Forever Together (2 page)

“You’re welcome,” he chirped, pulling his
drugs behind him. He
turned
before
he disappeared out of sight. “This is my room. You can tell me
about the beach later on if you like?”

Kate’s heart squeezed tight at the hopeful
expression on his little face. “I’ll do my best.”

That was enough for Toby. He waved goodbye
and disappeared behind the curtain.

His dad scooped up the crayons and left them
in the plastic box on top of the table. “Thanks for talking
to
Toby. He gets bored in here,
but he’s too sick to leave.”

“He’s a nice boy,” Kate said.

“Yes, he is,” Scott sighed. “You’re more than
welcome to visit whenever you like. If I’m not here, my wife will
be with Toby.”

“Excuse me. Are you Kathleen Jennings?”

Kate looked at the man that joined them.
Without the white coat stretched across his tall frame, she
wouldn’t have picked him for a doctor. Football half-back, maybe.
Healer of the sick and injured? No way. “Yes, but you can call me
Kate.”

His blue eyes crinkled at the edges. “I’m
Taylor Keegan, Doctor T to everyone. If you follow
me,
we can start the family conference.”

Kate said goodbye to Scott, then followed
Doctor T down a short corridor. Her heart hammered against her
ribs. This was it. After three weeks of planning and
tests,
she was about to see her father and his
family for the first time.

Doctor T stopped outside a closed door. “I
understand from what your dad told me that you haven’t seen each
other
for
nearly fifteen
years.”

Kate nodded.

“If you feel uncomfortable at any stage, just
let me know and we’ll take a break. You need to know that Kaylee
won’t be at this meeting. She’s got a chest infection. Until it
goes
away,
we’ve had to put the
transplant on hold. We’re going to discuss Kaylee’s treatment and
care. After
that,
I want to go
over what the transplant will mean for you. Are you ready?”

Kate glanced at the wooden door, then back at
Doctor T. “I’m ready.”

He opened the door and she braced herself
against
the impact of seeing her
father. Her eyes darted around the small room, confusion replacing
the worry that had kept her awake most nights.

Doctor T nodded to a man hovering by the
window. “Kate, this is your father.”

She didn’t know what to say, what to think.
Her father was about her height. Blue eyes stared at her with the
same uncertainty she could feel working its way through her body.
He had dark hair, peppered with gray, and a face that had seen more
than its share of the sun and wind.

And he wore a suit. A dark blue suit with an
emerald green tie. She couldn’t have said anything or moved if her
life depended on it. She felt like her body had been slammed into a
concrete wall, head-first, leaving her dizzy and breathless and
scared.

“Hi, Kate. I’m Anna, Tom’s wife. Thank you
for helping Kaylee.”

Tears swam in Anna’s eyes. She moved toward
Kate, reaching out to give her a quick hug. Kate closed her eyes
and tried to
plow
through the
shock of seeing her father, of meeting his new wife.

Anna stepped back and wiped her face. “Kate,
this is my brother, Dan Carter.”

Kate looked into the same unsmiling blue eyes
she’d met downstairs.

He nodded and she straightened her spine. She
knew that look. The one that was quick to blame and took even
longer to trust.

She’d seen it staring back at her in the
mirror, on the days when she wanted to forget about her past. Days
like today.

***

Doctor T looked down at his notes. “I’ve got
to be honest with you. I don’t know what the future holds. It all
depends on Kaylee and how well she responds to the steroids we’ve
given her.”

“What about the transplant?” Anna’s face had
gone white. She clutched Tom’s hand, held on so tight that Kate
wondered if it was the only thing keeping her upright.

“Kaylee’s not going to get better without it.
The steroids we’re giving her are putting a Band-Aid on what’s
going on inside her body. We’ll get through this infection and the
next round of chemotherapy. After
that,
we’re straight into the transplant.” He glanced
across at Kate. “We won’t start the transplant for another couple
of weeks. I don’t know what that means for any commitments you
might have, but you need to stay.”

Kate thought of her job back in San Diego,
the apartment she shared. The bills that were piling up while she
wasn’t earning money. “I could go home. Come back when you need
me.”

