With Every Breath (26 page)

After a sleepless night, he spent the morning at his lawyer’s office, gearing up for a legal battle against the surgeon general. It promised to be an ugly fight. The surgeon general secured the hospital space using money awarded to the navy from the Pasteur
Institute. That grant had been awarded in Trevor’s name, not the surgeon general’s. If the government yanked Trevor’s privileges from the hospital, Trevor would retaliate by demanding a return of the Pasteur money. It was sure to be a difficult and frustrating legal quagmire.

It was going to be a long day. Hopefully he could get his hands on the patients’ charts and scan them without having to see Kate. Being around her was a sweet kind of torture he didn’t have the strength to face today. She’d picked a fight with him each time he’d seen her in the past few days. He knew exactly what was happening, for he did the same thing when upset. It was easier to lash out and attack rather than surrender to the heartache. His entire thirteenth year he’d been sullen and angry at the world.

Unfortunately, she was waiting for him the moment he stepped onto the fifth floor.

“Trevor!” she said brightly, tugging off her mask and striding toward him with a smile that was almost blinding. She’d been playing checkers with a few of the patients in the sitting area but sprang to her feet the moment he walked through the door. How pretty she looked, wearing one of those puffy-sleeved blouses tucked into a slim black skirt. Yet it was her face that captivated him. Her cheeks glowed with health, and her eyes looked as excited as a child on Christmas morning.

He was immediately suspicious. Kate had nothing to be that cheerful about, and she was too clever by half. He glanced up and down the hallway to see if there was anyone she was performing for. Aside from the patients playing checkers and the ever-present Nurse Ackerman, they were alone.

“What can I do for you, Kate?” he asked, trying to inject a little energy into his voice. Actually it wasn’t that hard. Sometimes just being near her made his world lighter.

She drew to a halt a few feet from him, her hands clasped
before her. “I have an idea,” she whispered. “Can I show you something?”

Whatever had put that sparkle in her eyes was something he wanted to see. Kate always had that quality about her, going back to when they were in school together. She could find the silver lining in any cloudy day. He was irresistibly curious as he trailed after her to the sitting area, where she picked up a medical journal, opened it to a marked page, and held it before him.

He was stunned when he saw the subject of the article. Had she dared show this to anyone else at the clinic? He didn’t even want to discuss it within earshot of his employees or the patients. Flipping the journal closed, he rolled it into a tube and used it to point to the door.

“Outside,” he ordered. Anger lent him strength as he barged out the door and down the stairs.

“Did you know about that?” Kate asked in a breathless voice while she followed him downstairs. “Your odds for contracting tuberculosis shoot way up from working so closely with infected people, and I can’t imagine why you’re continuing to do it.”

Her voice echoed in the stairwell. Just what doctors and nurses wanted to dwell on—the elevated risk of contracting the fatal disease killing their patients.

“Please remain silent until we get to the conference room,” he said in his detached voice. He kept his mouth clamped shut while proceeding down the crowded hallway, Kate still trailing after him.

“I know you’re an intelligent man. So I don’t understand why you, of all people, would put yourself at such risk.”

Kate didn’t seem capable of holding her tongue, and the conference room was at the other end of the building. In frustration, he grabbed her arm and hauled her inside the linen storage closet. The scent of bleach rose from the stacks of neatly
folded sheets on the shelves. He fumbled for the chain attached to a single light bulb overhead, tugging on it, then slammed the door shut. Crammed with shelving, the storage closet was cramped for two people, but he didn’t want Kate yammering in the hallway. Everyone in the hospital was already aware of the elevated risk regarding contagious disease, and her waving that article around was pointless and unkind.

Standing only inches from her, he said, “I once injected myself with live tuberculosis cells, and you don’t think I’m willing to risk my life to find a cure for this disease?”

“Now that you know you aren’t immune, why are you still here?” She didn’t even wait for an answer as hope began blooming on her face again. “Trevor, I care for you. I’ve tried to fight it because, well, you’re the horrible Trevor McDonough and I’ve perfected the art of resenting you over the years.”

