Chasing the Wind (40 page)

He could feel Robert settling back. Even so, Robert muttered, "Either way, I'll have her job when this is done. Tomorrow, once the funds are in from Cayman." Robert slid down, stretched out his legs, rested his head on the back of the chair, and blew smoke at the ceiling.

"Just as long as it's not before the closing."

Luke moved and let out a cry. An hour had passed since they'd arrived. He wept now, head in her lap, arms reaching up. She leaned over him, stroking his face with her fingertips. "Shh, I'm here, baby."

She smiled at him and turned her head to the right, looking along the wall where they sat. No one had moved since she'd arrived. Across the way, a nurse pushed through a curtain in one of the treatment rooms. But there were probably sixty or seventy people waiting between those little rooms and where she sat with Luke.

Luke shuddered, and she stroked his cheek. Slowly his eyes closed, and she hoped he was sleeping. She ran her fingers across his eyelids, gently, like the brush of butterfly wings, as Mama used to do. Turning her gaze to the pay phone booth, her heart fell. There was nothing else she could do. Squeezing her eyes shut, she faced the fact that she was here for the night with Luke. She'd have to call Rebecca and ask her to pass the bad news on to Doug.

Robert would explode. The phone call would end her career, she knew.

She blinked back tears. There was no choice. No other option.

Luke woke when she gathered him up. When she stood, holding him against her, protecting the leg he seemed to favor, he began again to cry. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. Then she took a deep breath, steadying herself. She left the blanket on the floor to save their place as she headed for the telephone booth.

Rebecca looked up as Ashley Elizabeth entered the conference room. Their eyes met and Ashley Elizabeth jerked her chin toward the door. Rebecca gave a slight nod, pushed back the document she was working on, and stood. Raymond was engrossed in a final review of the investor agreement for the fifteen-percent subordinated convertible notes and their placement memorandum. Preston and Doug were arguing with Robert and the Cayman lawyer about the letter of credit. At the other end of the table, Bingham sat, arms folded across his chest, leaning back, eyes closed.

Without a word Rebecca slipped from the room. Ashley Elizabeth was holding the elevator door. Rebecca joined her and Ashley Elizabeth pressed the button for the sixteenth floor.

When the doors closed, Rebecca turned to her. "What's going on?"

"Amalise called. She needs to talk to you."

Rebecca raised her brows. "I thought she was in her office."

"
I
thought she was in the conference room having dinner."

"Is something wrong?"

Ashley Elizabeth gave a nervous shrug.

The elevator stopped on sixteen, and Ashley Elizabeth headed for her desk. Rebecca followed. "She sounds a little upset, but I didn't want to ask. She sent me to find you."

"Strange."

"You can take the call in her office. She's waiting."

In Amalise's office Rebecca picked up the telephone, pressed the flashing hold button, and took a deep breath. "Amalise! What's going on?" She heard an amplified monotone voice making an announcement in the background.

"I'll give you the short version and explain later." Her words came out in a rush, crisp, as if she wanted to rid herself of whatever she had to say. Get it behind her. "A child's been hurt, and I'm with him at the hospital."

Rebecca leaned one hip against the credenza and clicked her tongue. "I must be missing something. What child are you talking about?"

"He's the foster child of some friends. There's no one but me to stay with him. We're at Charity right now, in the emergency room." She paused, and Rebecca could hear her take a deep breath. "I think his leg's broken and I have to stay with him."

"You have to get back here, is what you have to do! Where are his, ah, foster parents? Let them handle it."

"That's not an option. Look, I can't explain. You're going to have to break the news to Doug and Preston that I won't be back for a while."

Rebecca frowned. This made no sense.

Amalise's voice broke. "Will you do that for me, Rebecca?" She paused. "I don't know how long this will take. Just . . . just tell them I'll be there as soon as possible."

Rebecca shook her head. "Have you lost your mind, Amalise?" She glanced at the door and turned toward the wall, lowering her voice to a hiss. "You're going to sit in a hospital emergency room with someone else's child in the middle of a
closing
?" She paused. "You might as well resign."

"There was no one else, and he's . . . listen, I can't explain it all now. There isn't time. I'll tell you all about it later, but I'm asking you to please do this for me."

Rebecca recognized that tone of voice: Amalise wasn't going to budge.

"Please."

Rebecca pressed her hand over her forehead. "How long will this take?"

"I don't know. Maybe hours."

"As in two or ten?"

"Somewhere in between, I guess."

Rebecca lowered herself into the chair. Amalise's career would not survive this night if she passed on this message. If the injured child were Amalise's own, or there was some other close relationship to explain, things would be different. But who was this child?

"Rebecca?"

"I'm here." She dropped her elbow onto the desk and her head into her hand, shrugging the phone close to her ear. She looked at her watch. It was already 8:35. "If I do what you ask, you'll be finished here, Amalise. The firm is counting on you."

There was a long pause before she answered. "I know. I'll have to take my chances."

Rebecca squeezed the space between her brows between her thumb and finger. "Please don't do this. You've worked too long, Amalise. Too hard."

"I love this little boy, Rebecca." Rebecca heard the surprise in Amalise's voice. "I do. I don't know how this happened, but there it is."

