And Call Me in the Morning (21 page)

Eli scoffed. “Don't patronize me. Anaphylaxis is serious fucking business, Holly. He could die.” Christ. Saying it out loud…

“He could,” Holly agreed, the living embodiment of that serenity prayer that infected the world. “I don't think he will. Do you know how people fight harder when they have something to come back for?”

She wouldn't take no answer for an answer. Eli nodded.

Holly cupped his cheek. “You see? Zane won't leave you.”

He covered her hand. No more denials. What did they matter? “Everyone does know, huh?”

“Not everyone. Some already made up their minds a long time ago. Some will still simply believe you're just close friends. Whatever truth is told is up to you, Eli.”

“Goddamnit, Holly.”

“Shh,” she soothed. “Keith, help me get him inside. It'll be all right. I promise.”

God help him. Eli wanted to believe her so much that he almost did. And if a woman like Holly said a thing would be so…

* * * * *

Then maybe it would be so.

Eli stood in the doorway to Zane's room and watched him from a distance. “Still,” he said to Keith, who'd shadowed him even when Holly left to check up on Taye and Richie. “So still. Look at him. You wouldn't know he's alive if it weren't for the machines.”

Keith nodded without a word. Still on a respirator—just to make sure, Diana had said, words he'd delivered himself to too many people to count—Zane was almost as pale as the sheets drawn up to his chest, his arms lying slack on the outside. An IV trailed from the back of his hand to a dripping bag of Eli didn't know what. Couldn't remember the name, too wiped out to think.

“I want to go in,” he said to Keith. It was like talking to Holly in a way. They fit together. So many people did, and he'd never seen it. “But my feet are stuck to the floor. Isn't that the damnedest thing? Now that he's okay, I should… Christ, Keith, what does that say about me?”

“I think just that you're human.” Keith kept one hand on Eli's shoulder to steady him. “He'll be okay. You too.”

“Almost wasn't.” Zane had flatlined. They'd have called it if Diana hadn't been a pushy bitch and ignored their scolding to get the job done. If it weren't for her…

He couldn't even finish a thought. Christ.

“Almost isn't, is,” Keith said, and Eli was tired enough to laugh at that. “Take your time. He'll be here.”

Eli snorted. His mouth tasted like stale cigarettes and sour coffee and an ineffective Tic-Tac. He stank, and he had a streak of tomato soup on his sleeve. No. Strawberry juice.

“Or maybe you should sit down.” Keith caught Eli before his knees gave out. As he guided Eli to the visitor's chair inside the room, he kept up a low, steady monologue. Eli only caught bits and pieces, but he did hear this clearly: “It's natural, Holly tells me. All that adrenaline. It's going to leave you shaky. Sit down and breathe.”

“Fuck.” Eli sank his head into his hands. “I feel like an idiot.”

Keith shrugged. “Doesn't seem that way from here.”

Eli craned his neck to look up at Keith and turned somehow in the middle of the move to look at Zane, and once he'd looked there, he couldn't look away. So quiet. So still. Respirator taped to the lips Eli had kissed—Christ, was it only a few hours ago? He thought it might be close to dawn outside.

“Never know what you've got until it's almost gone, do you?” he asked. Rhetorical question. Keith still nodded.

A thought, somehow sharp and clear, pierced its way through Eli's mind. “Keith,” he said, looking for the right words. “You do something with computers, right?”

Keith chuckled like a cave bear, a low rumble just as easily mistaken for a growl if he hadn't gently thumped Eli's shoulder. “Like you do something with medicine, yes.”

“Sorry.”

“Don't sweat it. You've had a rough night.”

“Not as rough as some.” Eli rubbed his cheek against the grain of his stubble.
Google search: Paris culinary arts.
There was someone else who needed to know. Not just this, but all that Zane had become. What kind of man he was. “Could you do a favor for me? There's someone I need to track down.”

* * * * *

The sun had risen fully, shining unforgiving even through the blinds by the time Diana came by. Eli would have thought he'd be asleep in his chair by then. He wasn't.

One look at her and Eli knew she didn't bring good news. His heart jumped into his throat.

“Stop. It's not about Zane.” Diana crouched beside him. She barely came up to his ribs that way. “He's doing great. They'll have him off the respirator in a couple of hours, probably.”

Eli had to clear his throat, a raw and nasty sound, before he could respond. “Whatever you've come to tell me isn't anything good either, is it?”

“Not so much.” Diana took his hand. “I figured you should hear this from someone you wouldn't want to punch in the nose. After all, you owe me.”