He battled a reluctant smile, for the affection blazing in her eyes robbed her words of any sting. His heart turned over as she took his hands, clasping them in the little bit of space between where they stood. Her voice was so tender and fragile he could barely hear it.

“I think we might have a future together,” she whispered. “I know the world is not a safe place, and I can accept that. It nearly killed me when Nathan died, but I’m willing to take a risk on you.”

Hope flared to life. If Kate were willing to join her life with his, it would be as if a gust of wind had filled his sails, lifting him higher and farther than he ever thought possible. She was the spark that had always been missing in his life.

He couldn’t stop himself. He wrapped his arms around the small of her back and hoisted her in the air. She clung to his shoulders as her feet left the floor, and the beginnings of an impossible dream began taking shape inside him.

“Do you mean that?” he asked, holding his breath. He held her so high that he had to look up at her.

The way she smiled down at him was glorious. “I do. I love you. I want to share my life with you.” She lowered her face to kiss him. He couldn’t believe it. Kate was in his arms and raining kisses on him. She was smiling so wide she could barely land a kiss on his mouth. He dragged her tightly into his arms, holding her close and kissing her back with all the love rushing through his veins.

When he set her down, his arm bumped against the shelf and the medical journal came tumbling down, landing on the concrete floor with a splat. He glanced at the journal, then back at Kate.

“Why did you show me that article?” A dark thread of suspicion took root. Kate looked hesitant but kept smiling as she smoothed the lapels of his jacket and moved to straighten his tie. He liked the feel of her hands on him, but he reached out to still them. She was up to something.

“When I first learned about your battle with tuberculosis,” she said, “I assumed it meant you were destined to get it again, and then you would die and I’d be alone. The article confirms that you’re at a much higher risk every day you continue to treat patients with tuberculosis. But, Trevor, if you switch fields, you’re at no elevated risk! The article says doctors who don’t treat infectious patients are much safer. You could go into surgery. Or fix broken bones. Or teach—”

He rocked back, bumping against the shelving behind him. “But I’m called to treat tuberculosis, to find a cure for it.”

“Trevor, think! There are other things you could do in medicine where you would be safer.”

She was so naïve. There was no place he could run where he would be isolated from people who carried the disease. He
would never know precisely how he contracted tuberculosis the first time, but it wasn’t in a hospital. The odds were he’d gotten it from his mother. He remembered the sound of her cough, and in her final months her handkerchief was always dotted with blood. He would be lulling Kate into a false sense of security if she believed quitting this work would make him safe.

“Kate, I could get tuberculosis from sitting next to an infected person on the streetcar. From sitting next to someone at your mother’s dining table. You need to understand that.”

“But why increase your risk? Once you set foot into the ward, you risk your life with every breath you take. That’s a choice, Trevor.”

“Yes, and it’s my choice.” How could he explain it to her? He had a unique perspective on the horrors of this disease. Already he could feel Kate slipping away from him, unless he could make her understand. He tilted her chin up to him.

“I feel called to treat this disease, Kate. Do you understand what I’m saying? I believe there’s a reason I’ve been able to survive it twice. I think God wants me right here in this hospital, doing everything I can to try to figure this thing out. I’m one of a few doctors alive who has experienced everything my patients endure and is still willing to share the same space with them. I know the pain of feeling my lungs stiffen with scar tissue, to feel like I’m drowning inside my own body. I know how it saps the energy from my limbs and spirit. And I feel called to do something about it. God wants me in this battle, and I won’t run away. Please don’t ask that of me.”

“I
am
asking it.” Kate pulled back from him, until she collided with the shelving behind her. “I understand there are no guarantees in life. Either one of us could fall down the stairs and die today. But you don’t need to take pointless risks. The
only way we can make a life together is if you quit studying patients with tuberculosis.”

Her voice was pure steel. It was the old Kate, the Kate who battled for what she wanted and almost always got it. She wanted him to quit. The surgeon general wanted him to quit so that a man scarcely older than Tick could take over. It was hard to keep standing upright as the pain ripped through him, closing up his throat and making his voice tight with frustration.

