Forever Sheltered (2 page)

But to do any of that — either the night OR the brush-off — with a coworker seemed like a bad idea. Especially with a devastatingly handsome doctor who was pretending to be a jerk but was really utterly vulnerable.

“Darion, then,” I said.

Damn, I might as well climb into his bed. I was done for. The gears of my interest had already gotten engaged. No telling what direction they would grind.

But there would definitely be grinding.

One of the volunteers led in two children by the hand. My next group was about to start.

“Looks like it’s time for me to go,” Darion said. He passed the two kids, patting one on the shoulder, and left the room.

Marlena returned, this time with Jake. He seemed pleased to be on the crutches, hobbling along. Half of his head was still shaved from his surgery, the suture angry and red but no longer hidden under bandages. He was recovering. It was such a relief when some of them did.

When the three kids were settled, Marlena said over their heads, “What was Marks doing here?”

I shrugged. “Just asking about a patient of his.”

“That boy is as cold as ice,” she said. “He’s been here a couple of months and hasn’t made a peep to anyone other than ‘Where are so-and-so’s test results?’” Marlena shook her head, sending her braids bouncing. “Nobody knows a thing about him.”

I set a piece of construction paper in front of each of the children. I could see how people would find him cold. He had walked in that way. But later, not so much. He’d been sort of emotional, actually. And he had that picture in his wallet.

The man was definitely a mystery.

A very intriguing mystery.

Chapter 2: Darion

The art teacher was definitely on my mind as I made my rounds through the oncology ward. Such a funny girl, with her striped stockings and bohemian style. I’d never known anyone with a college degree who wore their hair in pigtails.

Still, something about her was refreshing and easy. Not her attitude, certainly. Borderline insolent. But she let you know where you stood, good or bad. I could talk to her.

Showing her the picture in my wallet was probably a mistake. And I couldn’t afford many.

But it had worked. Cynthia would be looked after. For some reason, the two of them had a bond. I couldn’t question anything that helped her with this struggle. Cynthia needed as many people as possible in her corner.

I made sure I nodded cordially at the nurses who passed. Despite my best efforts since arriving two months ago, I had already gained a reputation for being a stoic.

I wasn’t sure how anyone could be emotionally involved in this specialty. More and more, it seemed the cases that were assigned to this floor were palliative and not curative. I spent more time establishing a comfortable, lingering decline than trying to make anyone healthy and well.

But St. Anthony’s was a subspecialty clinic within the bigger hospital. The people who came here were at the end of their cancer battle, seeking experimental treatments and any last shred of hope.

I recognized Harriet Parker trundling down the hall. Her husband rolled an IV alongside her. She must be coming from the chemo room. She’d asked to be able to take it with the outpatients. Anything to be among other people. I understood that.

I carefully memorized each patient’s name using alliteration, a trick I learned from a middle school teacher I dated briefly in med school. Harriet was always in a hurry, so I nicknamed her Harried Harriet.

“Hello, Harriet,” I said. “You haven’t slowed down a bit.”

She straightened her orange flowered head cap. “Oh, I’m not as spry as I was when I went through this as a kid.” She banged the metal stand of her IV. “Sloppy seconds are no fun.”

I tried to laugh, but I knew it wasn’t convincing. Harriet had beat childhood leukemia only to get secondary cancer as an adult. Nothing about any of this was really funny, although I could appreciate Harriet’s willingness to find humor in her situation.

“I’ll be down to see you in a bit,” I said.

She waved her hand. “No rush, Dr. Marks. I got nowhere else to be.”

I turned the corner of the hallway, this one bustling with nurses and aides. All the outpatient chemotherapy rooms were stationed along this corridor. Bedraggled family members sprawled on chairs in the waiting lounge, knitting or reading or staring up at television screens. Treatments could take hours, depending on the drug and the protocol. And the aftermath was often worse.

I knew this all too well, when my own mother went through it. Multiple cancers erupted at once, as though her body just gave up on fighting. I was midway through my residency. My involvement with her illness led to switching to oncology. While we struggled to manage her condition, I learned how important holistic care could be.

