The Billionaire Rock Star's Rescue

“Nine-one-one, what's the emergency?”

“Yes, we need help at 401 N Beverly Road, West Hollywood. A friend of ours got sick, he said his left arm hurt, then pressed his hand to his chest and fell to the ground!”

“We'll send an ambulance right away.” And saying this, the operator immediately transmitted the call data to the Emergency Room of the L.A Hospital, which was the closest one to the area.

A few seconds later Dawney Miller, recently turned twenty-eight, found herself in the ambulance alongside Bette, her colleague and best friend, and as always she began to go over everything she had learned during her three years at the GASMFA, the professional EMT and nurse school.

This was not the first time she intervened in a case of suspected heart attack, but that did not mean she should take the emergency lightly. Sadly, in her five years working in the Emergency Room at L.A Hospital, she had had at least ten cases in which, despite people calling them promptly, they had had to report a death from cardiac arrest to some friend, family member or, even worse, a crying partner.

An icy chill ran down her spine as she thought back to a similar incident, though different in many ways, in which she was the one who had found herself on the ground. She had been lucky, however: shortly after she had been dumped carelessly in front of the door of the Emergency Room at L.A Hospital, Mark, who was now speed-driving the ambulance in which she and Bette were in, had found her and rescued her just in time and just before a severe alcohol intoxication sent her prematurely to the Creator. Once she had recovered from the bad adventure, she had decided to cut back on her old life - being a groupie in a famous rock band was starting to become too dangerous - and enroll in a school to become an emergency responder. Getting back behind a school desk had been a challenge for her, who had dropped out of high school to follow the Razor Edge and their charismatic guitarist, Cole Young, and had never been much of a student, but she had gritted her teeth and, after the first week, had found that she liked EMT school. She had graduated with honors, which was even stranger, and three years later, after working her way up through the ranks in some small hospitals, she had tried her hand at everything and sent her application to the Emergency Room at L.A Hospital.

She had been accepted. And at that moment, when she had received the fateful yes and had been hired, she had felt that she had also paid off the debt she owed to that ER.

“We're here,” Mark said, stopping the ambulance.

She wasted no time: as Bette opened the vehicle doors, she quickly grabbed the defibrillator and everything needed to counteract cardiac arrests and heart attacks, then she jumped down from the ambulance.

She paid no attention to the luxurious neoclassical-style mansion, nor to the swimming pool illuminated by lights that changed color every second, nor to the gardens that surrounded it. Nor did she pay any attention to the six gorillas who, at first, tried to bar her way, but as soon as they saw her uniform, her purse and, most importantly, the defibrillator, they led the way for her and Bette into the villa's salon, which was lit by hundreds of crystal pendant lights and glittered with gold and fine white Carrara marble.

“Get everyone away!” Bette ordered to the bodyguards, and as soon as the six men were able to clear the area, they approached the man lying on the ground and knelt beside him.

After checking that, indeed, there was no heartbeat, Dawney hurriedly unfastened his pants to pull out the flaps of his shirt. Meanwhile, Bette unfastened the buttons of the elegant suit, and as soon as the man's chest was in view, Dawney immediately proceeded with CPR.

One, two, three, four... Stayin' alive, stayin' alive.

The song began to run through her head, setting the pace for her hands. During the first lesson in which they had covered heart attacks, their professor, Celine, had revealed to them the secret to doing proper heart massage:

“Just sing in your head to 'Stayin' Alive' by the Bee Gees and follow the beat.”

She had almost laughed about it the first time, but then, when she had found herself on the “real battlefield” and giving heart massages to both adults and children, she had realized that it worked.

One, two, three, four... Stayin' alive, stayin' alive.

“One minute and twenty seconds,” said Bette, looking at her watch. “I'll relieve you shortly.”

Dawney, even though she felt her arms beginning to ache, continued to practice CPR, never stopping.

And, in the meantime, she began to pray. “Oh Lord, please don't let it be too late.”

One minute and thirty seconds...one minute and forty seconds...one minute and fifty seconds...

“Ouch, you hurt me!” shouted a voice suddenly.

She stopped abruptly. Beneath her palms, the man's heart had started beating again.

She turned to look at him to ask how he was feeling now, as she usually did, but she did not have time to say a word, because the man preceded her:

“Dawney?!” he exclaimed, stunned. Then he raised his head slightly to look down. “Why are my pants unbuttoned?”

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-million-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.