctor tried to contradict her, she took him off my grandson's rounds. Axel suffered for a day and a half, writhing in pain, until she finally saw the light after dusting off her medical books and reading up on his condition. Of course, that quack took full credit for saving his life. If she'd waited any longer, Axel would've gone into kidney failure and been on a dialysis machine, or worse."

I leaned forward, placing my hands on the table. My heart raced in my chest. This woman had something up her sleeve... but what did that have to do with me?

"You must wonder why I told you?"

Again, I nodded, my heart racing. 

"Terrence told me about you, you know. I don't back losers and Terrence comes from winning stock, at least in the political sense. As far as being a man... well, Terrence has a low, and I'm talking almost non-existent sex drive. When I vetted him, he said he would rather eat rocks than fuck."

No wonder he wasn't so interested in intimacy.

She waved her hand as if to say she couldn't care less. "His sex drive, or lack of, didn't bother me. What mattered were the rumors circulating about him. We couldn't have that. Things are getting better for the LGBTQ community, but even in this day and age, we still need small-minded people and their money to get candidates elected, and once they are, they can change things from the inside out."

"So you had Terrence call me... and propose?" I was more shocked I was taking her revelations as calmly as I did. Others might have expressed their outrage at their life being upended.

Not so. 

I wasn't mad, not even a little perturbed. How could I be when those that loved me were by my side? Dallas had been rough on me and Kale, what with little support and no one I considered family. No, I didn't even think about complaining.

"Sorry dear," she said in a sorry, not sorry voice, "but we needed someone like you until I could wrap up a few of our more conservative donors. All I asked is that he get a woman who wasn't flashy, had a decent job and good manners, and I'd have no problem getting him elected mayor come February. He said he knew a woman who would fit my criteria, and... well, I asked him to call you." She gave me a sweet, grandmotherly smile that was so sincere, I took that as an apology instead. "Proposing was his idea, though. I guess Terrence thought he should go whole hog to keep you with him." She lifted her gaze to the ceiling for a second and returned it to me. "As if your job, which I arranged, wasn't enough to keep you in Chicago. Men—ftp."  She let out a wicked chuckle. "Little did I know you and Shelia have a connection." At my wide-eyed look, she giggled like a five-year-old. "Oh, I know about you and Jameson. When I saw him take you from the room during Terrence's fundraiser, I made it my business to find out all I could. I knew for some time he hated his wife...ex-wife almost as much as I do." Her blue eyes turned stormy with fury. "I would have destroyed her by now, but with my fingers in all sorts of political pies, I couldn't chance anything coming back on me." She gave me a conspiratorial wink. "I don't mind ruining a life, I just have to make sure doing so is in my best interest."