With Every Breath (30 page)

He rarely confided his personal life with anyone, but Kate was . . . well, Kate was like the other half of his soul. Talking with her felt as natural as a sunrise turning into the bright light of day.

Not that he had much longer with her. He never knew until now how the sweetness of love could be mingled with the ache of despair. It was a blend of joy and longing so intense that he wanted to suspend this moment in time and make it last forever. Tomorrow might be riddled with fear and heartache, but right
now in this perfect, fleeting God-given moment, he knew joy and was grateful for it.

* * * *

Kate walked back with Trevor to Mrs. Kendall’s town house, savoring the feel of his hand clasped with hers. She could have gone directly to the streetcar stop, but she wanted a few more minutes with him.

Memories of the scholarship contest and the gangly, graceless Trevor were etched so clearly in her mind, it was as if it had happened yesterday. At the time she thought Trevor had everything because he was driven to school in a fancy carriage and had nice clothes, but it was
she
who had everything. She had parents who loved her. She had a classroom full of friends. She had a pair of healthy lungs she always took for granted. Trevor had none of those things. Instead, he had a towering sense of ambition and a need to escape the shame of the bargain he’d made with his father. She couldn’t hold on to her resentment any longer. She admired him too much to wallow in trivial old grievances.

Trevor unlocked the door to Mrs. Kendall’s house, motioning for Kate to be quiet lest the old woman was still asleep. The moment the door opened, he paused, cocking his ear to listen.

Nellie Kendall rose, struggling against tears. “Thank God you’ve come! I think she’s gone, Trevor.”

The color disappeared from Trevor’s face as he raced to Mrs. Kendall’s side. He stroked a strand of white hair away from the woman’s forehead, still damp with sweat. He grabbed the stethoscope from the table, his fingers clumsy as he fit the rubber tubes into his ears. He pressed the disk to her chest and froze, his eyes closed as he listened.

Then he removed the stethoscope, sat down on the bed, and grasped Mrs. Kendall’s hand. “Dear God, please speed her
journey,” he said softly. “She was a good woman, the very finest. She was like my mother, my father, and my North Star.” His voice became hollow, as if it were too painful to continue speaking.

Kate’s vision blurred, and her throat hurt. She stood behind Trevor, her hands resting on his shoulders. “It’s okay, Trevor. It was her time.”

He nodded but didn’t look up. Then the strangest sound, like that of a strangled animal, came from deep inside his chest, and Kate realized he was trying not to cry. “I hate this!” he finally said. “I hate failing. I would have given anything to cure her.”

She sat on the bed behind him and clung to his back, feeling the uneven breaths he struggled to contain, but he lost the battle. She held him while he wept, wishing she could carry some of his burden.

Later that night, Trevor walked her home. He needed to talk and had been babbling nonstop ever since leaving the town house. Even in the weak moonlight, she could still see the tracks of tears on his face.

“I know the patients think I’m cold,” he said. “I can’t let myself get close to them. It hurts too much. The logical portion of my brain knows I can’t be responsible for people who die from tuberculosis, but something inside me rages each time I lose a patient, spurring me forward to keep working harder, to try something else. Sometimes I want to run away and never think of this horrible disease again.”

She sucked in a breath, and he must have heard it because he shot her a glare.

“Don’t start,” he warned. “This is what I meant that first day when I interviewed you. Anyone who works with this disease will get beaten down over and over. Hammered and smashed and broken, but tomorrow morning I will get back up and carry
on. I know that isn’t what you want to hear, but I won’t give up. Even if it kills me—and I accept that it may—I won’t quit.”

Whatever weakness Trevor showed at Mrs. Kendall’s bedside was fading. As he spoke, she could sense the energy and confidence trickling back into his spirit, even as it drained from her. She could never live this life. She couldn’t turn her emotions on and off the way Trevor did. She could not quietly stand by his side as he battled with a disease until it killed him.

They arrived at the front porch of the boardinghouse.

“Thank you for walking me home,” she said.

He touched the side of her face. “Thank you for everything.”

His smile was sad as she turned her face into his palm, pressing a kiss to his warm skin. He turned away and started walking back to the streetcar stop. She watched until he disappeared.

