Immortal Healer (22 page)

She shook her head. “No.” She actually said it as though it was nothing more than a disagreement—shrugged her shoulders, nothing more to say.

“I’m sorry, sweetie.” His voice came out as though the breath in his lungs was being expelled at the same time, but she was still shaking her head in disbelief.

“No.” There must be something more appropriate to say. “Children get leukemia.”

“Adults do too. All the time. But it’s too soon to know what kind or how fast it’s moving.”

“You say that like you’re sure you know what it is.”

“Your white cells are high, your red cells and platelets are low. I’m seeing a high concentration of blast cells. It’s leukemia. I don’t know what type, but I’m getting you in for testing tomorrow. I know a good oncologist that lives on the west coast. He’s one of my kind, and I’ve called him. He’s the best out there. He’ll be here in a few days. In the meantime, I know an oncologist here, and I’ll make sure he squeezes you in tomorrow for the two tests I want done. We have to do further testing to determine what type of leukemia it is and if it’s metastasized. It’ll take a few days to get the results processed and back, so it needs to be tomorrow, so it’s ready for my guy when he gets here.” He was talking fast, as though he couldn’t stop sputtering out everything in his mind lest he be forced to deal with the startled woman in front of him.

She was staring at his chest, saying nothing, and when she turned abruptly from him and walked from the room, he called to her. She ignored him, not because she wanted to be rude, but because she felt as though her world was stopping dead on its axis, and if she stayed there it might just fall from its orbit completely. She couldn’t stand to be near him at the moment.

It didn’t take him long to find her on the balcony of his living room. She was staring at the courtyard far below, seeing nothing at all and letting her eyes go out of focus and depth. “I’m guessing you wish now that you’d waited to see if I was going to live long enough to make fucking me worth your while.”

He didn’t snap at her, though her statement was rude. Normally, he’d have no problem calling her out on a statement like that, but nothing much was normal at the moment, and his lack of response was eerily depressing. His hands closed over the tops of hers along the thick stone balustrade. He moved in to hug her from behind, and his mouth nuzzled into her neck. “No regrets, sweetie.” His voice was calm as his lips moved against her skin. All she wanted was to melt into him, but she felt far away from anything in this world.

“Can’t you just bite me, make me one of you?”

“It’s complicated.” The hurt at his words was swift, and she spun to him.

“Why? Because you don’t want me to be like you?”

“That has nothing to do with it. In your condition … it could kill you before… It’s just complicated. You don’t understand what it means … and we don’t know anything about the type of cancer you have yet.”

“So, am I going to die?”

“There are a number of tests that need to be run in order to determine the type and aggressiveness of the cancer. There are many different types and sub-types of leukemia, and they all carry different treatments and prognoses. There’s no point thinking about any of this until we know what we’re dealing with.”

“You sound like such a doctor. Exceptionally good at avoiding answers.”

“It’s the only answer I have for you right now.” His lips kissed the spot where her shoulder met her neck, and her robe fell back, giving him the room he needed to kiss and nuzzle gently against her skin. “Let me take you to bed.” She didn’t argue. She let him lead her back to his bed, and they crawled in together. Neither of them slept, and he didn’t bother turning the lamp out.

She could see him watching her out of her periphery as she stared at the ceiling, and when he brushed the hair from the side of her face, she turned to him. “I don’t want to die.” It was honest and pathetically desperate. There was a time when she did, and she was furious with herself for ever thinking she could want something like that. It was a different time when life seemed impossibly bleak, but it didn’t matter. She’d been so willing to throw in the towel then. Perhaps this was just her comeuppance for wanting to quit life once. It was a sick twisted thing really. Now that she had something she wanted, would she lose it all?

The perspective she’d been lacking suddenly seemed so obvious. There were bigger things in this world to be afraid of than men. She’d held on to fear for so long, and here it was again, but this was real and valid, and it suddenly left her feeling like she’d wasted entirely too much time on unnecessary worries. Fucking hindsight.

