With Every Breath (20 page)

“A little, yes.”

He moved to the other side. “How about that?”

She screamed. Tears streaked from her eyes, dry heaves once again racking her body.

The nurse waited with her while Trevor stepped into the hallway. She heard him speaking to someone, but their voices were too muffled to understand. This was ridiculous. She never got sick. If someone could just take her home, she would lie in bed until this awful feeling passed.

Shuffling footsteps approached the table and Trevor was standing over her again. There was another man, whose white
beard made him look like Santa Claus. Trevor introduced him as Dr. Schrader.

“Kate, we think you have appendicitis. The appendix is a small organ at the bottom of the large intestine, and yours is infected. Sometimes it will go away on its own, sometimes it won’t. Yours is pretty bad.”

Dr. Schrader moved into view. “We have to take it out, Mrs. Livingston. It’s not a difficult operation, but we will have to put you under while we do it.”

An operation? It was unthinkable. To lie down and let someone cut her open and poke around in her insides . . . no. “I don’t need an operation. I’ll be fine.”

“Kate, you won’t be fine,” Trevor said firmly. “Your appendix is acutely inflamed, and that means the infection is getting very bad. If the appendix ruptures, it will spread the infection through your entire body. And then there’s nothing we can do.” He said the words in that flat, dispassionate manner that always got under her skin. Looking her in the eyes, he continued, “Do you understand what I’m saying? You will die, Kate. If your appendix ruptures before we get it out, you’ll die.”

She couldn’t make this decision alone. She needed to talk to her parents. “I want to go home. Tomorrow we can talk about it again if I still feel this bad.”

“I’m not making myself clear,” Trevor said. “We need to operate right away. Your appendix could rupture at any moment, and the longer we wait, the greater the risk. Do you understand?”

“I want to talk to Tick.”

Trevor nodded. “He’s right outside. We’ve already briefed him on your condition.”

Trevor and the other doctor left the room, and Kate pushed herself into a sitting position on the examining table. Tick stepped into the room, looking as white as a ghost as he twisted
his cap in his hands. But the moment he saw her, he plastered a grin on his face.

“Look at you, grabbing all the attention,” he said in an artificially bright tone. “All the patients upstairs are talking about you.” He took her hand, his fingers cold. “I hear you’ve got quite a case. Good thing we have a couple of doctors on hand who can fix you up, right?”

“Don’t you see what they want to do?” She wished her voice didn’t shake so badly, but how could she stay calm when every muscle in her body trembled? “Tick, I don’t want to do it. I want to go home to bed.”

“Come on, Kate. You’re the bravest person I know.”

“Not when it comes to this. I just want to go home. Will you take me?”

Tick drew a steadying breath. “Look, you aren’t thinking clearly right now. Trevor said it’s an easy surgery, but that you’re as good as dead if they don’t get that thing out before it bursts. Don’t go getting soft and stupid on me now. Everyone needs you too much.”

And then she saw the fear behind his wide blue eyes. He was putting on a brave show, but he was scared too. She couldn’t abandon Tick. He needed her, and she’d do anything for him.

She nodded. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

After Tick left to tell Trevor the news, Kate closed her eyes and prayed harder than ever before.

* * * *

It was just her luck that the hospital’s chief surgeon was in Boston for a conference and wouldn’t return until next week. That meant Trevor would be operating on her.

She lay on a table, her shoulder blades hard against its surface. Trevor stood on the far side of the room, arranging silvery
pieces of equipment that flashed in the lamplight as he set them on a nearby tray.

“Have you ever done one of these before?” she asked him.

Trevor rolled the tray next to her and the table. “Plenty, ever since my third year of medical school.”

“But Dr. Flynn is the expert, isn’t he? Maybe we should wait for him to come back from Boston?”

“Kate, I know what I’m doing. Try to relax. It’s going to be okay.”

She supposed she trusted Trevor as much as anyone to do this. Dr. Schrader was somewhere behind her head, preparing a mixture of ether and chloroform, which he said would make her sleep so deeply she wouldn’t feel a thing. She didn’t really believe it. She saw the scalpel Trevor had been cleaning, and there was no way it could slice into her without her feeling pain.

