Long Time Running (17 page)

He rushed to his feet as the paramedics pounded on the door. Giving them the quick facts of her condition and then stood out of the way as
they started to work. Panic crept up inside him as she failed to react to any of the stimuli they tried. Tears formed in his eyes at the realization that her last conscious thought was that he loathed her, that she believed he took her to bed only to exact some kind of misguided revenged pained him in a way he was
unprepared for. He directed them to take her to Manhattan General and followed them down in the elevator.

Sitting beside her in the ambulance, he curled his fingers
through hers and bringing her hand to his mouth, dropped a soft kiss on it. "I don't hate you," he repeated, whispering. "You...you m-matter very much to me."

As the ambulance sped through the busy Manhattan streets, he
continued to grip her hand hoping that they weren't too late.

#

Andrew and Sarah walked in silence to his office. As the door opened, Jack looked up expectantly. Seeing his aunt, he put down his book and ran to her, throwing his arms around her waist. She hugged him tightly in
response.

"I bet you have a ton of questions," she remarked softly.

He nodded in response without letting go of her.

Children had never been part of the plan for her. Ambitious
and driven to succeed, she had always been singularly focused on her career. She had little time for relationships or dating of any kind and that was just how she liked it; things were both safer and easier if you didn't have to let
anyone in. When Nathalie had called and told her that she was no longer able to care for Jack, she had supported her decision to place him for adoption.

Prior to flying to Tanzania, she had contacted several
agencies to find out what the best options were. Once with Nathalie they had spoken long into the night on more than one occasion as to whether or not this was the right decision. Nathalie had been paralyzed by fear and gripped by
nightmares, whether awake or asleep. It had not taken Sarah long to agree with her sister's decision. However, she had not been prepared on the long journey home to actually fall in love with Jack. He was a smiling, happy baby and by the time the plane had touched down in New York she was less sure of her
sister's decision. She had truly believed all Nathalie would need was a little time and she would change her mind.

And so against her better instincts and flying in the face of the tightly constructed world she had built for herself, she had decided to
keep him until Nathalie was ready to take him back.

But the anguished, regretful phone call never came and before Sarah realized it, she was too attached to the little boy to let him go.
But no selfish deed goes unpunished and as she felt him hugging her, the price for her choice was painfully clear.

"Why don't you pack up your bag and we can go home and talk about it?"

Pulling back slightly, Jack looked from his aunt to Andrew
and back again. "I wanna stay here," he told her quietly. "Can we?"

Andrew nodded. "Sure you can - you guys can stay in my office as long as you'd like. I'll just head to the lounge."

"No!" Jack replied quickly. Seeing the look of surprise on both adults' faces, he chewed on his bottom lip. "I want Drew to stay too. Can he?"

Sarah looked to Andrew and shrugged. Despite his assurances
of support, this really wasn't a conversation she wanted to have in front of him. She was fiercely private about so many things, including her relationship with Jack and it was enormously difficult for her now at the most trying
moment, to lay herself and her choices bare in front of another person, especially Andrew.

"Of course he can." Her smile belying her anxiety. Taking his hand in hers she led him to the couch and sitting down beside him,
draped her arm around his shoulder. "Are you okay Jack?"

He nodded, resting his head against her shoulder. "Where is my Mom?" he asked quietly.

Inhaling quietly Sarah stroked his hair. "She's talking
with Eric."

"She ran away from me" he said.

The hurt in his voice was unmistakable and she winced. Sarah was at a loss for words. It was not that she hadn't imagined a hundred
conversations with him about his mother but in all the scenarios she had run through her mind, this had never been one of them.

Sitting in his chair, Andrew leaned forward and put his hand
on Jack's knee. "Jack, your mom isn't feeling very well these days."

"Is she going to d-die?" he asked, his eyes wide with worry.

"No she isn't. She needs an operation to make her better. She wasn't running away from you bud, she was just really
confused."

