With Every Breath (24 page)

“Are you . . . ?” Kate’s words were hesitant. “Are you cured?”

How was he to answer that? It would be so easy to lie to her, to tell her what she wanted to hear so she could put this horror behind her and never worry about it again. He couldn’t bear to look at her as hope faded from her face. He turned to stare at a sparrow flitting in the tree outside his window. Anything rather than look at the heartbreak in Kate’s eyes.

“For a while I was convinced I was cured,” he said. “When
tuberculosis is confined to the lungs, sometimes it simply disappears. It only happens about ten percent of the time. We don’t know why or what causes some people to spontaneously heal, but I thanked God that I seemed to be one of them.”

And during those years he became obsessed with finding a cure. He attacked the problem by seeking out the best scientists in the world to share their research. He observed at clinics and universities and then launched trial programs of his own.

“I treated the worst cases,” he continued. “For eight years I was around patients whose lungs were infected with a massive degree of tuberculosis. I quit wearing a mask, even when I was working with patients I knew were at the contagious stage of the disease. For eight years I checked myself, and for eight years I was clean.”

Kate stiffened beside him. He didn’t want to proceed with the story, but he had to. He sent her a reluctant smile. “As you know, I can sometimes be a little arrogant.”

“A bit, yes.” She gave a sniffle and waited for him to continue.

“I started to wonder why I hadn’t been re-infected, especially since I spent so many years around infected people. Was it possible that once a person survived tuberculosis, they acquired some sort of immunity? Smallpox works that way.”

For over a century, people had been safely receiving the smallpox vaccination by having a tiny dose of the disease injected under their skin. After battling a mild, localized infection, they were immune for the rest of their lives. If there was a chance to develop a similar vaccine for tuberculosis, it would be a godsend, but he needed more information.

“I wanted to know if I was immune from ever getting tuberculosis again. This isn’t the sort of thing I could test on a volunteer. I had to test it on myself.”

“Oh, Trevor . . .” She whispered his name, and never had he
heard such agony carried on a single word. She knew exactly where this was leading.

“I collected a sample of live tuberculosis bacillus and prepared to expose myself to it. I spent the night before on my knees at a church, praying with every ounce of strength I had. Then I had a doctor in Boston help me with the injection. He shot the bacillus into my left bronchial tube, the passage that leads directly to the lung. And then I waited.”

It didn’t take long to know his experiment had been a failure.

“Six days later I tested positive for tuberculosis.”

Tears coursed down the side of Kate’s face. How badly he wanted to assure her that everything would be well, that there was no need to cry over him. But he couldn’t lie to her.

“I followed the best medical advice to cure it, and all the experts believed that the highest, thinnest air in the world was my best chance of beating the disease. Dr. Brehmer cured himself of tuberculosis by living in the Himalayas. That was how I got to India. I spent two years in a sanitarium high up in the mountains. Even then some doctors were speculating about the value of the sun. So I lay out in the open, wearing nothing but my skivvies every day for two years. It was freezing cold, but I got used to it. I drank straight cod liver oil and ate as much meat as I could get my hands on. And by the time I left, I was cured. That was three years ago. I’m one of the few people in the world to have beaten the disease twice.”

“Do you still have it?”

Today he was healthy, but tomorrow? His immune system had already taken quite a beating, and his odds of surviving another attack were slim.

“I test myself every week. My lungs are clear, and they have been for three years. Sometimes the bacillus can lay dormant for years before roaring back to life, so I don’t know what my
future holds. I still drink the cod liver oil and lie in the sun. I figure my odds of it coming back someday are pretty good, but I just don’t know.”

This wasn’t the kind of information he wanted to share with anyone, certainly not a person he cared for. In a tiny corner of his soul he always harbored a wild, irrational hope about Kate, but first those dreams were killed by his disease, and then there was Nathan. During his school years he never tormented himself with romantic fantasies of Kate. Besides, the opportunity to compete with her was all he really needed.

