A Woman's Heart (23 page)

"There'll be a plane." His eyes grew hard with determination. "I'll hire one."

She couldn't speak through a throat that felt like grating sandpaper. She could only nod, grateful that Peter was there making the decisions.

"We'll be with Alexander soon," he added, gently touching her arm.

"It doesn't sound good," she whispered. "Vomiting. Diarrhea. Babies can die when they get dehydrated." She stared hard into Peter's eyes. "He's so little."

"They've got him hooked up to an IV. That'll control the dehydration."

"I never should have left him."

Peter came closer still, and reaching out his hand, gently stroked her hair. His touch soothed.

If only the cabin hadn't turned to ice. If only she weren't so cold.

Peter ceased his caress and held out his hand for her to hold. For a long moment, she simply stared at it, her tears frozen in her eyes. Then she looked into his eyes and found them darker than midnight. His unsmiling lips were pinched white around the edges. But his hand, when she took it, was as hot as an electric blanket.

"Alex will be all right," he said huskily, pulling her to her feet and drawing her into his arms.

His touch warmed her on the surface, but inside, she still froze. From between open lips, her breath escaped shallowly. Peter's shirt lay comfortingly soft against her cheek.

"Alex's illness must have been coming on when we left," she said haltingly, her heart contracting with self-loathing. "He was fussing, was hot." She took a deep breath. "Ruby said it was teething."

She pushed Peter away, stared bleakly into his eyes. "I never should have left him," she repeated dully.

Chapter 14

The face staring back at her from the door's much-polished glass couldn't possibly be hers. She looked like a madwoman. Her strawberry blonde curls swirled around her head in a fashion impenetrable by any comb, and her eyes were blue-black saucers much too large for her face.

Peter yanked open the door to the children's ward and Jann sidled past, trying not to touch him, for if she did, the wall she'd so painstakingly built around herself would crack and she'd fly into his arms and beg to stay there forever.

Peter didn't need that. He looked no better than she. His skin was as pale as marble against his rumpled black hair and his mouth was set in a grim line. He'd said little when she'd claimed responsibility for Alex's condition, perhaps knowing there was nothing he could say to make her feel better, to lift the burden of blame from her shoulders.

Jerking her gaze from Peter, she stared down the long corridor. She had been in a frenzy to get here, desperate to see Alex with her own eyes, needing to hold him. But now they had arrived, she could scarcely bear to go on, hating that she couldn't alleviate her baby's suffering, terrified she would doom him with her presence.

Thrusting her shoulders straight, she forced one foot in front of the other, the only way she could make it any closer to Alex. She was excruciatingly aware of Peter at her side, not needing to touch him or see him to know that he was there. Needle-thin cords seemed to stretch between them, connecting them, binding them, one to the other.

The lights on the ceiling were unbearably bright, the floor, with its squares within squares, dizzying. Opening her eyes wide, she bit hard on her lip, but the pattern on the linoleum continued to swirl, and along with it, her mind.

Then Peter caught her hand and the dizziness disappeared, leaving only the terrified pounding of her heart. Everything frightened her lately. It didn't used to be so. Not before Alex. Not before Peter.

Children's Intensive Care.

The words might have been written in neon the way they stood out. Jann's pounding heart slowed. Or maybe it was her breathing that slowed, for she couldn't find enough air.

Peter gave her hand a squeeze then put his arm around her waist. She sank against him, needing him too much to resist him, needing the strength only he could give her. Pushing open the door to the ward, he guided her through in front of him.

Room 326. She couldn't see the number. Was it down another corridor? No. The even numbers were on the right like house numbers on a street. Laughter bubbled up, threatening to escape. She clamped her lips shut, pushing the hysteria away.

Alex needed her.

This was not her parents' room.

Nor Claire's.

Alex was not about to die!

Room 326. At last.

She took a deep breath, but before she could open the door, Peter pulled her into his arms. His heart beat savagely against her ear, but his arms were rock solid.

Like the man himself.

For a single, blissful instant Jann felt completely safe.

He tilted her face upward, and though he made no move to kiss her, power rocketed through her, lending her courage. When they had made love, it had been magic, today his touch held strength. Looking deep into his eyes, she found the courage to go on.

She opened the door. There were too many patients, too many visitors. The space was bursting with noise and confusion.

Except for Alex, who just lay there, his body too tiny for such a big bed, his gurgles and cries stilled. Covered in perspiration, he seemed to have shrunk during the three days she'd been gone. His face was gaunt and his precious baby fat had all but disappeared, leaving only loose skin wrinkling around skinny legs.

Except for his diaper, her baby was naked. His quilt lay on top of him. The one she had made. Under a panoply of stars, the porpoise still danced on the end of its tail.

Incongruous somehow, with Alex so sick.

Tears stung Jann's eyes. She'd made him that quilt after Claire died, as a promise to Claire's child that she'd always do her best.

Somehow she had failed.

Ruby rose stiffly from the chair beside Alex's bed. "Thank goodness you're here," she whispered as Jann hurried forward. The old woman gave her a hug. "I'm so sorry, Jann. I was sure Alex was simply teething."

Jann wrenched her gaze from her child and turned to her friend, heartsick at the sight of tears in the older woman's eyes.

"It's not your fault, Ruby," she said. "It's mine."

