The Drake Unwound Complete Collection Book 9 (11 page)

I nodded, unable to speak.

"Does she want you to meet him?"

"She didn’t say anything more than he was mine and we needed to talk."

Kate was silent for a moment. "I'm so sorry. You can drop me off at my father's."

I sighed as we came to a stoplight. "I don’t know what she wants, but why else would she come back to Manhattan? You're my life, Kate." I was silent as I considered what to do. I had no idea what Maureen would want, but Kate was the most important thing in my life and I wanted her to come when I met with Maureen. "I want you with me all the time. If you're willing, I'd like you to come with me. She has to know you and I are together."

"Do you think she wants you back?"

I shrugged. "I have no
idea
what she wants. She married this guy Chris who she met before we broke up. She said she'd tell me when we met."

"Where?"

"The hospital in Washington Heights. A coffee shop we used to go to. It's familiar ground, I guess."

We drove towards NYP and I found a parking space close to the café where I was to meet Maureen. Kate and I walked hand in hand into the lobby of the building. I saw Maureen right away – her blonde hair and height distinguishing her from everyone else. She was silhouetted against the window, watching for me.

We walked up to her and she frowned when she saw Kate, looking her up and down, her grey eyes judging. "Is this your current
slave
?"

"This is Kate McDermott. Kate, this is Maureen Johnston, my ex-wife."

Kate nodded politely at Maureen. I couldn’t believe Maureen was so rude as to suggest that Kate was my
slave
and that I would bring a mere submissive to a meeting with her but there was no way Maureen would ever understand the lifestyle.

"I need you to come with me," Maureen said, her voice clipped.

"Where?"

"To Morgan Stanley. The oncology ward."

"Your son—"

"
Our
son," she corrected. "He's got leukemia. He needs a bone marrow transplant and so I thought you'd agree to be tested. You could be a match."

Another wash of adrenaline went through me and for a moment, my sense of hearing dulled. Her son –
my
son had leukemia? I thought of the brother I never knew – the brother who died before I was born.

I’d passed the genetic curse along to my son. "Yes. Of
course
."

"Can we go somewhere and talk?" she said and sighed. "I suppose this has come as a shock."

I bit back a nasty reply, determined I’d remain in complete control. Maureen, and most of all Kate, didn’t need to see me lose it. Maureen led us down the long hallway to a small coffee shop where we purchased some coffee. We went to an empty table surrounded by other visitors and patients.

"So, tell me," I said, my hands around my cup. "How is it I have a son and I never heard about him?"

Maureen took off her scarf, removed her coat. She sat down and stirred her coffee, taking her sweet time about it as if she wanted to gain the upper hand and ward off any kind of attack on my part. Finally, after taking a sip, she spoke, her voice low.

"I didn’t think he was yours. I thought he was Chris's. It wasn't until we tested Chris as a donor that we found out he wasn't related. It was then I knew." She glanced up at me, her face red. "I must have miscalculated my dates. I probably didn’t want to think he was yours."

I knew that Maureen was unhappy when we split up, but I had no idea that she had already started a relationship with someone else. When she left me, I thought it was truly because we failed, not because she had someone else waiting. She’d mentioned someone named Chris in passing before she left me, but I thought it was just a colleague. I’d been jealous at the mention of his name but too busy and self-absorbed to push her to find out more.

"So you
were
sleeping with Chris before we split..."

"Drake, I could have been sleeping with an entire college football team for all you'd have known. You were so busy in Africa and with lectures and surgery and your band to even notice that I was having an affair."

"And how do you know he's my son? I should be tested—"

"
Drake
," she said, her voice sounding frustrated. "It was either you or Chris. I wasn't seeing anyone else. Yes, you should be tested, but given it's the same leukemia as your brother, I assumed he's yours."

"Of
course
…" I stammered. "They'll find out when they test me for compatibility." I said nothing for a moment, reining myself in once more, holding my cup between my palms. I didn't meet Maureen's eyes, focusing instead on the table and my cup. "So you were fucking us both, obviously."