All that was different now. Kate was free, and she sensed the electricity between them. Now that she understood why he’d always held himself aloof from her, a kernel of hope began to emerge. Like a small flame that was allowed more fuel, it began to glow and burn brighter. Most women would run screaming from him, but Kate? She was a risk taker. There was never a challenge Kate didn’t want to beat down and tackle until she got exactly what she wanted.

He picked up the files resting on her lap and set them on the desk. He drew his chair closer and reached for her hand. “Kate, look at me,” he said.

Her chin was still pointing down, but her eyes came up to meet his. Her expression nearly drove the breath from him. How could she wear her feelings so openly and still function?

“So now you know. I’ve never let myself get close to a woman because I’m not a good long-term bet. But I care for you. I’ve
always
cared for you.” Without asking permission, he reached up behind her neck to stroke the heavy coil of her hair. He leaned forward, giving her plenty of time to pull away if she chose.

She didn’t.

He kissed her softly on the mouth. Nothing had ever felt
more right or natural than kissing Kate, and she didn’t pull away from him. She leaned toward him and kissed him back.

Emotion surged through him, but he leaned back in his chair and forced his face to remain blank. Whatever Kate decided to do in the next few seconds would change the course of his life. She stared at her lap, her hand nervously twitching inside his palm. Then she pulled away.

Kate would not look at him as she scooped his medical files from the desk and carried them back to the filing cabinet. She knelt on the floor and shoved the files back into the lowest drawer. She sighed, holding on to the open file drawer as though she couldn’t sit upright without its support. Every muscle in her body was rigid, but her head hung low like the blossom of a flower whose stem sagged under its weight. She refused to look at him.

“I’ve already buried one man I loved,” she said in a whisper. “I don’t think I can do it again.”

The flame of hope flickered out. Her words were a blow, but he didn’t let it show on his face. He swallowed hard before answering. How quickly dreams could shrivel and vanish, like autumn leaves that skittered away on a gust of wind.

“I kind of thought you might say that.”

Her tears started rolling again as she turned to look at him. “Trevor, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry . . .”

It was easy to pretend he wasn’t hurting. He’d been doing it his whole life. “Don’t worry about it, Kate. I’ve known since I was thirteen I should never get too close to a woman.” He went over to where she knelt on the hard floor. “Let me help you up. You’re barely out of a sickbed.”

She sniffled. “I could race you down the stairs and beat you out the front door.”

It was a lie, but he let her win this one.

They were going to have to pretend this conversation had never happened. It was sure to be torture, but he would do it. He’d rather have whatever tiny piece of Kate he could get than see her leave the hospital.

“I have a stack of reports that need to be analyzed,” he said in a neutral voice. “I’ve arranged them in order of priority. I would appreciate it if you could have them done by the end of the week.”

“Of course,” she said, and he breathed a sigh of gratitude.

With every ounce of his heart and soul, he wanted Kate as more than a colleague. He wanted her as a woman, as a wife, as someone he could hold long into the night and the first thing every morning. It was an insane hope that he was foolish to even toy with, but he could settle for remaining her friend. He was light-headed with relief when she took the stack of reports to her desk. She was going to stay.

Hiring Kate was the best thing he’d done in his professional career, and he could handle anything so long as she didn’t leave him.

19

T
revor went back to work at his desk as though nothing had happened, and Kate tried to do the same, but after two hours she’d been unable to finish a complete set of calculations. It was as if her brain had splintered into a dozen pieces, none of which could function together. She wanted to cling to Trevor and weep at his terrible news, yet at the same time the logical piece of her brain was terrified because Trevor’s missing two years had nothing to do with the harassment at her parents’ boardinghouse. She was no closer to discovering who was launching this hideous crusade against a man she’d come to love.

Her breathing became ragged again and she sniffled.

“Quit crying, Kate.”

Trevor’s voice from the other side of their office was flat, and he didn’t look up from the document he was writing as he spoke. She whirled in her chair to face him.