Tonight confirmed her need to disentangle herself from Trevor as quickly as possible. She loved him too much to stay.

* * * *

Tick was waiting for her in the parlor. The house was quiet, and only a single gas lamp illuminated the front room.

“I was worried about you,” he said. “Did you tell Trevor about his father?”

“Yes.” She peeled off her cloak and set it on the sofa.

“And?”

She knew Tick was anxious to learn more about the mysterious Neill McDonough, but her spirit was too battered and weary to recount the discussion.

“Mrs. Kendall died tonight.” She was barely able to get the sentence out before the muscles of her face crumpled, and tears pooled in the bottoms of her eyes.

Tick pulled her into a hug. “I’m sorry.”

At his words, the floodgates released. She sobbed into his
shoulder. If he wasn’t holding her so tightly she would have collapsed to the floor.

“It’ll be okay, Kate. You’re tough. The toughest person I know.”

No, she was a weakling. She wanted to run after Trevor and beg him to let her stay at the hospital. She wanted to hold him and comfort him through this terrible night. At the same time she wanted to shake him for being so stubborn! She cried harder.

“If you don’t knock it off, I’m going to start bawling too.” Tick’s voice was strangled, as though he was already there, and she gave a gulping laugh against his shoulder. He squeezed tighter.

This had been the longest day of her life. She thanked God for Tick’s strong shoulder to weep on, but her heart ached for Trevor. As long as he was walking the earth, a piece of her would always long for Trevor.

21

T
he morning after Mrs. Kendall’s passing, Trevor strode to the hospital with renewed determination to smoke out the lowlife rat who was trying to ruin him. His private investigator in Baltimore had finally tracked down the last of the people associated with the Baltimore study, and he needed to follow those leads immediately. He wanted to get to the clinic, address whatever urgent needs arose while he was tending Mrs. Kendall, and then be on his way to Baltimore. The first thing he saw upon returning to the ward was that Frederick Lambrecht had the gall to change the locks on the fifth-floor clinic without his permission.

It took Trevor less than three minutes to grab a wrench and pull the offending doorknob from the unit. The superintendent was counting the hours until Trevor’s eviction, but as long as Trevor was in charge of the fifth floor, he’d tolerate no changes. He barged into the superintendent’s office without knocking, tossing the entire doorknob and lock mechanism onto Mr. Lambrecht’s fancy walnut desk, where they landed with a clatter.

“That’s what I think of your new lock,” Trevor snapped.

Mr. Lambrecht rose. “You’ve got the blasted marines standing guard. Do you really need your own lock and key?”

“Until I know who’s been sniffing around my clinic, yes, I do. And I’ll rip out anything else you try to install without talking to me first.”

“You’ve got only ten more days. After that, I’ll finally see the last of you.”

“I can see you’re devastated at the prospect,” Trevor said dryly.

He left without a backward glance and bumped into a man about to enter the superintendent’s office. Michael Wells. The puppy hired to take over his tuberculosis study. The young man took a step back, brushing a swath of curly brown hair back from his forehead.

“Mr. Wells,” Trevor said. “Or is it
Dr.
Wells?”

Michael took another step back and swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his thin neck. “Dr. Kendall,” he said weakly. “I . . . uh, I was just going in to meet with Mr. Lambrecht about some . . . some business.”

“Well, is it Dr. Wells now?” Trevor pressed.

“Not quite. I’ve yet to pass the licensing exam. I’m taking it next week.”

“Right before you start your new job,” Trevor said. “That’s convenient.” A kinder person would have put the young man at ease, but Trevor wasn’t feeling particularly kind at the moment. Michael Wells was the man handpicked by the surgeon general to take over Trevor’s study. If the study was to be turned over to anyone, Trevor wanted it to be his former assistant from Baltimore, but Andrew Doyle was still attending medical school at Harvard. Andrew had more experience with tuberculosis than the youth standing before him.

“I feel lousy about what’s happening,” Michael said. “You know I’ve always admired your work, but Barrow seems determined to find new blood for the study.”

