Save the Last Dance Read Online Free PDF

leave it as voice mail.
    Sylvia had noticed three other messages when she walked out of the salon—calls she’d missed due to the constant chatter and the noise of hair dryers. She’d simply have to catch up on all of them later.
    Nothing was as important as this conversation with her friend.
    “Sorry. As I was saying, just imagine our two together.” Sylvia gave Nanette a conspiratorial smile. “Wouldn’t Robert and Julia give us the most adorable grandchildren?”
     
    T HE VISION of Jared’s ashen, damaged face kept crowding into Kate’s thoughts as she sat curled up at one end of a couch in the waiting area by the operating room. The television was blaring in the corner, but she had no idea what the newscasters were saying.
    The longing to touch Jared, to talk to him, welled up inside her, her emotions swinging between hope and fear as she fought to stay in control.
    Two other families had filed in, settled down to wait, then left—one overjoyed, the other overwhelmed with sorrow. And still, there’d been no word about Jared since the anesthesiologist had come out with his release forms.
    Jared had suffered that second cardiac arrest just inside the O.R., but he’d rallied and had now been in surgery for almost an hour. An hour that seemed like a lifetime, marked by the inexorable ticking of the second hand on the clock.
    Tick.
    Tick.
    Tick.
    Kate’s fingers itched, flexing involuntarily as she imagined holding the same surgical instruments. She remembered the broken hips and backs and legs she’d operated on—snaking rods up through the marrow on femurs and tibiae; using screws and pins and wires to draw fractured shards together into a solid, functional structure.
    But it was her husband on the other side of those double doors…the father of her daughter, the man who’d been a part of her life all these years. It was still almost impossible to wrap her mind around the thought that any moment could be his last, and there was nothing she could do about it.
    “Dr. Mathers?”
    She swallowed hard against the fear rising in her throat and looked up to see a somber chaplain with an equally grim-faced nurse at his side. Her heart stuttered. “Jared—”
    “Oh, my dear,” the elderly gentleman saidquickly. “We didn’t come with bad news. As far as we know, he’s still weathering surgery very well. How are you holding up through all of this?”
    Kate looked down at her knotted hands and willed herself to relax. “I wish our daughter was here…I haven’t heard a word from her yet. Has anyone been able to reach Jared’s mother or sister?”
    “We’ve left several messages for his mother, but we did reach his sister, Julia,” the nurse told her. “She’s trying to arrange a flight home from New York.” The woman pulled a slip of paper from her pocket. “Also, the receptionist in the E.R. took a message from a friend of yours. Deanna, is it?” She unfolded the note. “Your daughter’s plane was held up in Denver due to bad weather, so she missed her connection from Minneapolis to Madison. The next open seats wouldn’t get her to Madison until late tomorrow afternoon.”
    “Oh, no,” Kate breathed. She imagined Casey trying to find a shuttle to a hotel, or simply camping out in the airport for the night. Either way she was all alone, a young college student who felt independent but who’d always be Kate’s baby. And she’d be so devastated if she didn’t have a chance to say goodbye….
    The staggering thought blindsided Kate, sending a gut-deep wave of grief rushing through her.
    “But your friend and her husband are already driving to Minneapolis to get her,” the nurse continued. “They figure they’ll make it back here by early morning.” She handed over the note, the handwriting nearly illegible. “I thought I’d better decode Marie’s handwriting for you.”
    When the nurse’s voice finally registered, Kate sagged against the back of her chair in relief. “Thank