“I don’t know how you can pretend nothing has changed,” she said. “How can you just sit there and go on like everything’s fine?”

“Because nothing has changed,” he asserted calmly. “My health is exactly the same as it was this time yesterday, we both
have a backlog of work to process, and you have no interest in anything beyond a platonic relationship. Therefore, nothing has changed. Any sniveling from your side of the office is a pointless waste of time.”

She sighed. It wasn’t true; everything
had
changed. If he’d made such a ridiculous comment yesterday, she would have teased him about being a lifeless block of ice, but that seemed only cruel now.

Nurse Ackerman tapped on the door. “A message arrived for you, Dr. Kendall.”

A quiver of anxiety trickled through her. Ever since those ominous notes began arriving, any unexpected message set her on edge. Trevor scanned the message, his mouth compressing into a hard line.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I need to meet with the surgeon general. He heard about the raid last night. I expect he’s going to demand my resignation.” He grabbed his briefcase and began stuffing files inside it.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“I didn’t believe the police would ransack your parents’ house, but they did.”

He slammed in and out of the filing cabinet, making a racket while he pulled every file related to the mercury study. He glanced over at her. “And I want you to go home. You’re overly emotional and not yet ready to be around the patients.”

“I’m healthy as a horse.”

“Doctor’s orders, Kate,” he said before storming out of the office.

* * * *

Trevor walked to the surgeon general’s office. It would be faster to take a streetcar, but he felt no obligation to rush across
town like a disgraced schoolboy summoned to the principal’s office. Besides, Trevor needed time to think, and he couldn’t do that while being jostled about with a crush of people on the streetcar.

He could take anything so long as Kate didn’t leave him. For a glorious moment this morning, he thought she might welcome him into her life as a man who was desperately in love with her. In that fraction of a moment he was almost blinded by joy. These last few months had been the most exhilarating of his life, and it was due to Kate being by his side.

But if a platonic relationship was all he could have with Kate, he would accept it. He’d held his breath all morning, fearing that at any moment she would push away from her desk and say she could no longer cope with the sorrow that came with this job.

And now he had the surgeon general wanting to tear a piece of him as well. He’d battle this storm just like all the others. The memory of Jack and Amy Collison rose again in his mind. How foolishly optimistic he’d been when he believed he could heal those two children. Maybe all doctors grieved the most when their first patient died, but Jack and Amy had been more to him than that. The anguish of their deaths taught him to keep his guard up around all future patients, but their memory still burned brightly enough to keep fueling his quest. They would be forever young in his mind, and he could not shake the sensation that they would approve of his determination to keep fighting.

Trevor climbed the concrete steps leading up to the brick fortress, prepared for battle.

He got one. Sitting behind his grand desk in full military uniform, Barrow’s eyes were like flint.

“For the first time since I’ve taken office, I’ve had the muckrakers
penning scurrilous stories about me because of this tuberculosis debacle, and I’ve had to defend myself to the War Department. I hired you to find a cure for our sailors and soldiers. What’s this I hear about you consorting with pickpockets and prostitutes?”

That was surprising. Trevor had been distributing his serum to the underbelly of Washington ever since arriving to the city last year, but apparently someone was now watching him and carrying tales to the surgeon general.

“I distribute medicine to them. No one else in the city seems interested in their well-being.”

“Well, it looks bad. You’re a man of science, working in an outstanding medical facility, and you shouldn’t be out slumming with the dregs of society. And all this on top of the mercury debacle. I won’t permit my reputation to continue taking a beating. I’m assigning a new doctor to lead the study, one with a spotless reputation. In three weeks, Dr. Michael Wells will be taking over the study.”

Trevor reeled back in his chair. “Michael Wells? He has a spotless reputation because he’s an infant!”

“He’s twenty-two years old, the same age you were when you began practicing medicine. He will complete his medical internship in three weeks, and after that he’s taking over your study. I want you out of the office before he arrives.”