Immortal Healer (25 page)

He stayed crumbled against the wall, lost in misery until the door from the central corridor flew open.

“Why the hell aren’t you answering your damn phone? You have me worried sick!” Ember busted through the door like a lunatic with Angus on her heels, but the moment she laid eyes on him, her irritation was lost. Rigley walked in after them, and Quentin pulled himself together as much as possible.

When Angus’s eyes lit on the hole in the wall, he sighed loudly, clapped a gentle hand on Quentin’s shoulder, and stood quietly by for a long moment. “Ember told me. Now you know I won’t argue with you turning her, so why so fucking melodramatic?”

Rigley responded, saving him the torture of explaining just why Abigail’s condition was so dire. “Cancer is tricky. Blood cancer is more than tricky. It’s one of Quentin’s areas of study, in fact.” They watched him with interest as Quentin stood by staring at the floor. “Cancer cells don’t mix well with the toxin. One of Quentin’s areas of research is studying the effect cancer cells have on our toxin, and let’s just say, it’s not pretty. There are no known cases of turning a human with cancer. The toxin doesn’t take well, can’t replicate quickly, and ultimately, it stimulates the replication of the cancer cells instead. The cancer cell load ends up exploding and killing the host before the toxin has a chance to take hold. Who knew cancer was so much more robust than our toxin?”

“It’ll kill her … it’ll be like giving her cancer a boost of cancer steroids and setting it loose to wreak havoc on her body.” Quentin mumbled the words as he looked up at them.

“Can’t you give her blood through an N.G. tube like you did with me to save my life?” Ember spoke; she looked nearly as worried as Quentin felt. It was almost heartwarming were he able to think of anything but Abby.

But she was missing a very important factor there. “Ingesting blood does nothing for her unless we can get her through transition. The problem is suppressing the cancer enough that the toxin can take hold … and doing all that without killing her.”

“We could try it,” Rigley spoke as Ember’s eyes flashed to him. “But there would be little hope of it working.”

“She’s going to die.” Ember was looking at him, pleading with him. “Isn’t it at least worth trying?”

“If we do this and we fail, which we very likely will, then she dies now. If we treat her, we can extend her life…” And that was the core of his argument. He couldn’t fathom losing her period. But he couldn’t fathom losing her now even more. He knew it didn’t make sense, but he couldn’t cope with her dying today, tomorrow or even a couple days from now.

“For how long?” She was practically yelling. Angus was standing by calmly, appraising their interaction. “You can’t cure her. You’ve said that already. So, for how long?” She was shaking her head in frustration. “Fine! So, treat her now, and try to turn her later! Can’t you do that?”

Rigley stepped in again. “She’s going to weaken over time. Even with treatment, she’s going to decompensate fairly quickly. She’s just too far gone and too severe. Her blood composition is going to continue to deteriorate. She’s never going to be as healthy as she is today, and she’s about as unhealthy as her body can tolerate being.”

“Then turn her now! You’re a great doctor. You can do this. You have to try.” She sounded as desperate as he felt.

He wanted more than anything to try to save her. He wanted to believe it was possible, but he’d watched exactly how this played out under a microscope enough times to know it was tantamount to murder if he bit her. Saving her was a pipedream—a very very pleasant pipedream. But he couldn’t be responsible for killing her now, knowing she could survive for another month, three, maybe longer if they were lucky.

“You don’t know what you’re asking, Em.” He understood her desperation plenty, but she had no idea what this meant. “You’re asking me to kill the woman I love. If she can have a month or two … I can’t take that away from her. Not when there is about zero chance she’ll survive this.” He was practically yelling.

“But there is some chance?” They whipped around to the sound of her quiet voice in the doorway. He’d been speaking so loudly they’d missed her approaching. She was standing just past the doorway of the corridor, staring at his feet as though she couldn’t quite bring herself to be part of them. But she’d heard them. The flutter of her heart made it clear. She met his eyes with a cock of her head. “Sorry, but a month’s just not enough time for us.” And then her eyes returned to staring at the floor.

