Midnight Remedy (24 page)

Frowning, he searched her face. “Then what was last night about? That meant something to me, Piper, and I thought it meant something to you.”

“It did. But Eric, you don’t trust me. Last night you were afraid to ask me if I’d been with anyone else. Admit it.”

“I didn’t ask you because I wouldn’t have made love to you if I’d thought you’d been with anyone else. Because I do trust you, not because I don’t.”

“We’ve never talked about San Antonio.”

“What’s to talk about? McKinnley jerks my chain, that’s all San Antonio was about. You said you weren’t involved with him, so there’s no problem.”

“How can you ask me to marry you when you think I’m a carbon copy of your ex-wife?”

“If I thought that I wouldn’t want to marry you.” Angrily, he spun away and paced before turning back to her. “Okay. Yes, I’ll admit some old fears surfaced that night, but I’ve had time to come to terms with my feelings. Any qualms I might have had just don’t exist any longer. You’re not Dawn.”

Eric paused and moved closer to her. “But this isn’t about me. This is about you. You can’t trust a man, you can’t trust me, because of something that happened over seven years ago. Dammit, I’m not paying for another man’s sins. Just because that son of a bitch lied and manipulated you doesn’t mean I will.”

“Can you honestly tell me you’ve forgotten what I did?”

“Hell, yes, I can forget it, but you can’t. You’ll never let yourself forget it. You’d much rather wallow in guilt.”

She hadn’t meant to make him furious. “Why can’t we
 . . .
why can’t things go on like they are, at least until
 . . .
”

Eric walked over to one of the benches and leaned back against it, crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s not enough. Not anymore. I want more. More than just the sex. It’s great sex, Angel, but I want something else, too.”

When she started to speak, he cut her off with a ruthless gesture. “Let me finish, Piper. I want to marry you, be a father to Cole, have some more kids with you. If you don’t think we can have that, then it’s over. I won’t settle for less.”

That’s what he’d be doing if he married her. Settling for less. And she couldn’t let him do it. “Then it’s over. Because I can’t marry you.”

Anger followed the pain and disbelief that initially darkened his face. “You’re serious,” he said, his voice harsh, unforgiving.

“Yes.” She turned her back and heard the door slam. Bowed her head and let the tears fall.

“No wonder he feels lousy.” Helping Cole to a seated position, he pulled up his nightshirt and placed his stethoscope on the boy’s chest. Eric wore his professional face, the one that gave no hint of what he was thinking. His expression, or lack of it, made him look like a stranger. But that’s what they were now, Piper thought. Strangers.

Finally he finished and let Cole lie back down. “Tell me again how this started out,” he said to her.

“Like a bad cold that just kept getting worse. We haven’t slept through the night in days.”

“Any nausea, vomiting?” He ran his hand over Cole’s abdomen and pressed on it in different areas.

“No vomiting. He’s complained on and off of his stomach hurting, but he does that every time he’s sick.”

Eric frowned. “Does your stomach hurt now, Cole?” He pressed down again, on his right side. “Does it hurt there?”

“Hurts all over.” Cole’s voice was weak. “My head hurts, too. Make it go away,” he said querulously.

“It’s the flu, isn’t it?” she asked, but she knew it wasn’t.

Eric stood and put a hand on her shoulder. “It acts more like the flu than anything else, but
 . . .
just make him as comfortable as you can.”

She saw him to the door. “You’re worried, aren’t you? What is it?”

Surprising her, he pressed his hand against her cheek and smiled at her ruefully. “Doctors are funny about their families. I can’t just turn off my feelings for him. I’m going to go back to work, but I’ll be back later. Call me if you need me.”

Piper watched him leave. She sensed there was something he wasn’t telling her, but she knew he wouldn’t open up. He’d said he couldn’t turn off his feelings for Cole. What about his feelings for her?

Cole called to her and she sat beside him again, holding his hand and telling him stories in the vain hope he might forget how wretched he felt.

“I’m putting him in the hospital,”
Eric told Piper when he returned to the ranch.

Piper didn’t argue. She didn’t need a thermometer to know that Cole’s fever was extremely high. The heat radiated in waves from his skin. Eric’s grim face when he examined him again only solidified her fears. “What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was flat and unemotional. His professional voice. She wanted to yell at him for his calm, yet at the same time she was intensely grateful for it.

“Don’t you even have an idea?”

“We’re taking him in so we can run tests, Piper. Until then we won’t know. Speculating doesn’t do a bit of good.”

Two hours and all sorts of tests later, she still knew nothing. Eric came in to stand by Cole’s bed and frown at him while he slept restlessly.

She was sick with worry and sick to death of evasions. “What are you testing him for? Tell me, dammit. I’m his mother, I have a right to know.”

He turned his attention away from Cole to look at her. “Giving you a diagnosis when I’m not certain will only make you worry unnecessarily.”

She dragged him away from the bed. “Just tell me, Eric.”

He sighed and glanced over at Cole before he met her eyes. “I’ve got a suspicion that it might be hantavirus.”

“Hantavirus?” Her brows knitted, she stared at him. “The mystery disease that was in the news recently?” Oh, God, she remembered now. Nauseated, she shut her eyes. “That’s the disease that killed those people in New Mexico.”

