Of Flesh and Blood (51 page)

She shook her head and shuddered at the suggestion.

“At least something good came out of his experience.” Steve hurried to add, “I mean, in the way he dedicated the rest of his life to kids with cancer. All the good things—great things—he did at the Alfredson after the war.”

She kissed him again on the lips. “I have to believe—at least I desperately want to—that his work after the war was some consolation to him.”

Steve touched her cheek gently. “Rin, how are you coping with all this? Has it made the panic attacks worse?”

She stroked the back of his hand with hers. “I love how you worry over me. But I haven’t had a panic attack in almost three days.”

“Good.”

She locked eyes with him. “I’m so sorry, babe.”

“For?”

“Not telling you sooner . . .” She cleared her throat. “About what really happened in Nakuru.”

He swept her apology away with a backhanded gesture. “I told you, Rin, I understand. I really do. I probably would have done the same. Out of sight, out of mind . . . and all that.”

“It doesn’t work, though.”

“Probably not, but you’re on the right track now.” He pursed his lips quizzically. “How do you feel about going back to the OR?”

“Operating again?” She shook her head vehemently. “I don’t think I’m ready.”

“I’m cool with that.” He grinned. “I kind of like going to bed with you and knowing you’ll still be there in the morning.”

Erin leaned forward and planted a long inviting kiss on his lips. She stood up and took his hand in hers. “Speaking of bed . . .” She pulled him upright and began leading him toward the staircase.

He heaved an exaggerated sigh. “I hate it when you drag me to bed. Makes me feel so cheap and tawdry.”

She fluttered her eyelids. “Cheap and tawdry are underrated emotions.”

He laughed. “The things I do to sustain this marriage.”

The phone rang. Steve moved closer and wrapped an arm around her waist. “Let it go to voice mail,” he said.

“Tyler McGrath.” The audio caller identifier’s robotic voice droned from the nearby wall phone.

“Tyler?” She grimaced at her husband. “At this time of night?

“You better take it.”

She broke away from her husband and grabbed the cordless receiver off the wall-mounted cradle. “Tyler, what’s up?”

“Jill,” Tyler croaked. “She’s sick.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Severe gastroenteritis. She’s in shock from the dehydration. She might even be septic, too.”

“
What?
”

Tyler updated his sister on Jill’s condition. At the mention of
C. diff
, Erin instinctively thought of Kristen Hill. She swallowed hard. “Where is Jill now, Tyler?”

“Still in the ER.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Erin, you don’t have to come tonight. Why don’t—”

But she hung up the phone before Tyler even finished.

Though there was no love lost between Jill and Steve, Erin’s husband valued family over everything else. His face crinkled with concern. “What’s wrong with Jill?” he demanded.

“
C. diff
.”

He nodded. It was explanation enough for someone who had followed Kristen’s illness so closely. “I’m coming, too.”

“Who will stay with the boys?”

“Oh, crap. I guess it’s too late to call over and see if Hannah can watch them?”

“She’s only in eleventh grade. It’s a school night for her, too.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Drive safe. Call me from the hospital as soon as you know anything.”

Erin wrapped her arms around her husband and planted a kiss on his lips. “I will.”

She hurried out to her car. Despite the potholes, twists, and poorly marked intersections on the country highway, Erin could have driven it blindfolded after making countless middle-of-the-night trips into the Alfredson while on call. As she drove, her head swirled with jumbled thoughts and images: her grandfather, Josef Mengele, Kristen Hill, those brutal youths in Nakuru, and now her sister-in-law, flattened by the superbug. Erin wondered whether the cumulative angst might trigger another panic attack, but she pulled into the driveway in front of the Alfredson’s ER without experiencing any of the telltale symptoms.

She parked a few spots down from Tyler’s car. Though worried about
Jill, Erin could not deny her relief that she was not arriving to perform heart surgery. The prospect still unsettled her.