We added at least a year — a good productive year — to her life because I was there to help the doctors talk to each other. We coordinated everything from surgery to chemotherapy to nutrition to mental health as a team, even though I was not allowed to oversee her care myself due to the family connection.

But I ruffled a lot of feathers. Several doctors felt I should have stayed out of it and resented non-medical caregivers recommending changes to her protocol.

I vowed that from then on I would work only someplace that incorporated holistic care. St. Anthony’s wasn’t quite it, but life had led me here after Mayo turned me down. I’d make the best of it.

I paused at the desk in the hub of the ward to log in and check which patients I needed to visit, but more importantly, to see if I had a moment to drop by and visit Cynthia before going on the longer rounds.

Something about talking to Tina made me want to see Cynthia sooner rather than later. I knew she was exhausted from the trip to Houston.

But we’d been treating her for two years. Inductive therapy. Radiation. Stem cell transplant. She couldn’t go on forever. Damage to her remaining kidney was becoming serious. She’d go into failure soon and end up on dialysis and a donor list. Then everything would change. The minute I stepped up to donate, whether a kidney or another round of stem cells, everyone would know our relationship.

Screw it. I would see her now. I whirled around and headed quickly back through the ward. Now I knew my reputation was preceding me, as my pace and determination made everyone move out of my way without greeting.

I couldn’t help that.

When I got to Cynthia’s door, I paused. Drawings in paint and marker and crosshatched pencil covered all the available space. The art teacher did not seem to realize that the person Cynthia drew holding her hand in so many of the images was her. She probably assumed it was a member of the family.

I focused on one of the drawings. In it, Cynthia had drawn all three of us — me, Tina, and herself. She positioned herself between us, all holding hands. My throat tightened a little. She deserved so much more than what life had handed her.

I knocked on the door in case a hospital nurse was with her, but when I stepped in, only Cynthia and the private nurse I had hired were inside.

“Dary!” Cynthia cried. She disentangled her legs from the sheets and gingerly stepped to the floor to come over to me.

My heart hurt, as it always did, when her small bare head buried into my belly. She was eight, but her thinness and slow growth made her seem younger. The only thing that kept me going as she fought this battle was that I could be here to manage her care, like I had our mother’s. Rules be damned. I had seen too many doctors with too big a caseload miss important things.

Nurse Angela adjusted a pair of lime green glasses to peer at her notes. “She’s eaten a little today. Urine a bit concerning.”

I held the back of Cynthia’s head. “I’ll order a blood test.”

Cynthia’s face popped up. “Not another one!”

“You have a new port,” I said, pointing to the neck of her gown. “No more sticks now that it’s working again.” Her central line had stopped functioning while we were in Houston, but I had a new one put in the minute we got back. It was a risk, a surgery when her immune system was down, but we needed to be able to put meds in her, and so many of her veins were already blown.

Cynthia touched her shoulder. “That’s right,” she said. “My space port is operational.” She laid her cheek against me again, clinging like it was hard to stay standing.

“She still seems a bit tired, so I canceled her extra activities today,” the nurse said.

Cynthia popped her head up again. “But I get to go to art, right?”

“She should go to art,” I told the nurse.

Angela lowered her glasses and glanced at the clock. “She’s already missed it.”

“Dary! You promised!” Cynthia’s hands scrunched the fabric of my lab coat.

“You’ll get to go tomorrow,” I told her. “I’ll make sure.”

I scooped her up and carried her back to the bed. “I heard about a special kind of marker today,” I said. “One that if you cross one line over the other, it makes a new color.”

“Ooooh,” Cynthia said. “Can we get some?”

“We can,” I said. “If you eat your dinner.”

Cynthia frowned. “But it makes me sick.”

I squeezed her hand. “Just do the best you can.” I glanced up at Angela. “All okay with the staff?”

When we were readmitted after the trip, one of the nurses seemed to suspect Angela wasn’t family after all. We created an elaborate ruse that Angela was Cynthia’s aunt. No one could know that Cynthia was my sister, or I’d be taken off her case.

