PrimeDefender (3 page)

* * * * *

He hadn’t left Keisha’s side, not on the
helicopter ride to the hospital and not in the emergency room, even though a
doctor and several nurses had tried to make him leave. Not until they’d moved
her to the CCU had he stepped away, and only for long enough that her dad could
see her after he arrived.

The fact she hadn’t regained consciousness
terrified Matt, who found himself burning off nervous energy by pacing the
long, narrow corridor outside the CCU. The tiny waiting room made him feel as
though the walls were closing in on him.

He hated hospitals. He’d hated them since
he was twelve years old and watched helplessly while his mother lay battered
and dying in a dingy room at a soot-stained Brooklyn hospital. Fuck, he’d never
forget the sucking, whirring sounds of the machines or those sickening smells
of antiseptics and disinfectants. Cries of grieving family members around the
trauma unit still rang in his ears, and the picture of his mom’s bruised, torn
features stayed with him now, twenty years after she’d passed away.

This place, a new, white-brick hospital set
in the middle of lush grounds, at least looked clean. Green grass, bright
flowers and stately oak trees provided a more cheerful view from the windows
than the tired industrial buildings and run-down businesses he remembered
staring at from the small, sooty window in his mother’s room. With its
determined neutrality, stark white walls and gray and black furniture, this
small, Southern hospital reminded Matt of an oversized mortuary. Come to think
of it, he hated funeral homes, too. He associated both places with pain and
death and loneliness.

“Mr. Rubin?”

He whirled around and saw the slim,
gray-haired female doctor who’d been snapping out orders to the nurses taking
care of Keisha in the CCU. His breath caught in his throat when he tried to
talk. “Yes?” he finally managed.

“Your wife has regained consciousness.” She
held up her hand when he started to charge back into the unit. “Don’t panic.
She’s resting well for the moment, but we need to talk. Shall we go to my
office?”

* * * * *

Candace Stein, MD, the placard on her door
said, told Matt to sit down and then leaned over her desk, her hands steepled
in front of her as she focused intense brown eyes on his face.

“I assume you’re aware your wife is killing
herself,” she said bluntly.

Matt blinked, unnerved at the doctor’s
words. “I certainly wasn’t until you told me. She seemed fine when I spoke with
her on the phone. That was less than two hours before I got home and found her
passed out on the floor.”

“Has Mrs. Rubin always been so heavy?”

Dr. Stein, whom he noticed was skinny
almost to the point of anorexia, asked that question as if it were an
indictment, and Matt didn’t like her attitude one bit. “Keisha has been
voluptuous ever since I’ve known her, and that’s been more than six years. I
guess she probably has put on a few more pounds in the past year.”

“Well, she needs to take off considerably
more than a few of those pounds if she wants to stay alive for long. This
episode can be just a warning, or it can be the first of many, one of which
will certainly kill her.” The doctor went on to explain that the decreased
blood oxygen that had caused Keisha to pass out was just one condition that frequently
accompanied what she called morbid obesity. “She’s diabetic, something that
apparently wasn’t diagnosed until now. Her blood pressure is out of control.
And I imagine you may have noticed her suddenly gasping for breath at night
when she’s been sleeping.”

“Some.” Though Matt was a pretty sound
sleeper and Keisha usually made him sleep on a yoga mat beside her bed, he’d
been wakened several times lately by her labored breathing. “When I asked her
about it, she shrugged it off, saying she’s allergic to the spring pollen. Come
to think of it, though, you’re right. What she’s been doing lately sounds more
like gasping than the wheezing she’s always had in spring and fall.”

The doctor nodded. “You said she’d gained
more weight recently. Has she been depressed?”

Depressed? Keisha was the least depressed
woman he’d ever known. “Not at all. I’ve noticed that she’s cut back lately on
a lot of the activities she used to enjoy, though. We’ve been dieting together
during this offseason, but I’m afraid she may have gained as much weight as
I’ve lost.”