No one said a word.

Dan crossed his arms in front of his chest
and gave her the meanest scowl she’d ever seen.

“I’ve only got two weeks of vacation owing to
me.” Her voice drifted off to nothing.

“You could stay with us,” Anna offered. “It
would save on your accommodation expenses and give you a chance to
get to know your dad.”

It was her turn to scowl. Her father was the
last person she wanted to spend time with. If she didn’t arrive
back in California in two weeks, she wouldn’t have a job. No job
meant no income, and that wasn’t something she wanted to face.

“For God’s sake,” Dan growled. “I don’t care
if you’ve never met any of us before. Kaylee’s your half sister.
You need to do everything you can to make her well. If that means
staying here, then by God you’ll stay.”

Kate felt her temper rising. She wanted to
help Kaylee, but Dan Carter could jump in a lake if he thought he
could tell her what to do. With his designer jeans and tailored
shirt, he didn’t look as though he knew what it was like to live
from day to day. She’d spent too much time wondering where her next
meal was coming from to lose her job. And if she stayed in Bozeman
she wouldn’t have a job to go home to.

“If you’re short of money we could help out,”
her dad said. “If you leave, Kaylee will die.” His bottom lip
trembled. Anna wrapped her arm around her husband’s shoulders and
held him firm.

Kate felt bad. Really bad. She’d brought the
success of her sister’s treatment down to money and she hadn’t
meant to do that. No matter what she thought of her dad, he didn’t
deserve the worry and stress of her problems heaped on his
shoulders. He had enough of his own.

Dan stood up and moved across to the window.
He stood with his legs apart, braced against the anger Kate could
see rolling around his body.

She cleared her throat. “I don’t need money.
I’ll call my boss, see if I can get more time off work.”

Doctor T scribbled something on the paper in
front of him. “I can write you a letter. I’m sorry I can’t give you
a more definite time-frame.”

Kate nodded and waited. She’d said enough to
last a lifetime.

“Doctor Davidson sent through all of your
notes from the tests they did at Sharp Memorial Hospital. We’ve
already talked about what’s going to happen over the phone. Have
you got any more questions?”

Kate shook her head. Doctor T had explained
everything in detail and sent links to websites that had more
information. When she’d wanted to know the answer to specific
questions, the staff at the hospital in San Diego had been amazing.
She’d walked into their waiting room three weeks ago,
shell-shocked. Not only had she spoken to her father for the first
time in years,
but she’d
found out
she had an eight-year-old sister. A sister with the same
auto-immune disease that her little sister, Lily had been born
with.

She still couldn’t get her tongue around the
name of the disease Kaylee and Lily shared. Hemophagocytic
Lymphohistiocytosis
were
two long
words that had turned her world upside down. Even when the doctors
referred to it as HLH, it didn’t make the outcome any easier to
bear.

“Would you like to meet Kaylee now?” Doctor T
knew this was the moment Kate had been dreading. “She’s in
isolation in the Intensive Care Unit. We’re hoping to move her into
another room in the next couple of days.”

She took a deep breath and tried to steady
her nerves. Her dad had sent her photos of Kaylee, of her life
before she’d been diagnosed with HLH. With her big blue eyes and
cheeky smile, she’d looked so much like Lily that it had made her
heart break all over again.

Doctor T stood patiently beside his chair,
waiting for her answer.

“Is it safe for me to see her?”

He smiled. “You’ll look like a dentist with
the white face mask you’ll have to wear. Kaylee wants to meet
you.”

Those softly spoken words almost unraveled
Kate. Unraveled twelve years of heartache and grief, of knowing she
could have saved Lily’s life. The doctors hadn’t known what was
wrong with her baby sister until it was too late, and that made the
hurt even harder to deal with.

“I can go with you.” Kate’s dad stood up. He
stuck his hands in his pockets and looked uncertainly at Doctor T.
“If that’s okay?”

Doctor T nodded. “What do you think,
Kate?”