“It seems all right. I made up a big ol’ story about all the crawfish boils I took Miss Cynthia to when she was a baby.”

“I even drew a picture,” Cynthia said. She sorted through a pile at the foot of her bed, producing an image of a blood-red crab diving into a pot.

I hated that she had to be involved in the lie, but she couldn’t tell anyone I was her brother. “That’s real good, Cyn,” I said.

I had to get back on rounds. Sometimes it felt like an illicit affair, the time I would steal to sneak in and check on Cynthia. I knew of no other way to work these long hours and still stay close to her. “I’ll see you before you go to sleep.”

“Okay.” Cynthia leaned back against her pillows, pale and fragile with shadows under her eyes. I cursed the genetic marker I’d discovered in both my mother and my sister, one that bypassed me. The tumor suppressing gene T53 was mutated in them both. Mom made it into her fifties before it caught up with her. But Cynthia hadn’t been so lucky. She was only six, just two years after Mom died, when she started showing symptoms of leukemia — deep bruising, weight loss, and fevers.

This would be a battle all her life. And I would be there to help her fight it.

Chapter 3: Tina

I had little time to think of Dr. Darion Marks or his peculiar attachment to his patient as my day spiraled out of control.

My attempt to teach a set of young teens to paint away their pain had gone completely south when the girls got the bright idea to color themselves instead. Soon I had four giggling rainbow heads and a set of nurses grumbling about the mess.

I wiped down the tables, still speckled with paint. I couldn’t admit it to anyone at the hospital, but I applauded their misbehavior. They had it tough, running around in hospital garb, no makeup, no dating or school angst or socializing. In their shoes, I would be doing much worse than a bit of temporary color.

My own teen years were complex and strange. I had gone “goth” and continually covered my pale hair with black dye. I ran with a crowd just like me, full of attitude and railing against authority. Everything had to be about me — my wants, my refusal to assimilate.

I didn’t get the big picture until life smacked me hard.

My hand automatically moved to my throat to finger the charm on my necklace, a photo pendant.

The image was of Peanut, the baby I had when I was seventeen. He was born terribly premature and lived only three hours. Three long, sweet hours.

His father never acknowledged him or saw him. He ditched me in the hospital during my premature labor. By the time I tracked him down again, he was already poking some other hole.

I frowned at the dirty cuffs of my sweater, smeared with paint and magic marker. I would love to be able to wear short sleeves to make my job easier, but it seemed unwise. People would notice the scars. I slid the sleeve up my arm. Even five years later, the raised white lines on my wrists were obvious at a glance.

I’d been so stupid. So young. So unable to think about anything beyond the pain I was in at that moment and how to make it go away.

A tiny bare head peeped around the edge of the doorframe. “Miss Tina?” a little voice asked.

Cynthia. Dr. Darion’s favored patient. She wore a pale blue gown and the nubby-bottomed socks the nurses preferred. She wasn’t hooked up to anything today. No drip or oxygen tube. With her quirky smile and cheerful demeanor, she could be any small girl.

But a closer look revealed the shadows under her eyes. And of course the lack of lashes as well as hair. Her hands were marred with nicks and scars from IVs. If the neckline of her gown shifted just right, you could see the port they had installed for her chemotherapy.

I pulled my sleeve down over my own scars.

“Hello, Cynthia,” I said. “You missed class today.”

“I wanted to come.”

“Does anybody know you are here?” I remembered Dr. Darion saying she had lost her mother. He hadn’t mentioned a father.

“I told Aunt Angela.”

“Is she in your room?”

“She said I could come.” She slid into a chair. Her body was tiny, smaller than a typical eight-year-old. More like a kindergartner. She propped her chin on her hands. “She went with me on the trip to Houston.”

My boss had told me not to ask medical questions of the young patients, but to redirect if they said anything their parents might not like non-staffers to know.

This policy insulted me on several levels. One, it’s pretty damn hard to do art therapy if you’re not supposed to know how or why they are sick. Two, I signed enough paperwork on privacy to fill a file cabinet. And third — why wasn’t I considered staff?