For the first time since she had started doing that job, Dawney was speechless. Before she had been too busy giving him CPR and trying to save his life, but now that the adrenaline had disappeared from her body, she realized that the patient on the ground was not just another stranger, but Cole Young!

His light brown curls were shorter than when she had first met him, and they now bore the marks of several highlights done at some very expensive salon in Los Angeles, but she would have recognized those dark blue eyes anywhere: when she was still a groupie and followed the Razor Edge's, they had made the hearts of thousands of fans beat. Including her own.

“Stop thinking and act, Dawney! He is not out of danger yet, you must take him to the hospital immediately!”

And then she asked him:

“How do you feel, Mr...?”

She had managed to regain control of the situation.

***

Cole looked at her, as if he were actually staring at an alien from Mars who had just landed in the ballroom of his five-billion-dollar mansion.
He could not understand why Dawney was pretending not to know him. True, it had been ten years since they had last met and since that night where he had acted like a complete idiot, but they were no strangers.

“Young. Cole Young,” he finally replied, deciding to stay on her game. For now. “Like a caterpillar just ran over me.”

Dawney nodded. It seemed that the heart attack had left no serious after-effects behind, but to be able to say for sure, they would have to take him to the hospital and do all the appropriate checks.

“Okay, now listen to me, Mr. Young. We're going to take you to the hospital now. There the doctors will give you a little checkup to make sure you are okay. Warn us, right away, if you experience any other symptoms or if you have pain in your left arm again. Did you understand me?”

“Loud and clear, beauty,” Cole thought, feeling the sudden urge to give her a piquant or double-speak-filled response.

He restrained himself: this was no time for joking; had it not been for Dawney, this time no one could have prevented him from detaching a one-way ticket to the other world. And a checkup at the hospital certainly would not have hurt him. In fact, he should have gone months ago, after his doctor had told him, in no uncertain terms, that his illness had worsened and that, if he did not have heart surgery as soon as possible, he would end up like his father. Only then, between the various recordings, the supervision of the mixing and mastering processes of the various CDs that had come out, or were due to come out during that year, and the numerous times he had had to intervene to calm the mood swings of this or that musician, he had forgotten about it. Or rather, he had not had the material time to do so.

“Yes, I understood everything.”

“Very good.”

Then, without adding anything else, Dawney and the other rescuer, a woman with very short black hair and light gray eyes, placed him on a stretcher, after which they carried him out of his mansion and directed him to an ambulance that was waiting outside in his yard.

As the ambulance doors closed on him, he thought of a way to get a word in edgewise with Dawney or, at the very least, to get a few words out of her.
For example, what had happened to her? If she had recovered after what he, a fool, had done to her, why had she not come looking for him? And why, after what they had shared together, had she pretended not to know him?
But then, before he could even realize it, he slipped into sleep. His body was tired and, in the end, that tiredness won out over his mind and, also, over the questions he wanted to ask to her.

***

Two weeks later, and after the doctor on duty had done his final checkup, Cole walked through the sliding doors of the L.A. Hospital exit. Garrison, his private driver, was already outside waiting for him and, as he approached, opened the limo door for him.

“I am happy to see you again, sir,” he said in his unmistakable Yorkshire accent.

“I'm too, Garrison,” he replied, then got in and sank down into the white leather seats.

Garrison closed the door on him, then reached behind the steering wheel and started the car. The metallic gray limousine glided quietly from the hospital entrance to the parking lot exit and then into Los Angeles traffic.

“Garrison, raise the partition, please. I have to make an important phone call.”

“All right, sir,” and, saying this, the driver pressed a button to the right of the steering wheel.

The partition began to rise slowly, too slowly for Cole's liking, but finally he was able to get the long-awaited privacy.

Arrived at the hospital, the doctors had checked him out and, when they had realized that his heart beats were not regular, they had decided to operate on him urgently.

Another heart attack, in that condition, would have proved fatal to him.

He remembered little of what had happened afterward, except for his entrance into the surgical room, and the days in which he had gone from wakefulness to sleep and in which, as he later found out, he had been transferred to the intensive care unit “to avert further risks”.

As soon as they had seen that his condition had stabilized and that the surgical intervention was perfectly successful, the doctors had transferred him to another ward for convalescence.

While there, also aided by the disappearance of the effects of anesthesia, memories had come back powerfully.

He had tried, in every possible and imaginable way, to inquire about Dawney, saying he wanted to thank her in person for saving his life, but he had found an impenetrable wall. He had even tried to exert his legendary charm, with which he had managed to win over the most prominent singers and even rock bands that had made millions of dollars to his rivals with every album released, on Ester, the young practitioner of Jewish descent who had seemed to him the most malleable of all the white coats, but without success.

The only response he had been able to get, had been:

“Unfortunately, I don't know Dawney's schedule. You know, they are always very busy in the ER, and it is not uncommon for someone to relieve someone else, even if it is not his or her work shift, to allow him or her to rest. They got into this habit during the Covid pandemic.”

Therefore, even before he left the hospital and unable to get information about Dawney “on the good terms,” he had decided that, once he got out, he would take action and do it “on his terms”.

He dialed the number on his latest-generation iPhone, then leaned it against his ear. The person sought answered on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Michaels, it's Cole Young. I have a new job for you.”

“Tell me, Mr. Young.”

“I need you to investigate about Dawney Miller. I want you to find out everything about her, the places she frequents, her work hours, her current home address, her tastes, and anything else you think might be useful to me. I will give you fifty thousand dollars now and another fifty thousand as soon as you finish the assignment.”

He heard the private investigator gasp on the other end of the phone.

“That is a very high amount of money, Mr. Young. Are you quite sure...”

“Absolutely, Michaels,” Cole interrupted him, dryly. “I never do anything unless I'm sure. Fifty thousand now and fifty thousand at the end of your assignment, but find me that information,” and, so saying, he hung up.

Immediately afterwards, he connected to the Internet with his cell phone and, after entering his bank's online portal and, subsequently, his customer account, he ordered a quick transfer from his bank account to Michaels'. A few seconds after receiving confirmation of the transfer from his bank, he received a message from Michaels:

“I'll start the research right away, Mr. Young.”

And with that he could say he had completed his day's work. Now he could not wait to get home, take a shower to get the smell of the hospital off of him, and think about what to do next.

One thing was certain: he would not let Dawney slip through his fingers a second time.