“You don’t know what you’re asking.” He walked to her, grasping her hands. “Even saying this will
probably
kill you doesn’t quite touch just how very certain I am that I can’t keep you alive through this. I’ve studied cancer cells and the vampirism toxin exhaustively. I used to think there was a potential cure for vampirism in cancer cells, but it’s too volatile. It’s not anything I’ve ever been able to control.”

“I’d rather you try to save me than wait for me to die. Who knows, perhaps I can cash in on a little of that luck life owes me.” Her eyes were fixed on his as she spoke quietly.

“We could overdose her on Ara-C…” Rigley.

“No.”

“Dose her with arsenic… Her sub-type responds to arsenic treatment.” Again Rigley.

“No. You’ve lost your fucking mind.”

“Have ECMO on standby in case she goes into heart failure.”

He couldn’t believe the man was so gung-ho on killing her. “In case? There is no in case. The OD on chemo will absolutely put her into renal failure, and we’ll be able to do nothing about it. There’s little chance her heart won’t fail after that.”

“Wait. What are you saying?” Ember wasn’t willing to stand quietly by any longer. But she was not on his side in any way either.

“He wants to overdose her on chemo drugs. It will destroy her kidneys, and it
will
lead to heart failure. If her blood can’t move, she can’t transition.”

“I don’t
want
to overdose her. I want to lower her blast cell levels to give the vampirism toxin a fighting chance at transitioning her.”

“And if you leave her with no white cells, no platelets … you’ve done nothing but kill her and made it impossible to turn back.” He was yelling again.

“Would someone please explain to me what you’re talking about?” Abigail’s voice was barely heard over the heated discussion, and the room quieted in an instant as all eyes turned to her.

Quentin held her eyes, blocking out everyone in the room but them. If he was going to consider doing this, the decision would be made between the two of them anyway and not a room full of optimists who refused to believe this could kill her. “Overdosing you on chemo will compromise your kidneys. Renal failure will easily kill you on its own. And because we can’t treat it with dialysis without compromising the toxin that we need in your blood, we would have to let the renal failure go. Eventually you’d end up in heart failure. You have no chance of surviving or transitioning if your heart stops. We have to keep your blood moving, and the only way we could do that is to put you on bypass or ECMO. But then … you’re dead at that point. There’s no pulling you back from an overdose of chemo like that, let alone kidney failure and heart failure. Basically, we would have to kill you, and there’s little chance it would even work. Your kidneys would be shot, your heart would be all but dead, and on top of that, we have to worry about the chemo wiping out your white cells and platelets. Once infected, we can’t give you a blood transfusion because our toxin sees foreign blood as a threat, and it causes an immune response that would kill you. If you were through transition, I could give you blood directly to your stomach through an N.G. tube that would help your body heal, but the cancer will make it difficult, if not impossible, for the toxin to take over your blood cells the way it needs to push you through transition. Feeding you blood does no good if we can’t get you through transition.” He watched her, waiting for some sort of reaction.

“And here I thought you were going to say it was hopeless…” Her sarcasm had the corners of his lips pulling up for half a second. “I hate to throw one more concern into the mix, but I’m expected to resume outpatient treatment in a couple weeks. I mean, assuming I could possibly survive this, how long would it take? Could we wait until after this outpatient treatment that I have to do, or…”

“Your best chance is now, and the longer we wait, the more difficult it will become. If you want to do this, you do it now.” Rigley was speaking again, but Abigail’s eyes still held Quentin’s. “Your probation can’t be your concern. You deal with that later, if…”

“There is no if!” He snapped at Rigley and then turning back to her, “I can’t kill you. Please don’t ask me to kill you.”

“I’m dying. You don’t have to kill me for that to happen. All I want is for you to try to save me. Please.” She was pleading with him and just as intent on blocking out everyone else as he was. And then as her eyes filled with tears and his own pricked, she spoke. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but a month from now when I’m still dying, and we’re out of time, you’re going to regret not trying now. I can’t stand the idea of losing you, but if I have to, I’d at least like it to be fighting for more time.” He couldn’t seem to look away from her. The room was silent for many long seconds.