The wheels of Dr. Schrader’s chair rolled closer to her head, and the sharp odor of carbolic acid surrounded her. “You’ll be sure I’m all the way asleep before Trevor starts cutting?”

“I promise. Don’t worry, I’m an old pro at this.”

And then Trevor was standing over her, a mask dangling around his neck. She clenched her hands around the edges of the table. “If this doesn’t work out, please tell my parents and Tick that I love them.”

Mercifully he spared her the arrogant attitude. “Of course,” Trevor said softly.

“Tick’s application for the Naval Academy is due the last week in January. Will you make sure he gets it in on time?”

Trevor nodded.

“They want letters of recommendation. It would be great if you could write him one.”

“I can do that. Anything else?”

She closed her eyes.
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall
not want. He maketh me to lie down in green
pastures . . .”
She drew a blank and scrambled for more words from the Psalm. She couldn’t even remember the Lord’s Prayer. This was it then. “I’m ready,” she managed to say.

Trevor nodded to Dr. Schrader, who pressed a white cloth over her nose and mouth. What an awful smell. The last thing she saw was Trevor drawing up his mask to cover his face.

15

I
t always took a long time for the effects of ether to wear off. Patients could be groggy for hours, and they needed someone to sit with them to ensure they didn’t try to get up or tear at their bandages. Usually a nurse was assigned that duty, but Trevor had sent her away hours ago. Kate didn’t know any of the nurses on this floor, and he didn’t want her surrounded by strangers. He was exhausted and so full of relief that he felt like a limp rag, but he couldn’t leave her side. Sitting in a hard chair pulled up close to Kate’s bed was the only place in the world he wanted to be.

She’d been drifting in and out for a while now, sometimes muttering a few words, other times able to converse quite lucidly, but he knew she would forget everything when she finally emerged from the anesthesia. Patients never remembered what they’d rambled while under the effects of ether. For hours he’d been stroking her hair back from her forehead, watching little emotions flit across her beautifully molded face as she slept.

She turned her head and opened her eyes, staring up at him. He drew the chair a little closer and leaned forward. “How are you feeling, princess?”

“Princess is my dog.”

“The mutt that loiters on the hospital’s front steps?”

“Mmmm.”

How typical of Kate to bestow such a noble name on a mangy dog. “I fed her for you. She looked hungry, and I figured you’d want me to.”

“Good,” she murmured, then drifted off again.

He would do anything for Kate. She had no idea how much she meant to him during their years in school. The hours competing with her were the only times he remembered being happy during those miserable years. For a few hours every day he could forget the lousy hand of cards life had dealt him and just be a normal boy who liked a pretty girl.

Nathan Livingston didn’t bother him. He knew Kate adored Nathan and would probably marry him someday, which was fine because Nathan was a decent guy. Trevor never aspired to Kate in that way. She was way out of his reach, but he relished the sheer joy of competing with her, even if it was something as stupid as who could skip a stone farther. Kate was always so fierce, never giving him an inch, and he liked that about her. Even now he liked that about her. Listening to the scratch of her pencil in the office as they both plugged away at their research. Watching her take notes as he read statistics to her. Watching the way her red hair caught the sunlight.

Kate stirred again. “Are you going to be here when I wake up for real?”

“You’ll go back to disliking me when you wake up for real.”

She chuckled. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

She turned her head away and started humming a nonsensical little tune. What he wouldn’t give to have a woman like this in his life. Kate was a once-in-a-lifetime woman. If he were a normal man like Nathan, he would have been able to compete
for her. Court her by bringing her flowers or maybe one of those boxes of chocolates they sold in the fancier stores. But he wasn’t normal, and never could be. If Kate had any idea of who he really was, she would want nothing to do with him.

Kate rolled her head back, still looking a little drunk on ether. “All the nurses like you,” she said.

“They don’t know me. I try to scare them off, but nothing works.”