“Yes,
very
new,” Trevor said. He turned and left the soon-to-be doctor standing in front of the superintendent’s office.

The moment he returned to the clinic, Trevor pulled Tick aside. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning to follow a lead in Baltimore, and I’ll need you to keep an eye on Michael Wells while I’m gone,” Trevor said. “He’s a young man, curly brown hair, here to take over my job. And I don’t trust him.”

“Do you think he could be our man?” Tick asked.

Could a twenty-two-year-old medical student engineer this reign of terror? It seemed outrageous, but Trevor’s downfall would vault Michael Wells into one of the few positions in the country performing a controlled tuberculosis study.

“I’ve not sensed that level of cunning in him,” Trevor said. “He’s entering the field because he wants to find a cure. He seems to care. It’s hard to believe he’d launch an attack like this, but then again, I didn’t think he’d get in line for my job either.”

“Professional jealousy?” Tick asked.

“Maybe. And keep an eye on Henry Harris.” He didn’t want to imagine that his jovial lab assistant could have anything to do with this, but Henry was a logical suspect. Henry had worked with him in Baltimore and was the only person who had complete insight into both the Baltimore study and the current activities in the lab. For the life of him, Trevor couldn’t see a motive for Henry to destroy him and felt guilty even asking Tick to spy on the man.

The only thing Trevor knew for sure was that there were few things more demoralizing than sorting through his short list of friends to determine who hated him enough to engineer his downfall.

* * * *

Kate spread out a newspaper on the staff table, scanning the job advertisements that interested her. She needed to find
a job, and fast. Her mother had recently pawned a bracelet to pay the bank note this month, and the new hot water heater was acting up again.

“I need to go to Baltimore.”

She startled and sat upright. Trevor had been standing behind her, his face somber and aloof. He nodded toward the nurses’ station. “I’ll be gone for several days, and I need to go over some details before I leave.”

She followed him to the front counter, where he laid out a stack of papers. “The architect will be here tomorrow with two proposals for an elevator to the roof. I need you to meet with him. Don’t let him scrimp on the size of the elevator.”

“Naturally.”

“I also want the statistics on the blood work for the past month. I want it graphed against the preceding four months.”

“Certainly.”

He continued rapping out orders, demanding someone make a trip to the surgeon general’s library and pull the latest research on iron metabolism in blood.

“Of course.”

“I want it here by the time I return, with a summary of each article.”

“All right.”

There was a pause, and she looked over at him, surprised that he stopped barking out orders long enough to draw a breath.

“Don’t go,” he whispered. “Please don’t go, Kate.”

The plea was so soft she barely heard it, but it sliced her to shreds. If Nurse Ackerman hadn’t been standing a few feet away, Kate would have wept. Instead, she swallowed hard so that the tears wouldn’t leak into her voice.

“Hold it together, McDonough,” she said softly.

Never had she seen a man keep a volcanic flood of emotion
so tightly locked inside, yet any attempt to comfort him would merely prolong their agony. Trevor knew exactly what he needed to do to keep her with him.

And it broke her heart to know he never would.

The clinic door banged open, and Neill McDonough came walking into the clinic. “There you are, Trevor. No escape this time, my boy.”

Trevor’s father wore a greatcoat that flared out behind him in an impressive sweep of black wool and expensive cologne.

Trevor took a step back. “Good morning, Mr. McDonough,” he said. “I’m heading out of town on business, so I’m afraid I have limited time to meet with you.”

Before Trevor could retreat to his office, his father’s gold-tipped walking stick shot out to block Trevor’s escape. “Nonsense. I’ve come to invite you to my wedding. My boy, surely you will be interested in renewing the family connections. Oh, and I have a business proposition for you.” He paused and glanced at Kate. “The famous Kate,” he said in a silky tone. “You seem to be a constant presence in my son’s life.” His eyes narrowed as he observed the close proximity between her and Trevor. “Perhaps there’s to be another wedding in the family? Now, you’re the daughter of people who run a boardinghouse, correct?”

“Yes,” she said stiffly. “But you may rest assured there are no wedding bells in my future. Your son’s virtue is safe from me.”