“You two need time to talk about this, and we’re not helping at this point.” It was Ember, and as Quentin glanced at her, he caught sight of a tear as it trickled down her cheek. She grabbed Angus’s arm and started pulling him toward the door. “Come on. I’m sure you’re fiancé is looking for you. You’ve been away for a long time, and you do have a wedding coming up.” But Angus couldn’t seem to pull his eyes from them.

When Angus approached Abigail, he looked solemn. Angus was usually a calm, laid back soul, infuriatingly so by many accounts, but he appraised Abigail with a serious expression as she finally looked away from Quentin.

“You must be special. Very special for Quentin to have fallen so in love with you.” And then as he leaned to her cheek and pecked her lightly, he finished. “You have my support. Whatever you choose to do, you will have our support.” And then he clapped another hand on Quentin’s shoulder before leaving the room with Ember.

Rigley hung back; Quentin knew he would. “Can you make this decision by tomorrow morning? We really can’t lose any time on her treatment either way.” They both nodded. Rigley pursed his lips for a moment and nodded slightly too. “Well I wish we hadn’t met under such circumstances, Abigail, but it is good to meet you. I wish you all the best, and I’ll see you both tomorrow morning.” And then the man was gone.

He was left staring at her. She wasn’t dead. At least not yet, and he had no right to start seeing her that way. He could hear her heart pounding as she stood in front of him, see the worry and insecurity in her eyes, and God how he wanted to save her. He wanted to do everything she was asking him to do. But he was terrified he’d end up killing the only thing in the world that meant anything to him.

“Say something.” She was watching him. Her expression looked guilty, and he was stunned by it.

“What would you like me to say?” There was a slight smile pulling his lips. They were finally alone and neither of them seemed capable of moving the conversation back to what they really ought to be talking about—her cancer, his unwillingness to kill her for the sake of trying to save her; pretty much all those terribly unpleasant things they’d spent the past fifteen minutes arguing about. They were just staring at one another.

“You could tell me you love me again. I enjoy hearing that far more than your confusing medical jargon.” Her sarcasm he knew she leaned on in times of need was working overtime at the moment.

“I do. Very much. I love you.”

But as he spoke, her face fell and became very serious again. “I love you too. You don’t deserve this.”

“
You
don’t deserve this.
We
don’t deserve this.” He meant it, and he hoped like hell she understood just how devastating this was for him too. They most definitely did not deserve this. “I don’t want to go back to our apartment yet. Can we go up to the pool for a while?”

“Okay.”

Chapter26

It was well after midnight, and thanks to sleeping her despair away for a number of hours earlier in the day, she was awake. The glass enclosure the pool was housed in was silent, and their steps echoed as they strolled across the room to the large flat loungers. They were overwide with soft white linens on them, certainly not like any loungers she’d seen before. “I’m starting to think you’ve got a thing for sex outside, and this is simply as close as you can get under the circumstances.”

His hand squeezed hers, and he looked down at her. “I suppose. I’d much rather be outside right now. Before too long we won’t be able to enjoy that.” For half a second her heart skipped a beat. She assumed, of course, he was referring to the fact she’d be dead before long, and as he likely heard the panicked race of her heart, he stopped midstride, turned to her swiftly, and kissed her. When he pulled back again, he shook his head slightly. “It’s almost fall, and unless you like making love in the snow, no, we won’t be able to make love outside for much longer, at least not until next summer.” She calmed but only barely.

He stripped out his clothes before climbing into the water, and she followed him. The water was warm, and she dove down to the bottom, letting herself sink before pushing back off from the floor of the pool. He watched her as she broke through the surface, and she watched him too. They were silent as he swam toward her. She wanted to be with him forever, and she was desperate to survive this fucking thing if for no other reason than that. She kept her focus on him, imagining what it would be like to live completely in his world, belong to him completely, and never have to consider losing him. And not just because she was dying.

When he approached, she turned away from him with a smirk and swam to the ladder, pulling herself up and walking to the lounger. The lounger was about as wide as a full size bed, with a spongy soft mattress. It was adjustable at the head and was sitting with the head raised partially up. She toweled off as he swam to the stairs too, watching her intently. He was expressionless, and she couldn’t quite figure out what was going through his mind.