Chapter 4 - Sirens in the Sky
The terrace suddenly became a blinding swirl of flashing blue and red lights reflecting off the hotel's panoramic glass walls.
Paramedics swarmed around Eleanor, wrapping her in a thermal trauma blanket and strapping an oxygen mask over her pale face.
"Pulse is thready and tachycardic, BP is one-sixty over one-ten," the lead medic announced into his radio headset.
"We need an immediate transport to Mount Sinai emergency trauma unit!"
Eleanor's hand reached out from beneath the thermal blanket, weakly searching the air until her fingers brushed Emily’s arm.
Emily had remained sitting on the cold stone, too overwhelmed to move, watching the chaos unfold.
"Come with me..." Eleanor whispered beneath the plastic oxygen mask, her gray eyes pleading with the young waitress.
"Don't leave me, child."
Emily looked up at me, hesitant and clearly intimidated by the sudden arrival of doctors, detectives, and corporate executives.
"Please, Emily," I urged gently, placing a hand on her bruised shoulder.
"You saved her life. If she wants you by her side, you belong there."
Emily swallowed hard, nodded through her tears, and allowed one of the female paramedics to help her to her feet.
"We need to treat those contusions and check your wrists for ligament tears anyway, miss," the medic noted gently.
Across the ruined terrace, Vanessa was struggling violently against the iron grip of Officer Martinez.
"You cannot arrest me based on the delusions of a senile woman!" Vanessa screamed, her auburn hair falling across her flushed, furious face.
"Daniel, tell them to release me! Tell them this is an internal family dispute!"
I walked over to where she was pinned against the marble wall, looking down at the woman I had once loved with absolute disgust.
"This is not a family dispute, Vanessa," I said, my voice dead and devoid of warmth.
"This is attempted first-degree murder. And I am going to testify against you personally."
"You wouldn't dare!" she spat, venom dripping from every syllable.
"My father will destroy you in court! You'll never see a dime of the offshore assets I secured!"
The words slipped from her mouth before she could stop herself, a slip of the tongue that made Detective Hayes, who was standing beside the officers, narrow his eyes.
"Offshore assets?" Hayes repeated quietly, pulling out a small notepad.
"We'll certainly be looking into that during the financial discovery, Mrs. Whitmore."
"Shut up! I want my lawyer! I'm not saying another word to any of you!" Vanessa shrieked as cold steel handcuffs snapped around her wrists with a sharp, definitive click.
The sound echoed across the terrace, finalizing the destruction of our marriage and the beginning of her public ruin.
They marched her past the gasping onlookers who had gathered near the entrance, wealthy socialites whispering behind their hands in horrified fascination.
I turned back to the gurney where Eleanor was being prepared for the elevator ride down to street level.
"Daniel, ride in the front of the ambulance," Detective Hayes instructed, handing me his business card.
"We've locked down the entire terrace as a crime scene. Crime Scene Unit is already photographing the broken bracket and the silver platter."
"Thank you, Detective. Make sure she doesn't get bail," I pleaded, clutching the card in my bruised fingers.
"With a victim of Eleanor Whitmore's stature and direct eyewitness testimony from you and the employee, she isn't walking out of Central Booking anytime soon," Hayes assured me grimly.
We descended in the service elevator at breakneck speed, the quiet humming of the motor doing nothing to settle the storm inside my head.
How long had Vanessa planned this?
How many times had she smiled at Eleanor across our Sunday dinner table while secretly calculating the height of terrace railings?
When the elevator doors opened onto the subterranean loading bay, three ambulances were idling with sirens already warbling.
Crowds of paparazzi and late-night journalists were already gathering behind the police barricades at the street exit, flashes strobing through the darkness.
News travels at the speed of light in Manhattan when a billionaire is nearly thrown from a rooftop.
Emily and I climbed into the back of the lead ambulance beside Eleanor's stretcher, the doors slamming shut with a heavy vacuum seal.
The siren unleashed its deafening wail as the vehicle lurched forward, carving a path through the midnight congestion of the city.
The paramedic immediately began cutting away the torn sleeve of Eleanor's emerald gown to insert an intravenous line.
Her arm was covered in horrific purple hematomas where Emily and I had gripped her to fight off the fall.
"She's showing signs of severe hypothermia and possible cardiac distress from the shock," the paramedic muttered to his partner in the front.
"Step on it, Mike!"
Eleanor's eyes flickered open, locking onto Emily, who sat quietly on the small fold-down jump seat opposite the gurney.
"What is your full name, dear?" Eleanor asked weakly, her voice barely audible over the roaring siren.
"Emily Parker, ma'am," Emily replied softly, reaching out to gently touch Eleanor’s trembling fingers.
"I work for the Grand Hyatt catering division."
"You don't work for catering anymore, Emily," Eleanor whispered, a faint, defiant smile touching the corners of her lips.
"You are the guardian angel of the Whitmore family."
Emily’s eyes welled with fresh tears as she shook her head.
"I just couldn't watch her push you. I couldn't let someone die."
I watched the two women, an empire-builder and an hourly-wage waitress, connected by an unbreakable bond formed forty stories above the ground.
Suddenly, Eleanor's cardiac monitor emitted a sharp, erratic series of warning beeps.
The paramedic’s eyes widened as the green line on the screen spiked erratically.
"Ventricular fibrillation! She's going into cardiac arrest!" the medic shouted, lunging for the defibrillator pads.
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"Driver, code red! Mount Sinai, prepare trauma room one immediately!"
My heart plummeted into ice as the world spun completely out of control.
