Loving You Always (5 page)

W
hat are you looking for?” Mama Jess crinkled her brow, studying Meredith’s face.

“Hmmm?” Meredith glanced at the entrance to the waiting room again and again. She swung her eyes back around to Mama Jess. “What’d you ask me?”

“I said what—”

Meredith’s phone rang and she snatched it from her back pocket.

“’Scuse me, Mama Jess.” She glanced down at the screen, leaping to her feet and speeding around the corner.

“Hello,” Meredith said, her voice tentative, waiting for the unidentified caller to speak.

“Meredith,” Walsh said from the other end, sounding about as weary and worried as she did. “How is she?”

“Where are you?” She answered his question with one of her own, glancing over her shoulder and being careful not to say his name.

“I just landed at Raleigh-Durham. I’m on my way there now.”

“No, you can’t.” Meredith slipped into the stall she’d used before to call Trish. “I wanted you to know, but I didn’t intend for you to come here.”

“And did you honestly think there was anyone who could keep me from coming?” Walsh asked, his voice weary and implacable. “I’m not concerned about what you or Cam or anyone else thinks right now. I’m coming. Try to stop me.”

She closed her eyes, hearing the steel in his voice. Oh, God, what had she done? She didn’t know exactly what had gone wrong between the two men, but she knew Kerris was at the center of it. Cam was a sloppy mess in the waiting room, drowning in guilt and frustration. He wasn’t stable. If Walsh showed up now, there was no telling what would happen. It was a volatile powder keg, and she had just lit a fuse.

“Walsh, let’s compromise.”

“I’m making no promises. And I
will
see her.”

“No one can see her right now. She’s still in surgery.”

“And the baby?”

Meredith clutched the handicap stall grab bar for support before sinking to sit on the closed toilet seat. The silence ripened while she looked for words.

“Meredith?” Walsh’s voice was more quiet, less certain.

“The baby didn’t make it.”

“Oh, God. Does she know yet?”

“No, she hasn’t been conscious since they brought her in. They did the C-section, but the baby was already…was already gone. Then they took Kerris into surgery for the internal injuries she’s sustained.”

“Fuck!” She heard Walsh bang something with force. And then bang it again. “I’m coming to that hospital. I don’t care how it looks. Not you, not Cam, nobody will stop me.”

“It won’t do any good for you to be here right now.” Meredith smothered the words in persuasion. “She’s in surgery, and if you come, you and Cam will just glare and circle each other like wild dogs.”

“How is he?” Concern softened Walsh’s voice.

“He’s suffering.”

“I can only imagine. No, I can’t imagine. He has to be grieving for the baby, and still waiting for Kerris to come out of surgery.”

“And the guilt,” Meredith added before she could stop herself, biting her lip. She practically heard the cogs in that sharp mind on the other end turning.

“What does he have to feel guilty about?” Something quiet and deadly slid into Walsh’s voice.

“Um…”

“Don’t even think about lying to me. What are you not telling me?”

“Walsh—”

“I’ll find out, so just tell me now.”

“Well, they had a fight.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And apparently Cam…”

“Cam what?”

“Cam had been drinking and stormed off. Kerris was scared he’d hurt himself, so she went after him, and it was raining. There was something in the road. She veered and hydroplaned.”

The details tumbled out in a rush, the waiting stillness on the other end making Meredith wish she could take back every word before they reached his ears.

“And you expect me to back off for him?” His words were so soft and ominous, a shiver of fear ran along her arms. “If she dies, Meredith, I’ll twist that pretty face of his beyond recognition.”

“Walsh, listen.”

“No compromise. I’m on my way.”

“Okay, okay.” Meredith’s shoulders dropped another inch. “But call me when you get here. Wait in the parking lot. I’ll come out to let you know what’s up, and we can go from there.”

She held her breath, waiting for his response.

“Okay, Walsh? Can you at least do that for me?”

She heard a car door slam.

“I’m on my way.”

She’d have to take that as a yes.

Walsh sat in the parking lot, considering the hospital entrance, so quiet at this time of morning, the sun just starting to overtake the night sky. The last time he’d been here, it had been to take his mother home to die. And before that, there had been Iyani. Kerris had been by his side through that ordeal.