The young boy pulled on his bottom lip as he mulled what Andrew had told him. Turning, he looked to his aunt. "Is that true Aunt Sarah?"

Smiling gamely, she nodded. "Yes Jack. Nathalie came here because she needs an operation"

"Not to see me?"

Swiping at the tears that had appeared in the corners of his eyes, Sarah kissed him on the top of his head. "We wanted her to be well before she saw you and that's why you were a surprise to her."

It wasn't the most direct answer she could have given but she was not yet ready to explain why his mother had given him up in the first
place. She wasn't even sure she could.

"Oh." Falling silent, he reached for his backpack and pulling it to his lap, hugged it.

Still shaken by her sister's rejection Sarah felt, for the
first time, completely out of her depth. Unsure of what to say, she looked briefly at Andrew before dropping her eyes to her lap.

"Little man?" Andrew asked.

"Yeah?"

"Do you have other questions?"

He chewed on his finger.

Sensing his tentativeness, Andrew patted his leg. "You can ask anything you want to."

He looked at him and took a deep breath. "Does my Mom
love me?"

Andrew felt his own eyes well with tears as demons from his past danced in his head. "She does."

Pulled from her own thoughts, Sarah tightened her arm around
his shoulder. "She really does - very much Jackie. And when she's feeling better she'll-"

He interrupted her. "And when she's feeling better, we'll take you to see her."

"Okay," he nodded, looking up at his aunt. "Aunt Sarah, I'm tired, can we go home now?"

"Of course we can Jack. And if you have more questions, you can ask me."

Sliding off the couch, he pulled his backpack over his
shoulders and shrugged. "I'm okay for now," he said.

Both Sarah and Andrew recognized that far from being satisfied with the answers he received, Jack was simply letting them off the
hook.

#

Andrew had returned to his charting when his beeper vibrated loudly. Picking it up, he exhaled as he saw the message. Slinging his stethoscope around his neck, he sprinted down the hallway to the elevators and
then down to the ER. He paced impatiently as he waited for the ambulance to arrive. As was his habit, he tried to visualize the tumor and how he was going to attack it. He knew there would be no time to waste once she got here.

The doors flew open as the paramedics guided the gurney through. They gave him the bullet on her condition while he performed a quick exam of her vital signs. It did not escape his notice that the t-shirt she was wearing looked an awful lot like the one his best friend had been wearing when
he left the hospital. He looked up at Eric.

"What happened?"

Eric was pale and drawn and could barely take his eyes from Nathalie. "We....we...we fought - we argued and she had a seizure - no -
two seizures and then another one in the ambulance."

He nodded. "Okay. I'm going to take her up to surgery now. You need to talk to Sarah. And Jack," he added.

"I....I want to observe," he announced suddenly.

Andrew shook his head. "Not a chance. This is a delicate enough operation, I don't need an audience. You need to talk to Sarah and Jack and you need to let me do what you know I can do."

"She thinks I hate her," he whispered.

"Then let me fix her," he replied impatiently, "and you can tell her that you don't."

"Okay" he nodded as the gurney headed toward the elevator. "Drew!" he called urgently.

Pausing, he turned around. "Yeah?"

"Be brilliant"

A small smile tugged at the corners of Andrew's mouth. "Count on it."

As the elevator doors closed Eric slumped against a pillar and dropped his head back. Waiting had never been his strong suit and with a
long night ahead, he wasn't sure what he was going to do but he knew he had to get out of the hospital. Thrusting open the doors, he disappeared in to the late evening.

Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.

Eric's feet hit the pavement in a slow and steady rhythm. He glanced at his watch. 2:13 a.m. Nathalie had been in surgery for three hours
already with probably another three to go. His cheek still burned from where Sarah had slapped him. He had stopped by the apartment to tell her about Nathalie and to, hopefully, see Jack. Jack was already in bed and when he had
told her that her sister had collapsed after they argued she slapped him. She had told him that if anything happened to Nathalie she would never forgive him. They both knew that he wasn't responsible for her condition but she needed
someone to blame and he was feeling guilty enough to let her. He had left her, tearful and angry, and returned to the hospital where he paced the floor. The hospital had always been the one safe place where he could hide, the place where he always knew who he was and what he was doing. But not this night. This
night, the walls of the hospital felt like they were closing in on him. The place that had offered him sanctuary for so many years now felt like it was rejecting him. The only solution was to run.

Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.

He could still feel the way her hand curled around his wrist as she had dragged him to the locker room to change his shirt the first day they met. All the new interns had been milling in the hallway waiting for their
attending except for her. Nathalie bounded down the corridor with a friend, laughing and smiling, her green eyes dancing. He had heard her laugh and looked up from his notebook. It was so free and easy and he was instantly envious and
intrigued. She had been distracted and bumping into him had spilled her coffee down the front of his new, white Brooks Brothers shirt. Her cheeks had reddened in embarrassment and with an apologetic smile, she had wrapped her hand around
his wrist and pulled him to the locker room. As she introduced herself, she had quickly undone the buttons of his shirt, pulled it from his shoulders and handed him a scrub top to wear. She stuffed his shirt in her locker with a promise to have it dry cleaned and return it to him. They were back in the
hallway and he had had yet to speak a word. It hadn't mattered, he was already falling for her. He had resisted falling in love for so long because he had been so sure he had nothing to offer. His friends always teased him that when
he finally did fall, he would fall hard. And he did. He had fallen like a ton of bricks. It was just that no one had told him the landing would be so soft.

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He looked at his watch again. 3:26 a.m. She was more than
half way through. She was the toughest person he had ever met. Others in her life called her invincible but to him that implied there was no weakness. Nathalie had weaknesses, she had moments where life seemed on the verge of
overwhelming her but she was too tough to give in. He had seen her put one foot in front of the other when almost anyone else would have fallen. And if anything, the last 12 hours had proven to him that she had not changed. She was
also fiercely loyal to those she loved and he had been on the receiving end of it more than once. Dinners with his family were difficult, stilted affairs and his father had never let the presence of a guest get in the way of his enumeration of Eric's failings. She would ride to his defense as he sat
silently accepting the dressing down. She would always meet his father's list with one of her own and had no reticence in telling him all that he was missing out on by ignoring his son's accomplishments. And when that didn't work she had
told his father that no one is promised a tomorrow and that he should be ashamed of himself for letting his son believe he wasn't loved. She had told him the only reason she was able to accept her parents' death with any grace at
all was because they had never let an opportunity pass to tell her that she was loved. Nathalie had put that into practice with him as well. It was never easy for him to say the words, they had always seemed to tangle his tongue but she said it - often and easily. When he finally was able to tell her that he loved
her he felt like the world had suddenly turned on in color where it had only been black and white. He believed he could do anything - be anything - because she loved him. She was tough, she was smart, she was beautiful and she was a
challenge. He was a goner.

Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.

The first time they had sex had been a revelation to him. They had been sitting on his couch and he had, much to his own surprise, been
revealing more about himself to her than he had to anyone else, except Andrew. He had shied away from intense or emotional conversations fearing he lacked the vocabulary but slowly by offering him safety, Nathalie had teased it out of him. It had unleashed a torrent in him, giving him the courage to ask for what
he wanted and to realize he was worthy of the good things in life. She was one of the good things. The memory of the first touch of her silky skin still sent shivers down his spine. They had taken their time, exploring each other's
bodies and honoring each other. Sitting facing each other, they had been kissing as if they could not taste enough until he pulled back. He had looked into her eyes and in a flash had seen everything he had been looking for but
refused to admit he needed. He had seen love and he had seen security and in that moment he knew that he could never let her go. For the first time he had trusted his heart to another person and believed she would keep it safe. Once
he accepted that, the world had opened itself in ways he had never dreamed possible. He had wanted a lifetime of moments like that. And when it was gone, it had been as though the ground beneath him had disappeared. The pain of losing her was greater than any pain he had ever known.