"I didn’t mean to. You were pretty insistent when you were around. I tried to talk to you but you were always shushing me, trying to get me into bed. I finally gave up."

Kate stood up at that, obviously embarrassed to be listening to our private conversation. I grabbed her hand.

"Stay," I said. She sat back down, her cheeks red. I sighed heavily, feeling bad that she had to hear my dirty laundry, hoping that it didn’t sour her on me – on us. "Tell me about my son."

"Liam," Maureen said. I glanced up at that. Maureen gave a half-smile, somewhat guilty-looking. "I always liked your father and that name, so I called him that when I found out he was a boy."

"Jesus
Christ
," I said, rubbing my eyes. "You never suspected that he was my son?"

"You and Chris look quite a lot alike. Dark hair, fair skin. He has hazel eyes, and yours are blue, but still. Liam could have been either of yours. I
assumed
," she said, her voice low. "I
wanted
to believe he was Chris's son. It wasn't until we needed a donor that I found out the truth."

"How long ago was this?"

"He's had leukemia for a year, but it wasn't until he didn't respond to chemo and had a relapse that we decided on stem cell transplantation. We tested everyone in the family and that's when we discovered Chris wasn't his father. As soon as I found out, I made an appointment with Krishnamurtha here at NYP Children's. I decided to come here, where I knew some of the nurses. NYP has one of the best pediatric oncology centers in the world. And of course, there's you. You're the same blood type. I thought you might be an HLA match."

"What's his diagnosis?"

"AML. M5. He has a rare 10:11 mutation and needs aggressive treatment. I should have known he was yours when I heard it, but I wasn't thinking about you."

"
Christ
," I said, rubbing my forehead. "How's he doing?"

"He's holding his own, but he needs a transplant. If you're a match, he'll be prepped for consolidation therapy. High dose chemo and radiation, followed by bone marrow or stem cell transplant. We looked for a donor but came up empty. If you're a match, will you agree to donate your marrow?"

I didn’t hesitate. "Of course.
Anything
."

"I know you're going to Africa, but I need you to do this."

"The semester doesn’t start until March so I have some time. I was going to help with their surgical slate for a while, help with backlogged cases, but that can wait."

Maureen covered her face with her hands and cried in front of us, her sobs silent, her shoulders shaking.

Despite my anger and shock, I had loved her once and she was the mother of my son, so I reached out and squeezed her shoulder. Maureen seemed to snap out of it and reached into her bag. She fished through its contents and removed a tissue, wiping her eyes as she struggled to gain control over herself.

"Thank you," she whispered.

I shrugged. "How could I say no? He's my son."

"I knew you didn't want kids, Drake. That's why I never tried to find out if he was yours or Chris's. I knew you probably wouldn't want him anyway, but Chris
did
want him. He
wanted
a family."

I nodded. "I never wanted to have kids because of the chance of passing on the gene. I never imagined being a father."

"You are, but Chris is his
real
father, Drake. A father isn't just a sperm donor. A father is the man who reads you stories at night, who plays soccer with you in the summer and who takes you fishing. A father is the one who sits by your bed when you're sick."

I shook my head, filled with a sense of bitterness. "I guess I never had a father, then."

She glared at me, an exasperated expression on her face. "Look, Drake. If you do this, I don’t want you trying to become involved in Liam's life. Leave things as they are," she said, her voice edged with warning. "It was hard enough telling Chris that Liam wasn't his. Liam doesn't have to know. It would break his heart to find out that Chris wasn’t his biological father. Maybe some day when he's grown and able to handle it, but now? I don't want him to know."

I didn’t say anything, biting back a nasty response about her morals but who was I to condemn her for being unhappy with me? I had been a self-absorbed bastard.

"Will you come up and see him now?" she said. "He's probably asleep, but you could look in on him." She turned to Kate. "You won't be able to go into the room. Only family is allowed inside."

Kate shook her head. "That's fine. I wouldn’t presume to intrude on your private family business."

"Kate can come along if she wants, and wait outside his room." I turned to her and took her hand, squeezing it. I needed her with me for she was the light in my life, and I would need a lot of light now.