Chapter 23

“Try to relax, sweetie.” He knew it was impossible. He’d given her a valium before leaving his residence, but it was doing little good if her heart rate was any indication. She was lying on her side, clamping down hard on his hands as he sat at her head.

The oncologist was a loose acquaintance of sorts, and while he wouldn’t be treating her, having the tests done now gave them a few days advantage. He’d called Brent Rigley as soon as he’d seen the blast cells under the microscope the night before. Brent was an oncologist of his kind from the west coast, and he was renowned in his field. He was going to fly out the evening after next, and that would allow the lab more than enough time to process her biopsy and CSF analysis before he arrived.

He had fucked her brains out that morning as she moaned and cried out loudly. She was standing bent over to the bathroom counter as he stroked one deep and harsh penetration after another. He watched his length sink to its hilt. Her entry distended around his girth, and that sight alone was enough to leave him crazed for his release. Add to that, the tight, clenching muscles of her pussy clamping down hard on him, and he was ready to come within minutes.

But it wasn’t much about the sex. It should be. They deserved the enjoyment of that, but such things as gratuitous, purely pleasurable sex were lost the moment she decided to get cancer. Damn. She just wanted to push away the fear, focus on something other than their day, and he just wanted to give her what she needed to cope with it all. He pushed and pounded into her as his tension melted for a time. He was hoping it would have the same effect on her, and as she came, her forehead dropped to the countertop, and she panted. When she lifted her head, a drop of blood fell from her nose. It was just another reminder of the war being waged inside her body, and he knew exactly what her body was saying.

Once she was showered, he watched her braid her long damp hair back in a messy pattern. When she was finished, she just stared at herself. She was standing naked, and he was watching her from the doorway as he slipped his shirt on over his head. She was so exceptionally stunning, and he let his eyes travel every inch of her, dreading how ugly and real their day was going to become.

And now she lay on a table, curled on her side facing him, and all he could do was watch. He was throwing a bit of a temper tantrum in his head. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair for her, and it wasn’t fair for him either. Making love to her for the first time after being parted from her for a month shouldn’t have ended this way. Her life being jeopardized when he’d had so little time with her made him want to put his fist through the wall. He could and would wait another twenty lonely years just to have her all over again, but sadly, there was a good chance she didn’t have anywhere near that time. That was not a truth he was willing to accept. He had survived for so long without intimacy, and now the only intimacy he wanted was being threatened. It felt like an attack. He hated what life was doing to her. She’d struggled enough. She deserved happiness and safety. She did not deserve more pain and fear.

But as he studied her and watched her shiver on the table, he stowed his own fury at the unfairness of life. He hid his desire to strike, hit, and pound his fists in fury, he clamped his jaw tight and kissed her brow gently instead. She didn’t need his worry. She had plenty of her own. It showed in the defeated look of her eyes. It was hard to see her so utterly … lost.

“I don’t think I’m going to like leukemia.” She made the comment as the doctor swabbed her hip with a cold alcohol pad. He smiled gently at her somewhat dark moment of humor. He wanted to go back to focusing on their chemistry. That exquisite desire that had built over the past couple months between them. That’s what he wanted to be exploring. Not her fucking bone marrow.

The doctor met his eyes as he prepared to inject the Lidocaine. Quentin leaned to her ear. “You’re going to feel a prick and a sting. It’s just the numbing injection.” She cried out quietly as the needle penetrated her skin, and he watched her. He watched as the next two numbing injections left her fighting the tears, and they waited silently for the Lidocaine to do its job. He watched as the tears ran down her cheek. The pain of the initial numbing injections might have been gone but the fear was not, and he could do nothing to take it away.

She groaned as the large harvesting needle was pushed deep to her hip bone, drilling and crunching through her bone. Her lips trembled, and the tears fell silently. His heart was lurching, and he was desperate to help her, but there was nothing for him to do but watch. Watching was one of the hardest things he’d ever endured. As though he could stomach enduring the physical pain of what she was experiencing far more than he could stomach the anguish of watching that pain on her face.