Dr. Stein gave him a strange look, as if
she thought he was blind. “I’ve ordered some tests. Unless the results tell me
something I don’t expect, I’m going to recommend bariatric surgery, since from
what you say, I doubt diet modification will help your wife. With her
out-of-control hypertension and uncontrolled diabetes, she isn’t a candidate
for appetite-suppression medications, and she’s in no condition to undertake a
regimen of strenuous physical activity. If I’m not mistaken, tests will show
she’s also suffering from sleep apnea.”

“You’re serious. You think Keisha’s going
to die, don’t you?” Matt’s chest felt tight, as though someone had tightened a
noose around his heart.

“I don’t think it, I know she will unless
she changes her lifestyle, although I can’t give you an accurate estimate of
when she’ll have a fatal episode. What happened today was a stern warning that
she can’t go on as she has been. You realize she’s more than a hundred pounds
over her optimum weight, don’t you?” The doctor sat back in her chair and gave
him the once-over. “You’re a big man, yourself, but you look as though you’re
in pretty good condition.”

“I play football for a living. I have to
keep my body conditioned. I also have to carry what would probably be too much
weight for the average guy. What does that have to do with Keisha?”

“You live with her. You eat what, five or
six thousand calories a day, which you burn off in the weight room? Am I
right?”

Matt didn’t like Dr. Stein’s accusatory tone.
“During the season, yes, but I’ve cut back this offseason, and I’ve lost over
thirty-five pounds. Keisha’s been dieting with me.”

“And she’s also cut down on her physical
activities and gained some weight. Right?”

“Yes.” Matt hadn’t thought to relate the
two facts, but the doctor made sense. “What do you propose I do about it?”

“I spoke with your wife briefly about her
condition, but she wasn’t receptive to my suggestions. I propose that you talk
Mrs. Rubin into having a gastric bypass or laparoscopic banding as soon as it’s
physically feasible. I’m going to call in Dr. Carl Sheldon—he’s one of the best
bariatric surgeons in Savannah—to take a look at her and make his
recommendation.”

When Matt walked out of Dr. Stein’s office,
his head was reeling. He was Keisha’s slave, not her Master or even her husband
in the sense the doctor probably assumed. He couldn’t imagine she’d take well
to him suddenly telling her he wanted her to make any changes in her lifestyle,
much less a change so extreme as to require surgery.

* * * * *

Matt ran into Charlie Harris, the Rebels’
defensive coordinator and Keisha’s dad, as he was coming out of the CCU.

“What’s the matter? What did Keisha’s
doctor say?” Charlie grabbed Matt by the shoulder and propelled him into the
tiny waiting room that mercifully was empty for the moment.

“I have to go talk to Keisha,” Matt said,
resisting his father-in-law’s effort to shove him into one of the gray plastic
chairs that lined the walls of the little room—one that sat next to a corner
that held a small, black-lacquered table. A stack of out-of-date magazines sat
beside a chrome-and-steel gooseneck lamp, as though anybody waiting for word
about a critically ill loved one might want to read about fashion, football or
home decorating.

“She’s sleeping right now, so the talk can
wait. You sit down, boy, and tell me why my girl’s lying in that bed with tubes
stuck into her like she’s a pincushion.”

Matt let out a sigh but gave Charlie a
summary of what Dr. Stein had told him. “I dread telling Keisha,” he said,
swiping at the sudden pulsing ache in his forehead with one hand. “She’ll ask
me who the hell I think I am, trying to act like I’m her husband instead of her
slave.”

“Here’s what I think, boy. It’s about time
for you to get some balls.”

“What the fuck do you mean?” Charlie had
never said a word to Matt before about his and Keisha’s lifestyle, and he sure
as hell had never set foot in Rebels’ Roost. Keisha’s dad was about as vanilla
as anybody associated with the Rebels.

“I know more than I want to about the
ass-backward arrangement you and my girl have, and I’ve got a pretty good
notion of some of the shit that goes on at Rebels’ Roost. How the hell could I
help figurin’ it out when you go around the locker room with your dick locked
down half the time, and when you have on a dog collar when I visit you at
home?”