Rebecca could hear a small child crying, then Amalise's voice low, muffled, soothing. Another announcement in the background broke the silence between them.

Amalise's voice caught. "Please do this for me." She paused. "I'll see you later."

"Wait!"

But she'd hung up.

Rebecca straightened, looked at the phone in her hand, then slowly turned around and hung it up. Swiveling back to the desk, she knit her fingers together and stared unseeing at the books in Amalise's bookcase. A part of her wanted to weep for Amalise. They had survived law school together. They'd both been summer clerks for the firm, the first women ever hired for such a job at Mangen & Morris. And they had broken barriers together as associates in the firm's class of '76.

But a part of her also thought of the slow, steady climb toward becoming the first female lawyer up for partner. She would have no competition for the spot if she passed on Amalise's message. She fought against these thoughts, struggled against the growing temptation to do exactly what Amalise had asked.

She could do her job and Amalise's part as well. She could be the heroine who saved the closing, the one who'd stepped into the gap. And after that, if she worked hard enough for two tonight, a partnership would virtually be assured.

But there was another option, she knew.

She pushed back the desk chair and stood. Drawing in a deep breath, she looked at the telephone, then released her breath and looked up at the ceiling. Reflecting. Weighing.

Then she blew out her cheeks, picked up the phone, and dialed.

Jude arrived at the hospital at
8:55, stood just inside the emergency room door, and looked around. It had taken twenty minutes to get here, from the moment he'd hung up from Rebecca's call to the hospital parking lot. It was a miracle he hadn't gotten a ticket. There wasn't much time, Rebecca had said. She'd cover for Amalise as long as she could, but they'd notice pretty soon.

Dividing the room into sections as he did when searching for something out on the gulf, he scanned each square of the grid, narrowing his eyes against the bright fluorescent light. Within seconds he spotted them on the floor to his right, pressed against the wall. The child was stretched out on a blanket on the hard tile floor with his head in Amalise's lap.

Charity was a big, hard-working hospital. A teaching hospital with good doctors, and the primary destination for any ambulance in the city in an emergency situation. If the occupied chairs, stretchers, and gurneys were any indication, he figured Amalise and the child could be waiting there for days.

So he adjusted his original plan and walked toward her. As he grew close, she looked up. The blank expression disappeared as her eyes widened.

"Rebecca called," he said before she could ask. He stooped down before her, eyes on the child. The boy from Kerlerec Street, he figured.

Rebecca had warned him that Amalise's clock was ticking. No time for delay or emotion right now. Jude fixed his eyes on Amalise. Dark rings circled her eyes.

Looking up at him, her mouth tightened and she hugged the child closer. His eyes traveled down and met the child's. Large and soft and brown, warily they watched him. In the instant something turned inside, a small nudge that told him to listen to the whispers in his mind:
What you do for the least of them, you do for me.

"What happened?"

"I think he's broken his leg." She indicated the right leg. "He fell down some stairs."

He nodded. Felt along the boy's hip, his thigh, his knee, ran his hand down the shinbone, and the boy cried out. Amalise let out a small anguished sound.

Jude looked up. "It feels like a break just above his ankle." He gently nudged the boy's chin, looking at him. "I bet that hurts, Buddy."

Luke shrank back against Amalise.

"His name is Luke."

Before Amalise could object, Jude slid his arms under the blanket and Luke and picked him up in both arms.

Amalise scrambled to her feet. "Wait! What are you doing?"

He rose and looked at her, the boy cradled in his arms, the blanket hanging down around him. Luke was silent, watching them.

Jude's brows knitted. Too much time was passing. "I'll take him to Touro Infirmary. It's smaller and there won't be a wait."

Amalise's eyes opened wide, and she nodded. "Yes. Of course. I didn't think of it."

He turned toward the door, motioning her to follow. When Luke cried out and stretched out his arm for her, she took his hand and held it all the way to the doors.

As they approached the exit, Jude turned and backed through the door, holding it open. Cradling Luke against him, he could feel the rapid thud of the child's heartbeat. The door closed behind them and they stood in the November cool, just outside the waiting room, under the portico. Amalise reached across and pulled the hanging blanket up over Luke, gently tucking it around him. Then she slid her hand over his forehead, stroking it. Jude stood still, letting her soothe the boy, until gradually he felt the little heartbeat slow.

At last a slow shuddering sigh ran through the child, and Jude felt an almost imperceptible release of tension in the small body in his arms.

Amalise met Jude's eyes and smiled. "So Rebecca called you."

"She's worried. You'll be missed soon." He looked down at Luke. The boy was light as a feather. And sound asleep.

"I had to make a choice, Jude."

Now would come the hard part. He nodded and met her eyes. "I understand. But now you have to get back to work."

"I can't leave him." Her eyes darkened as she looked at him. "He calls me Mother." Her voice was thick with emotion. "Would a mother leave her child?"

He held her eyes. "He'll have a whole lifetime with you, Amalise, if that's what you both want." He saw her quick look, saw her thinking. "But right now you have to trust me."

She looked at him. "I do."

He nodded. "You may love this child, but you also love your work, and the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. So let me help." He nodded at Luke. "Look, he's asleep. I'll take care of him tonight. And tomorrow."