“You have a dimple when you smile. Right there.” She stabbed a finger in the air, almost poking him in the eye before he grabbed her hand, tucking it back beneath the sheet. “Why haven’t I ever noticed it before?”

Because he never had much to smile about.

“Am I going to have a scar?” She pulled up the bedsheet to look. He grabbed her hands again and placed them back at her sides.

“Careful, Kate. I put in a beautiful line of perfect stitches. If you ruin them, I’m putting them back in without anesthesia.”

“I can see your dimple again. You shouldn’t smile when you threaten me. I’ll bet I can sew better than you.”

“I have a very steady hand. My stitching is flawless.”

Her head lolled to the side, and her breathing became deep and regular. A moment later, she started muttering to herself. “Trevor McDonough,” she murmured. “Who would have imagined I’d fall in love with the horrible Trevor McDonough.”

The smile fell from his face. If Kate truly loved him, it would be unbearable to be around her. He would never be free to marry, but if he were . . . well, Kate had always been the finest woman he knew.

“Trevor McDonough,” she mumbled again. “I’ve gone silly and stupid over Trevor McDonough. It’s so embarrassing.”

He closed his eyes, letting his fingers stroke her silky hair. Sometimes his longing for Kate was so great he didn’t know if
he could draw another breath. There were times in the office when he ached to drag her into his arms, to hold her close and tell her how he really felt about her.

He continued stroking her hair, just for a few more seconds. This was going to be the last time he ever set a finger on Kate Livingston. She was going to forget everything about this conversation, and tomorrow things would go back to the way they had always been. He drank in the sight of her. She was sunlight and energy and hope, and yet he needed to get away from her. He loved her too much to let these feelings get out of control.

He withdrew his hand. “I’m going to ask the nurse to sit with you for a while. Her name is Esther, and she’ll take good care of you.”

But Kate had already fallen back asleep. He placed a gentle kiss on her forehead before leaving the room.

16

K
ate was warned that her biggest risk following surgery was the danger of infection, so she was allowed no visitors. Aside from the nurse who delivered her meals, Trevor was the only person she saw, and he was lousy company.

He came in twice a day to look at her incision and check for infection. The tentative friendship they had before her surgery vanished behind his ironclad shell. He held his chart before him like a shield whenever he came to examine her, using the same clinical demeanor he had with the patients upstairs as he took her temperature and checked her pulse. At any moment she expected him to start referring to her by a number. Couldn’t he at least meet her eyes when he walked into her room? The man had as much passion as a potted plant.

Being an invalid was lethally dull, but three days after the surgery she was beginning to feel human again. The nurse propped some pillows behind her back, so she could sit upright and try to engage Trevor in conversation.

“I hope you’ve been to the boardinghouse for dinner. After saving my life, I expect my mother will shower you with rose petals and kill the fatted calf.”

He didn’t bother to reply as he made notes on his chart.

“Trevor!”

“Please keep your voice down,” he said calmly. “I’m three feet away and my hearing is excellent.”

“Then tell me you’ve been going to dinner and making friends. You need allies. There’s a new man boarding with us, and he works at the Justice Department. He would be a good person to know.”

Trevor replaced his pencil in the pocket of his lab coat. “I’ve no interest in cultivating friendships with government bureaucrats. They’re cold-blooded vultures without a speck of human compassion.”

Like someone else I know
. “Trevor, I know it can be hard to pretend you have an actual beating heart beneath that lab coat, but you were making progress before I got sick. I hope we don’t have to do remedial therapy.”

Paying no attention to what she said, he turned to leave. “Your parents are waiting outside. I said they could visit. Do you want to see them or should I send them away?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She tried to rise, but Trevor’s hand shot out and held her in place. After assuring him she would remain in bed, Trevor left the room.

A minute later her parents peeked in the door.

“It’s okay. I’m not going to break,” she said with a smile.

The door opened wide, and her mother burst into tears. Her father’s eyes didn’t look too dry either. They stood at the foot of her bed, looking as if they’d like to pounce on her, but they obeyed the rules to keep their distance. Her mother dried her eyes. “I would’ve had to kill that horrible man if any harm came to you.”