Charlie had a point, but he certainly had
never mentioned a word before. “I guess it would have been pretty hard to
ignore the signs.”

“Don’t worry, just take over. Make her do
what she needs to do. I’ll back you up if she tries to give you grief.” For a
minute Charlie shut up, but then he shook his head. “I guess Keisha’s always
had it rough, her being big like my ma when her mom was so dainty and all. I
feel real bad for passing along my fat genes to her, especially now when you’re
telling me she may die because of them.”

“Not your fault, Charlie.” But Matt wasn’t
so sure. After Keisha’s mom had died, Charlie had sent Keisha to live with his
mother and grandmother, a couple of the biggest women and best cooks Matt had
ever met. “Like you told me last fall when we first talked about me switching
positions, weight’s largely a matter of what and how much a guy eats. If I can
lose a bunch of weight, why can’t Keisha do it, too?”

“Because food’s always been my girl’s
security blanket. And the bigger she’s gotten, the less she’s wanted to
exercise.” Charlie paused, as if he wondered if he should go on. “Mama and
Grandma did that to me, too. If I hadn’t gone away to college and had a coach
who clamped down on me, I’d have been in the same boat. Did you know I weighed
three twenty when I was eighteen?”

Three twenty? Charlie was several inches
shorter than Matt and the heaviest Matt had ever been was three ten. “No. I
have trouble believing that.” Charlie had been an all-Pro defensive end, and
though he’d been coaching now for ten or twelve years, he still kept himself in
pretty good shape.

“It’s true. I used to eat a lot when I was
happy and even more when I was sad. Just about every occasion was an excuse to
eat at my house. And I sent my girl to live there after her mama died.” Charlie
hung his head.

Matt reached over, patted the older man’s
shoulder. “It’s okay, Charlie. Keisha loves her grandmas. And you did what you
had to do.” The man couldn’t very well have played pro ball without having some
help raising his daughter who’d been just eight years old when her mom had
died. “But damn it, we can’t let Keisha kill herself.” Matt stood. He had to
talk to Keisha now, and he had to make her listen. “I’m going in there to talk
to her now.”

Charlie shook his head. “Good luck, son.”

* * * * *

“No way. You’re insane if you think I’m
gonna have this surgery. That doctor is out of her mind. I just had a little
fainting spell, but now I feel perfectly okay. If you don’t like me the way I
am, get your white ass out of here and don’t come back.” Keisha sounded
surprisingly strong. The fact she was hostile to his suggestions didn’t
surprise him at all. “If you don’t, you’ll be sorry when I spring myself out of
here.”

“Sweetheart—”

“I’m not your fucking sweetheart, I’m your
Mistress and don’t you forget it.”

Matt should leave. If he did he would be
following his Mistress’ express orders, something he’d been doing without
question for the past five years, ever since he’d knelt in the dungeon at
Rebels’ Roost and sworn to be her faithful, obedient slave. He had no doubt
that Keisha meant it when she ordered him to go.

But he couldn’t walk away. He loved her too
damn much. If she died, a large part of him would go with her. He clenched his
fists and looked her in the eye. “I love you and want you to keep on being my
Mistress for a long time. It nearly killed me to find you passed out on the
floor and not to be able to rouse you. They say that sort of thing’s gonna keep
happening until one day they won’t be able to revive you. I don’t think I could
go on living if I lost you. That’s why I’m begging you to listen to the
doctors.”

When he said that, she scrunched up her
face and practically yelled, “Get out of my face now, I said. And don’t you
come back in here unless it’s to help me get out of this bed to go home.” Matt
noticed the zigzag patterns on a monitor above her bed start to jump as though
they were on steroids.

When Matt would have said more, a nurse
grabbed his arm and escorted him away. “Her blood pressure’s gone crazy. You
can try talking to her later,” she said as she shoved him through the door.

* * * * *

“She threw me out.”

Charlie scowled at Matt. “If you care for
our girl, you’ll forget what she told you and get your ass right back in there
as soon as the nurse says it’s okay.”