He smiled, remembering how they had distracted each other that day with silly jokes and teasing as they’d waited during Iyani’s surgery. They’d laughed over his mother’s soul food. His mind had greedily hoarded every moment he’d ever spent with her, and it was like bread and water to him now—sustaining. What if he never saw her alive again? He slammed his fist into the steering wheel, wishing it were Cam’s head.

Thoughtless. Selfish. Foolish. Irresponsible.

He had known Cam could be all those things, and he’d bowed out anyway, let him walk off with a treasure he had known was meant to be his. He really didn’t know if he was angriest at Cam or at himself. He pulled out his phone.

“Meredith, I’m here.” He kept his voice low and free of the wretched emotion boring a hole in his gut.

“I’m coming out,” she whispered back. “Where are you?”

“There’s a G on the pole in front of me. Does that help?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you in a sec.”

A few minutes later, Walsh unlocked the car door, and Meredith slid into the passenger seat.

“Hi, Walsh.” She looked at him like he was a booby trap, poised to go off with one misstep. She wasn’t wrong.

“How is she?”

“Still in surgery.”

“What are we dealing with?”

“Well, of course her car was ancient. No side air bags, so she really bore the brunt of it when she slammed into that tree. A huge limb came through the window. Four ribs on her left side are broken. Her left lung was punctured and has collapsed. Her left arm and leg are broken.”

Meredith fixed a flat gaze on the windshield ahead of her.

“She hit her head against the side of the window, but we don’t know the impact of that yet. It seems that there wasn’t much damage to her face. Just some surface scratches and cuts from the shattered glass and branches.”

Meredith had cataloged Kerris’s injuries dispassionately, almost matter-of-factly. She didn’t fool him, though. Walsh saw the tremble in her fingers and noted the sharp marks where she had bitten her lip too hard. The same terror that gripped him gripped her.

“How’re you holding up?” Walsh reached over to squeeze her hand.

“I…I’m,” she started and stopped with a flurry of blinks to stem her tears. “I’m fine.”

“You’re a wreck.”

Her face crumpled, tears rolling down her cheeks unchecked.

“I’m a wreck. I’m so scared, Walsh.”

“Me, too.”

The words were a breath, all the sound he could spare with fear holding him in a headlock. He gathered her close, offering the comfort he needed for himself. He allowed her to cry a few minutes, releasing some of the strain and trepidation that had been locked inside her for the last few hours. He finally pulled back, peering into her tear-splotched face.

“Better?”

“Not really.” She choked on a half-laugh, half-cry.

“I didn’t think so.” Walsh drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Tell me how this needs to go.”

“If Cam sees you, it won’t be good.”

“Yeah, well if I see him it won’t be good.” A growly rumble, Walsh’s voice held the threat of a violent storm. “She was chasing him after a fight? And he was drunk? He’s supposed to take care of her.”

“Accidents happen.” Meredith shifted in the passenger seat, her fingers plucking at the seat belt. He could see all over her face that she didn’t buy that line of crap. “He couldn’t have known she would follow him out like that.”

“This is Kerris we’re talking about.” He squeezed the steering wheel. “Did he honestly think she would let him drive drunk?”

“I don’t think he was thinking.”

“That isn’t good enough. Dammit, if she dies…”

The silence following his outburst was almost too painful to sit through. He hoped the fire in his eyes cloaked the bleak desolation enveloping him.

“You love her,” Meredith whispered.

He looked straight ahead through the windshield, not acknowledging her.

“You knew the night before their wedding.”

“Don’t, Walsh.”

“Don’t what? Remind you that if you had stopped it she might not be fighting for her life right now?”

“And you?” Meredith fired back. “You could’ve stopped it at any time. You knew she lo—”

Walsh swiveled a glance at Meredith when she cut herself off.

“Actually I didn’t know how she felt until later, but I couldn’t deny there was something special between us. She did enough denying for the both of us, though, and I let her get away with it. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”

Walsh ignored the burn of tears in his nostrils, gulping back a useless moan. He laid his forehead against the steering wheel, rolling his head back and forth.

“Walsh, you can’t go in there.”

He raised his head, loading the glare he leveled at Meredith with every bit of frustration and anger he felt before pulling the trigger.

