Gracie could feel the acid churning in her stomach and creeping up her throat; her head was swimming.
She’s had too much to drink.
Cynthia had been topping her up all night. Gracie had meant to keep herself to a limit, but she’d let things slide—she didn’t know how else she was supposed to get through the evening. Now she has no idea how much wine she drank during this interminable dinner party. When she got to her place, she could barely walk and only made it as far as the couch. Somewhere in the night, she fumbled for the fleece blanket she kept on the sofa and passed out again. By morning she was so cold she thought all the drinking had made her fall ill. She reset the thermostat to crank up the heating equipment to make up for falling body temperature. The readings were so low he knew something was wrong with the furnace. She called the heating company immediately for heating repair. When the HVAC professional asked her what had happened, she was in no frame of mind to explain, not that she would remember, so she just told him she was away and just came back to a non-functional electric heater. The heating dealer confirmed that they would send help by noon. In the meantime, she had the fireplace to keep it warm. At around half past noon, a heating technician arrived. Gracie showed her to the HVAC installation and left him with it. After a thorough inspection, the repairman from the heating dealership found that all it needed was heater maintenance, and it was good to go. Gracie did not have the heating device tuned up the previous year, which must have caused the malfunction. The HVAC professional was done in an hour.