He hesitated. “There have been some deaths associated with it.”

“Oh, my God.” Hantavirus. The only thing she knew about it was what she’d read in the paper. And all of those people had died. “Is it
 . . .
is it always fatal?” she managed to say.

“Good God, no.” He put his arm around her and hugged her. “I shouldn’t have told you until I was sure. We don’t even know that he has it.”

“It
 . . .
it might not be that?” How could Cole have a disease she’d hardly even heard of?

“It could be another virus. Maybe a strain of flu that’s resistant to the vaccine.”

“When will we know?” She turned and clutched at the lapels of his coat, her fingers digging into the fabric, while her eyes were fixed on his, imploring him for answers. “Today?”

Eric shook his head and covered her hand, patting it consolingly. “It will take a day or so for the lab results to come in. We’ll just have to wait.”

Her gaze turned blank, her fingers loosening and slipping away. “Wait?” She closed her eyes. “Eric, I’m scared.”

“I could be wrong.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. “You could be wrong,” she repeated tonelessly. “What happens if
 . . .
” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

“He’s here in the hospital, Piper. They’re equipped to deal with it if he should become worse.”

Piper took that for what comfort she could. Damned little.

Two days later,
Eric stared at Cole’s lab report. Positive for hantavirus. The report had come in while he was making rounds. He held it a moment, looking for the possibility of error, but there was none. Hantavirus, a disease that killed sixty percent of those who contracted it. Cursing, he threw the report on his desk.

Piper sat in a chair drawn up beside Cole’s bed. The same place he saw her every time he went in. “Come take a break. I’ll send Charlie or your mother in if you want.”

She glanced up at him, her face drawn, exhaustion etched in it. “You know, don’t you? You’ve gotten some reports back.”

“Come on, Piper. We don’t need to discuss it in here.”

He took her to one of the staff offices. She looked fragile, exhausted, scared to death. Knowing no way to soften it, he spoke bluntly. “It’s hantavirus.”

Her face paled. Her hands were gripped together so tightly he could see her knuckles turning white. “Is he going to die?”

“No.” There was no way he could guarantee that, but no more than Piper could he face that possibility. “No, he’s not going to die,” he said grimly.

“Those other people did.”

“He won’t die, Piper. He isn’t exhibiting the worst symptoms, so we have to hang on to that for now.” She went to him then, all of the fight drained from her. He held her and wished he could guarantee the outcome like he’d never wished for anything before.

As a physician he’d rarely felt more helpless. Hantavirus was a disease without a prescribed course of treatment. There was a new drug available to treat certain strains of the disease, but until Cole worsened, Eric couldn’t give it to him. All he could do was treat his symptoms and wait.

Piper held Cole’s hand
as he shifted restlessly on the hospital bed. She thought about all she went through to have him. The publicity that resulted from her liaison with Roger, the torment she’d endured from the press. It was worth anything she’d suffered to have this one small child to love. Gazing down at him, she saw him start to gasp. Within minutes he began turning blue. She hit the emergency button beside his bed.

An endless time later, Eric and a couple of nurses ran in, took one look at Cole and said, “Piper, wait outside.” After that he ignored her, pushing her out of his way to get to her son, slapping the oxygen on him and snapping out orders to the nurses. “Intubate him and then put him on the vent. Now!”

Piper waded in a quicksand, her mind mired in terror, ensnared by the grim reality of the sight before her. Immobile, she focused on her son’s face. Heard nothing, saw nothing but Cole, lying deathly still.
Please, God, don’t let him die
. Her breath let out in a sobbing gasp. A nurse led her to the door. She walked blindly into her grandfather’s arms and laid her head on his chest. “Grandpa, what if he doesn’t—”

“Hold on, girl. Cole’s a Stevenson, and we don’t give up, so don’t let me hear you talk that way. He’ll pull through.” He patted her back. For the first time in her memory she felt a tremor in her grandfather’s hand.

“He has to, Grandpa. Oh, God, he has to.”

They waited, each trying desperately to believe what they told each other. Interminable minutes later, Eric emerged from Cole’s room, his face drawn and weary. “He’s stable now. Go take a look at him and then let Charlie stay with him, Piper. After you see him I’ll explain what we did.”

So she went in and reassured herself that her son was alive. Hooked up to a machine, but alive. She smoothed the hair on his head and thought about how unnaturally still he was. Cole, the child who always ran, was lying motionless on a hospital bed.

“We’ve put him on the ventilator,” Eric said when she came out. “I’ve started him on that new anti-viral drug I told you about. The machine’s helping him breathe, so that’s good.”

She felt herself losing it, but couldn’t stop. “How can you say it’s good when he has to be hooked up to a machine so he can breathe?” Tears ran down her cheeks and she beat her fists on his chest. “How can you say anything about this is good?”

Eric held her while she cried, unable to comfort her. She was right. Nothing about this was good. Ironically, he’d had to wait until Cole worsened, until the virus attacked his lungs, before he could take a more aggressive course of treatment. Now he was finally able to give him a drug prescribed for the particular strain of hantavirus that Cole had. A drug that might or might not help him.