Kate nodded. Maureen didn’t argue.

Maureen led the way to the elevator and down the hallways to the children’s ward. I asked Maureen about Liam's diagnosis and treatment and she ran down the sessions of chemo he’d already gone through and how he responded initially, but went out of remission. When they exhausted all the meds open to them, Liam’s oncologists decided on stem cell transplantation. I realized that Kate wasn’t up on all the terminology so I turned to her.

"He has acute myelogenous leukemia. It's a cancer of the white blood cell at a certain stage of development. He has a rare mutation that makes it very aggressive and so they have to treat it equally aggressively."

"Like your brother's?" she asked.

I nodded. "Liam was diagnosed when he was four and died when he was five." We pushed through double doors and into the pediatric oncology ward. "I never knew Liam," I said, thinking of my mother’s tiny shrine to him. "I was supposed to be the consolation baby, but apparently, I wasn't enough."

Kate took my hand and squeezed. I turned to her, and saw that her eyes were brimming. When I saw that, my heart warmed.

"Sweet sweet
Kate
," I whispered, leaning down to kiss her cheek.

We arrived at the pediatric oncology ward, walking past the playroom with brightly painted floors and walls in blues and yellows. I hadn’t spent a lot of time on the ward, for I dealt with neurosurgery patients, but every now and then I had a pediatric patient with a brain tumor and so I had been there before to visit.

Kate sat in a small waiting room while Maureen and I spoke to the nurses at the nursing station.

“He’s been stable, sleeping most of the time.”

The nurses at the station didn’t know the whole story and assumed I was just a consulting physician.

 “Dr. Morgan is a friend and is going to check in on Liam.”

The nurse nodded and we went back to Liam’s isolation room. We entered the anteroom and suited up in gowns and masks. When we entered Liam’s room, I got my first look at him. He lay on the bed, his tiny head bald from chemo, his face pale, his lips pallid. On oxygen, the nasal cannula circled his face, and an I.V. threaded into his arm.

I stood beside the bed and watched Liam as he slept, my emotions almost overwhelming me. I didn’t know how to feel – incredibly shocked that I had a son, incredibly saddened that he was so sick and frail. A deep protective sense filled me, and I knew at that moment that I would do anything and everything in my power to save his life.

I reached out and took his tiny hand in mine, stroking my thumb over his skin, which was thin and pale. I had to bite back tears, and inhaled deeply in an attempt to gain control over my emotions. I glanced up at Maureen, whose own eyes were wet. Liam stirred briefly, and so I gently placed his hand back down on the covers.

“Let’s go,” I said, too close to tears to stay any longer.

We left the room and removed our gowns and masks before returning to the waiting room. I was surprised to see Chris there with Kate. She wasn’t looking at him and her face was pale so I wondered if he’d said something to her.

Maureen turned to them. "I see you two have met," she said, her voice clipped.

"We did." Chris leaned over and kissed Maureen on the cheek.

I took Kate’s hand and pulled her into my arms, needing at that moment to feel her warmth and her sympathy and love. I pressed my face into her neck and squeezed her. She ran her hands up my back, rubbing my shoulders to comfort me. I fought to regain control over myself.

"I'm so sorry," Kate whispered, and that made me even more emotional. I breathed in deeply, swallowing back my emotions. I pulled back and kissed her briefly.

"Thank you for being here." I ended the embrace and slid my hand down her arm, clasping her hand in mine, our fingers entwining. I wiped my eyes briefly and turned to Maureen.

"Call me when the arrangements are made," I said to her. "I'll come whenever his doctors need me."

Maureen nodded and I was so glad to leave the two of them, not wanting to break down in front of anyone. We went to the elevator and I pushed the button, waiting in silence because I was afraid my voice would falter if I spoke.

Once the elevator doors closed, I leaned against the wall and pulled Kate into my arms for the short ride down to the lobby.

"Christ, what a day…" I said and ran my hand over her hair as she leaned against me. "I'm so glad you were here with me. I don't know what I'd do if I were alone through this."

"What a shock for you," Kate said, squeezing me back. "To find out you have a son and that he's sick."