She gazed at her dad. Hope and exhaustion
were etched into his face, making him appear older, more vulnerable
than a man twice his age. She had a feeling Kaylee’s disease would
leave scars on their family for longer than they realized. Longer
than any treatment would last.

Kate swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’d
like you to be there. Thank you.”

Her dad’s eyes filled with tears. “Kaylee’s
the same, but different. The steroids and chemotherapy she’s been
given have made her gain a lot of
weight
. She’s not…” He dropped his head to his chest,
overcome by too much of everything to continue.

Anna stood and held Tom’s hand. “Kaylee’s
body is doing everything it can to stay alive. She’s talked
non-stop about you all week. Not because your bone marrow matches,
but because you’re her sister.”

Kate felt tears fill her eyes, reminding her
of why she was here. Kaylee’s disease had triggered a chain of
events that no one could have imagined, least of all Kate. She
didn’t know where they would end up, but she prayed to God it
wasn’t inside a funeral home.

“I’ll take you up to the Intensive Care Unit
now,” Doctor T said. “Once we get there the nurses will show you
what you need to do before going in to see Kaylee.”

Kate followed her dad and Doctor T out of the
room. When her parents’ had divorced, she never thought she’d see
her dad again. Never considered that he might have a new family.
Never imagined the genetic marker that killed her sister would
strike again.

But this time, unlike twelve years ago, she
might be able to do something about it.

***

Kate left the room and Dan’s shoulders
relaxed. He leaned against the window and stared at the Rockies
spread out before him. The sun glittered off the trucks sitting in
the parking lot and normal everyday life carried on around them.
For the last few
months,
they
hadn’t been living a normal life. Kaylee’s disease had taken hold
and left them exhausted and fearing for the worst.

When Kate had been in the
room,
he’d listened to the conversation going on
behind him. But he’d paid more attention to the words that weren’t
being said. When they’d talked about Kaylee, Kate’s voice had been
hesitant, too full of emotion
for
a sister she’d never met. He didn’t know what had happened in her
past, but it sure as hell made her scared about Kaylee’s
future.

And that didn’t go anywhere near to matching
the emotion rolling off her when Tom spoke. She’d gone from
ignoring her dad completely to taking the support he was offering.
And for some reason that made Dan even angrier about what was going
on.

He couldn’t believe the last six months had
come down to this. They were relying on a stranger to save Kaylee’s
life or take away their last scrap of hope. He didn’t care what Tom
and Anna had said this morning. If Kate
left,
he’d track her down and handcuff her to the
hospital bed. He was damned if he’d let her leave Bozeman without
giving Kaylee what she so desperately needed.

His niece made him laugh, made him forget
about what had brought him back to Bozeman. She had a way of
looking at the world that simplified things. She made one and one
equal two, instead of the twisted ending he’d been living with for
years.

Anna stood beside him. “It’s not as bad as
you think.”

He grunted. You couldn’t get worse than a
donor who wasn’t interested in sticking around. He would have
thought helping her younger sister would have been a priority, but
obviously not. “I can’t believe she thought about leaving. Doesn’t
she realize how sick Kaylee is?”

“Kate hasn’t been here, seen Kaylee. We don’t
know what’s going on in her life.”

“I know what’s not going to happen. She’s not
leaving.”

Anna shook her head. “She won’t leave, Dan.
You’ve got to trust that it will all work out.”

Trust be damned. He’d never been into all the
mumbo jumbo that Anna thought made the world go round. Cold hard
facts worked for him. A woman who traveled across the country then
couldn’t stay had something to hide. And if there was one thing he
was good at it was finding the truth. No matter what it cost
him.

***

Kate tried not to breathe too deeply. The
smell of antiseptic made her stomach turn, made her want to run for
the nearest exit. Her dad was talking to Doctor T, discussing
Kaylee’s progress and the blood test results they’d seen before she
arrived.

Some of it made sense, most didn’t. As they
turned into another
corridor
she
thought about Dan Carter, not because she wanted to, but because it
stopped her thinking about Kaylee. Everyone else had made her feel
welcome. Not Dan. He was the only one who knew how close she was to
leaving, and that alone would keep her in Bozeman for longer than
she should stay.