When the doctor was finally finished, her quiet sobs hitched in her throat, and he kissed her temple.

“I wouldn’t normally recommend a lumbar puncture until I’d had a chance to analyze the bone marrow.” The doctor was looking at him, voicing his disagreement with what Quentin was asking him to do.

“And I will never understand why doctors wait to run tests they know they’re ultimately going to need to run. We waste more time than any other profession on the planet.” He was insulting himself as much as the man in front of him, but he wasn’t willing to be patient when it came to Abigail, and he wasn’t willing to lose any time with her treatment either.

But looking to her eyes, he saw the fear, and his resolve cracked.

“It’s okay … it’s okay.” She nodded her head slightly as she spoke, trying to reassure him. “I’d rather get it all done now and be finished with it. I don’t want to worry about coming back for another fun test in a few days.” She chuckled, but it was strained and held no humor whatsoever.

The next procedure was just as difficult for her and just as painful for him to see. It left her with a raging headache, and he sat by her side for the number of hours the doctor wanted to keep her for observation. He gave her a strong painkiller that left her incredibly flirtatious for a while before she finally drifted off to sleep. It was the closest thing he’d come to a smile, listening to her groggily talk about sucking his dick.

When she slowly woke hours later, he kissed her lips gently. “I’m sorry.” He was momentarily stunned by her first words, but she quickly continued. “First girl you sleep with after twenty years, and she ends up being half-dead.” Her humor was still quite dark and sarcastic, but she deserved it.

“I wouldn’t trade making love to you for the world, and there is no one I’d rather give up celibacy for than you.” He smirked, and she smiled at the comment. He was relieved to have the tests behind them. Her headache would likely linger for the remainder of the day, and her hip would be sore for a few days, but she could at least let go of the fear for the time being.

He walked her slowly from the clinic to his car, and once they were seated, he reached for her hand. “I want to go back to Nantucket. I don’t want to sit in our apartment for the next two days waiting.” He likely sounded like he was pleading, and he was. He couldn’t stand the idea of going to his place after the night before.

Going from absolute repletion to absolute disaster in one second flat had left a mark on him, and he didn’t want to have to see where he’d made love to her and then see where he’d found out she was dying fifty feet away. But there was no argument. She nodded and he sighed. He made one quick stop at a drugstore as they left town, returning with a bag full of her favorite junk food and a few other things, before they drove south out of town. She reclined her seat and rested while he stroked the skin on her thigh. She’d worn the new dress Ember had to force her to buy, and he grazed his fingers lightly over her skin as her eyes closed and she dozed.

*

“Time to wake up, sweetie.” His voice was warm as he purred in her ear. She woke as he unfastened her seat belt. He pulled her up to her feet, and she groaned at the pain in her hip. Sore was an understatement. Her body had tensed while she’d slept, and as she took her first step, her leg nearly gave out from under her, but he was there, and he pulled her swiftly up into his arms, carrying her toward the cottage.

After he’d put away the food he’d bought for her, he walked her down to the beach. He wanted her to stretch her legs, and as they moved slowly, he kept a cautious hand on her elbow. Once she was settled into one of the Adirondack chairs, and he’d pulled a warm blanket over her legs, he left to collect fire wood.

The eastern sky over the ocean was darkening by the minute, and from her place at the base of the bluff, she couldn’t see the western sky that she knew was fading fast. He settled into the other chair after the fire was going, and she turned to him. “There’s this great scene in the movie
Beaches
just like this. One of ‘em was even dying.”

“That scene took place on the west coast—nowhere near Nantucket.”

She met his eyes as he smirked, and her eyes bulged. “Wow. I had no idea you were such a dork. You know it makes you a ridiculous nerd that you know that?”

“What can I say? I’m a huge Bette Midler fan from way back.” He smiled as he reached for her hand, and she did too.

He opened a bottle of wine for her awhile later, and as he handed her a second glass after she quickly made her way through glass one, she smirked. “Trying to get me drunk?”