“The hell I can’t.”

“Right now, no one can see her.” Meredith laid a staying hand on his arm. “And until anyone can see her, I just think you being in the waiting room will only agitate Cam.”

Cam deserved every drop of guilt he was probably choking on right now. Walsh wasn’t worried about him.

“Look, my family practically built this hospital,” Walsh said. “I’ll find somewhere to hang out. Just call me as soon as she’s out of surgery.”

Walsh pulled out his cell phone, watching Meredith slip back through the hospital entrance. Good, he still had Dr. Ravenscroft’s number. Not even considering the lateness—or earliness—of the hour, he dialed it.

“Dr. Ravenscroft here.” His mother’s old physician sounded as alert as he always did.

“Dr. Ravenscroft, it’s Walsh Bennett. Sorry to call so early, but I need a huge favor.”

Half an hour later, Walsh walked into what would soon be the Kristeene Walsh Bennett Cancer Wing, carefully picking his way around a few piles of unfinished lumber. It was still under construction, but Dr. Ravenscroft had assured Walsh that at least one office, his own, was close enough to completion for him to crash there for a while. He followed the doctor’s instructions, taking the needed turns that brought him to an office that was, even though not quite finished, obviously going to be luxuriously appointed. Well, a hospital’s version of luxuriously appointed. Dr. Ravenscroft would have some real office envy if he ever got a load of Martin Bennett’s Persian rug.

It occurred to him that he had fled New York in the midst of crucial negotiations with Sheikh Kassim.

“I’ll have to call Dad,” he said to the empty room.

Someone else could step in for a few…days? Weeks? He wasn’t sure how long Kerris would be unconscious, but he wasn’t leaving until she wasn’t. He’d call Trisha, too. He quirked his lips in a wry smile, remembering Trisha pounding on his door in the middle of the night. He had barely ever spoken about Kerris at all, much less let on how completely his best friend’s wife owned him. How had Trisha known?

He flopped down on the leather couch, one of the few pieces of furniture already in the room, and leaned back, feeling the flight and the sleepless night catching up to his body. Sleep wasn’t even a possibility, but at least he could close his eyes and rest. Only there was no rest. He had never felt so unsettled. Paradoxically, he felt compelled to move at the same time he longed for an anchor to hold him still and secure. He stood to his feet and headed toward the chapel. It was worth a try.

He sank into the front pew in the empty chapel and shook his head, silently deriding himself. Who was he fooling? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a church. He did believe in God, but that was about it. He didn’t know that it would do him any good right now. He struggled to recall a prayer, a catechism, a hymn—any tradition that was supposed to make him feel a connection of some kind.

He had nothing.

His mind, his heart, his soul, his spirit were all consumed with fear and a wretched helplessness he couldn’t stand. This wasn’t something he could conquer or subdue or manipulate or charm. Kerris’s life was out of his hands, hanging in the balance, and there was nothing he could do about it. He leaned forward, turning his head so his temple rested against the pew.

It was too much.

He drew several shallow breaths, rehearsing all the hurts he’d endured, situations that had been out of his control and had all ended tragically, leaving him stumbling and grappling. His parents’ divorce. Iyani’s lost battle. His mother’s death, which had left him empty of everything that had held him together.

And Kerris. Losing her hadn’t been a physical death, but it was a gradual, ongoing demise of hope. Hope that someone would see him and know him—dark and light, good and bad, and still love him deeply. Nothing would ever convince him that Kerris was not that one. He’d held the cards in his hand and had misplayed them.

All these hurts had been like small tears, tiny rips in the fabric of his soul that had stretched into a gaping hole. Left unattended and unrepaired, they now threatened to swallow him entirely. If Kerris died, he couldn’t help but think it would leave him slashed open, permanently, irreparably torn. Like his father when his mother died. Assured and confident and certain on the outside, but beneath—adrift, lost, his certainty the hardened crust around a center turned to mush from irretrievable loss.

And then the words Walsh had heard his father say over and over at his mother’s deathbed rested on his lips. Silent at first and then approaching a whisper and then swelling to a moan that filled the cavernous chapel, the syllables melting from the heat of his pain until only he recognized the words. Aloud, it was the incoherent lament he’d heard from his father.