More than he could ever pay. Eli steeled himself. “Let me have it.” He expected to hear he'd been fired for causing a scene. Maybe reports that a mob was out for the queer doc's head. People laughing at their expense. Whatever.

He didn't even think about the possibility of what he got.

“The free clinic's closing at the end of the month. No money,” Diana said. “I'm sorry.”

The last bit of wind Eli had left in his sails whooshed out. “Fuck. It never rains but it fucking pours, doesn't it?”

“Such a fucking filthy mouth.” Diana pressed his hand between both of hers, more of a slap than a caress, but gentler than Eli had gotten from her at any moment he could remember. “Are you with me?”

Eli rarely saw this side of her, the competent doctor, and the tea and comfort were more Holly's forte, but Diana was trying as hard as she could and they both knew it. Everyone in their own fashion. Made the world go 'round.

Diana waited to be sure before she drew a deep breath and nodded decisively. “I'm telling you because you have to be the one to tell him when he wakes up. Don't let him hear this from anyone else.”

Eli's chest ached. “Diana…” He wanted to tell her. Everything. It wasn't enough of a thank you; still, it'd be something.

“Shut up.” She pinched the inside of his wrist. “Like I don't already know. We all saw it, Eli. Long before you two did. Why do you think we pushed so hard? Not for shits and giggles. Though there were plenty of those.”

Eli started to laugh. Once he'd begun, he couldn't stop, and Diana joined him. They slumped in place and hooted like a pair of hyenas until the charge nurse came to snap at them, because sometimes you got a choice in how you cracked, and this was a hell of a lot better than screaming.

In its way.

* * * * *

It'd been twenty-five, almost twenty-six hours since Eli had last slept. He was used to it, but be that as it may, adrenaline peaking and fading did take its toll. He'd almost drowsed off still in the visitor's chair when a stir of movement from the bed brought him as wide awake as an alarm shrilling in his ear.

Zane's gray eyes were open just a crack. He tried to turn his head to look at Eli. Be damned if that twitch of his lips wasn't him attempting a grin. “Is this where I say you should have seen the other guy?”

“Jesus Christ.” Eli didn't think. Wouldn't have wanted to. He was on his feet and leaning over the bed without remembering how he got from one to the other, the only thing he gave a damn about being touching his lips to Zane's. His were dry and cracked, but Eli tasted salt.

It took a second before the clumsy thump at his side registered as Zane trying to soothe him. “'S okay,” Zane rasped, his voice all but a frayed thread. “I'm okay.”

“Fuck you,” Eli said before he had to push his face into Zane's shoulder and stay there until his eyes stopped watering. It made it worse, or better, when Zane fumbled to touch him and hold on, murmuring scraps of sound that Eli knew were comfort.

Finally he could withdraw. Roughly wiping his face on his sleeve, he kissed Zane once more. The chair was within hooking reach of his leg; Eli caught it with his ankle and drew it to the bedside. “If you ever scare me like that again, I'll kill you myself.”

Zane laughed without sound.

“Keep snickering at me and I'll do it now.” Careful of the IV, Eli threaded his fingers through Zane's and held on. “I'm too old for scares like this. Don't do that to me again.”

Zane's voice had deserted him completely. Christ, what kind of doctor was Eli if he couldn't remember to caution Zane not to try to talk after he'd had a respirator all night, only taken out an hour ago? “Shh,” Eli warned. “Don't pay me any attention. Just being maudlin.”

You're entitled
, Zane mouthed.
It's okay. Promise
. Then, almost sending Eli's temper through the roof,
How's Richie?

“How's Richie? Fuck that; where's Richie? Better be across a state line by now or I'll—”

Zane shook his head as sharply as he could and shaped a firm
no
with his lips. He winced when the thin skin cracked.

Something Eli could help with, at last. Some nurse, not Bernice, had placed a cup of ice chips by the side of the bed. Eli fingered one out and ran it across Zane's mouth. “Lie still and rest up, would you? You're giving me more gray hairs, and those I don't need.”

The corners of Zane's eyes crinkled. He tongued the ice into his mouth and tucked it into his cheek.
The gray is sexy.

“How you can laugh about this? Swear to God.”

Zane squeezed his hand.
How are you?

“Too old for this.” No. Wrong. Eli sighed. “I don't know. Better than you?” Still not thinking—deliberately, because he didn't care anymore—Eli lifted that hand to his lips and kissed the back, below the IV needle. “All I know is I'm here and I'm not leaving.”