She dragged a chair next to Alex's bed and wearily sat down. Her baby lay so still. Only his eyelids fluttered as he slept and his chest rose then fell with the release of shallow breaths.

His intravenous stood next to his bed, so big, so adult a machine for such a little guy. When Jann lifted Alex's hand, she found his fingers as waxy and lifeless as a doll's. She massaged them gently, willing them to warm and turn their familiar pink.

Peter wedged himself in on the other side of the bed, his brows drawn together and his lips a grim slash.

"What's he doing in a room like this?" he demanded.

"I don't know," Jann said helplessly, then glanced toward Ruby.

"It was all your medical insurance would cover," Ruby explained softly.

Peter's face grew more thunderous.

Even that small insurance had been more than she could afford. The pulse at Jann's temple pounded in unison with the bleep of the monitor at the head of Alex's bed.

A nurse entered the room carrying a tray laden with pills. Peter called her over with a jerk of his arm.

"I want this child in a private room," he said, "with a private nurse."

He was giving orders again, Jann thought dazedly, but she welcomed it this time as she had the night before. She could only pray his efforts would make a difference.

Back on Maui, she had phoned the hospital while Peter arranged for the plane. Alex's doctor hadn't been able to tell her what had caused the baby's gastroenteritis, but had indicated it could have been any number of things. A bacteria. A virus. A tropical germ. His environment.

By the time she and Peter had arrived in Honolulu, the culprit had been found. The supply of water on her boat was to blame, water stored in an aging holding tank, pumped up through old pipes and dribbled out through leaking faucets. She'd put off the repairs many times, thinking she couldn't afford them, but it looked as though now they might cost her everything she held dear.

Over the telephone, the doctor had sounded reassuring, but when they saw that same doctor at the front desk on the way in, his eyes had held worry. Jann knew the dangers of dehydration in a child as young as Alex, but was trying hard to cling to the doctor's initial certainty he would get better, to trust in that opinion. But to do that she had to eliminate the memory of her parents' death and of Claire's death, too.

Fear as sharp-edged as a diamond, lodged in her throat. She tried to swallow, but couldn't. Peter cast a swift glance in her direction, then took hold of Alex's other hand, caressing the baby's skin with a slow sweep of his thumb.

She had witnessed Peter's gentleness before, when he held Alex or changed his diapers, when he'd made the baby giggle in a rousing game of peek-a-boo, but she hadn't allowed herself to value that gentleness, hadn't dared to even acknowledge it. Now it loomed before her, as damning as her guilt.

Alex pulled his legs to his chest and emitted a shallow mew. His eyes opened for an instant, then fluttered shut once more. Peter stroked Alex's tummy in a circular motion, seeming to know instinctively where it hurt and how to fix it. Fixing what she had broken. What she was responsible for.

Pressing shaking fingers against her brow, Jann prayed the pressure would take away the pain, feeling idiotically hopeful that because she was suffering, Alex's suffering might disappear.

Ruby touched her shoulder, saying she and John were going home. They were worn out, Jann realized sickly, by the vigil they had kept. A vigil she should have been here to keep herself.

* * *

The day passed in a blur and ended in a fog, the muted ceiling lamp the only indication night had fallen, and the chinks of light showing around the edges of the curtains the only sign dawn was upon them again. A stiffness pervaded Jann's body, forbidding movement. Numbness infiltrated her brain, stifling all thought.

The only clarity was the hands clasped on the white sheet in front of her, Alex's hand in Peter's and Alex's hand in her own. She longed to take hold of Peter's other hand and complete the circle of hearts and bodies, for that seemed the only way her baby would get better. But to reach for Peter seemed as impossible now as reaching for the stars.

She touched her crystal instead, its smooth surface strangely cold and unresponsive. When she slipped it from around her neck and held it in her open hand, its color disappeared along with its warmth, its usual translucent pink chillingly subdued.

The crystal, with its shafts of light and splashes of reflected color, had always fascinated Alex. He would reach for it, squealing with delight and with plump fingers pat at it as though it were alive.

With a swift glance at her baby's pale face, Jann tucked the crystal into his hand and pressed his fingers shut around it. She wasn't sure what she expected to happen, but it wasn't this nothingness of expression, this paucity of reaction. Even when she took his hand in hers, Alex didn't move.

Heartsick, she stared across Alex's inert form and looked at Peter instead. For the past eighteen hours, she had focused only on her baby, convinced that unless she did so some irreversible harm would occur. But she needed Peter's strength, as a yawning hole needs filling, as grass needs rain, and flowers sunshine.

Yet she couldn't acknowledge that need, couldn't allow it to even exist, for if she did, she'd be vulnerable, and she had promised herself never to be vulnerable again. She had attempted throughout the night to expunge all images of Peter from her brain: his lips, the safety of his arms, his eyes... especially his eyes, with their ability to see into hers and know, as only a soul mate would know, what she was thinking and what she was feeling.

But she had failed in her efforts. He lingered in her mind as he did on the periphery of her vision, warming her to her heart's core and her soul's center. His strength was her strength, his warmth hers also. The first time Alex cried out so feebly in the night, she froze, turned to Peter and, for an instant, long enough for her to grip more tightly to her courage, the ice retreated and her soul readied itself to meet the new horrors ahead.