“Two minutes ago I was happier than I’d ever been when you said you’d share your life with me.” She winced, but he would not stop. “You give with one hand, and then take away with the other.”

“You don’t need to yell, Trevor.”

The linen closet was small, and he could probably be heard outside, but he didn’t care. Frustration was breaking his control, and years of anguish came roaring out.

“Do you know how long I’ve wanted you? You’re like sunlight and water and air to me. All you need do is walk across my line of sight and my whole world lights up.”

“You love your crusade more than you love me,” Kate said, her lips trembling. “You’ll kill yourself! You’ll die because you’re too arrogant to think another doctor could work with those patients as well as you.” She stepped forward, bumping against him and grabbing the lapels of his coat. “Please . . . we could be so good together.”

He pulled away. “Don’t touch me, Kate. Don’t come near me. I love you, but you don’t know the meaning of the word. You only love when it’s easy, when there are no storm clouds on the horizon.”

“Trevor, I’m afraid.”

“Of course you’re afraid!” he shouted. “Do you imagine for
one second that I’m not? But I won’t give in to it. I would lay down my life for you. I would lay down my life for any one of the thirty-two people lying in those beds upstairs, and I won’t turn my back on them. If I run away from what I’ve been fighting for all my life,
then
I begin dying.
Then
my purpose will be over.”

She flinched and began straightening her shirt. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Don’t go.”

She twisted away to fumble with the doorknob. He tried to turn her to face him.

“Kate, don’t go, please. Stay and fight this out.”

She shook him off and fled from the closet as though it were on fire. He braced his hands on the doorframe, watching her dart around the people in the hallway. He wanted to run after her, drag her back into the closet, and plead with her to stay. He gripped the edges of the doorframe so hard it cut into his hands. His tie was askew, and he could tell by the way people looked at him that he was a disheveled mess.

What had come over him? He wasn’t the kind of man to yell and storm and rage. All his life he’d kept such emotions clamped tightly inside, but Kate had unlocked that lid and they came thundering out.

He wanted her back. He wanted to look at her every day in their office and as they made their rounds in the hospital. He wanted to come home to her at night and watch her unwind that coil of her hair by the light of the fire.

Yet he knew from the moment he crested the top of a mountain with two dying children by his side what he was destined to do with his life. He would give anything if he could have Kate alongside him, but he was prepared to finish the journey alone before he would abandon his quest.

* * * *

Kate couldn’t return to work with tears streaming down her face and her heart splitting into pieces. Instead she ran to the churchyard two miles away, where Nathan was buried. By the time she arrived there, she’d composed herself and wasn’t sniveling like a baby anymore.

She’d never seen Trevor so angry or even imagined he had it in him. Nathan never yelled at her. They’d been so young and never had any real problems in their life together.

“You only love when
it’s easy,”
Trevor had accused.

Was he right? She and Nathan never had any problems other than the frustration of saving enough money to find a place of their own to live. When they found nothing they could afford, they laughed and made do in Kate’s tiny bedroom in the boardinghouse. If Nathan had lived longer, surely they would have been tested by life’s challenges, but yes, her life with Nathan had been easy. Was she brave enough to love when it was hard?

The iron latch on the cemetery gate was cold as she lifted it and stepped into the walled yard. Right now Nathan was the only person she could talk to. She couldn’t even bawl on her mother’s shoulder, because Trevor asked her not to tell anyone of his condition. People weren’t meant to carry terrible secrets alone. Maybe Trevor had mastered that skill, but she hadn’t. Her boots wobbled on the path rutted by the roots of silver maples, until she stood before Nathan’s final resting spot.

“Look at you,” she murmured, leaning down to brush away the dried leaves that mounded up at the base of his headstone. She yanked a few clumps of weeds and tossed them aside. “I’m sorry I haven’t been better about visiting. I have a new job and it has been . . . well, it’s much better than my job at the census bureau.” The lump in her throat made it hard to keep talking.
She brushed the grit from her hands and tried again. “You remember Trevor McDonough, don’t you? It turns out he’s really something extraordinary. Who would have guessed it?”