Inside, the ER was hopping. The beds were crowded with men and women who ran the gamut in terms of age and race. A number of staff greeted her with friendly but distracted smiles. A few glanced around, trying to help locate a phantom cardiac surgical patient, until Erin explained she had come to see a relative. Across the room, she spotted her father standing beside Tyler, who wore a yellow gown and had a mask dangling loosely below his chin. Erin dashed over to where they stood in front of a room whose entrance was covered by a closed curtain. She tried to hug Tyler but he warned her off, pointing to his gown. She turned to her father and wrapped him in her arms. He felt as rigid as usual, but when she squeezed him she could feel his rib cage through his jacket, and realized he was thinner than ever.

Breaking off the embrace, she pointed to the room. “How’s Jill doing?”

“She’s sleeping now,” William said.

“Stable?”

“Her blood pressure is better.” Tyler sighed. “But she’s still in rough shape.”

Erin nodded. “What are they treating her with?”

William glanced over to Tyler—who shook his head helplessly—and then back to Erin. “Jill is refusing treatment,” her father said.

“
Refusing?
What the hell? She can’t be thinking clearly, Tyler!” Erin said. “We can get around this with a psychiatrist’s opinion.”

“Erin, there’s a reason she doesn’t want the antibiotics,” Tyler said.

She threw her hands in the air. “What could that possibly be?”

“She’s six weeks pregnant.”

“She is?” Erin gaped.

Tyler showed her a grim smile. “We just saw the heartbeat.”

“Even more reason for her to get proper treatment,” Erin said.

William folded his hands together. “The antibiotics they are using to treat this
C. difficile
infection are potentially harmful to the fetus.”

Digesting the news, Erin considered Jill and Tyler’s long fertility struggles. She appreciated her sister-in-law’s dilemma; this pregnancy had to be especially precious to her. “I really need to talk to Jill,” she said.

“Okay,” Tyler said. “I’ll take you in now.”

“No, Tyler. Alone.”

He stared at her, bewildered. “Okay,” he finally said.

Erin looked from her brother to her father. Uncharacteristically, William’s shoulders were slumped. He looked so much older, and his downcast eyes suggested an air of defeat she had never seen in him before. She felt a deep pang of sympathy. “Another case of
C. diff
isn’t going to help your cause with the Alfredson board, huh, Dad?”

William chuckled but only looked sadder for it. “I’m an old man who’s a little slow on the uptake. But I am starting to realize that my ‘cause’ is totally insignificant relative to what our family is going through.”

“That’s not completely true,” Erin said. “The Alfredson
is
part of this family.”

“We’ll see for how much longer.” William pointed to a cart by the room’s door with gowns, gloves, and masks. “You’ll need those to see Jill.”

Erin headed for the cart and quickly slipped into the mandatory protective gear. The steps reminded her of prepping for surgery, and her heart skipped a beat.

She pulled open the door and stepped into the room. A gowned nurse, whose bright red hair peeked out from under her cap, sat a few feet from the bedside and wrote notes in the chart. Erin exchanged a nod with her as she approached the other side of the bed.

Jill’s eyes opened and she recognized her sister-in-law immediately, despite the mask. “Erin . . . hey, thanks for coming,” she said weakly. She struggled to push herself up on the bed.

Erin grabbed hold of Jill’s arm and helped slide her a few inches up the bed. “You feeling any better yet?”

Jill’s shoulders twitched slightly. “Not my best day ever.” She nodded to the two IV lines running into her. “The fluids are helping, though.”

“I hear congratulations are in order.”

Jill rolled her eyes. “That might be a tad premature.”

“You’ve made it this far.”

Jill’s gaze dropped to her sheets, and she said nothing.

“You don’t want to risk exposing the baby to the antibiotics, right?” Erin ventured.

Jill looked up at her plaintively. “Have you read the potential side effects to fetuses?”

Erin shook her head.

“In the first trimester, the risk of miscarriage increases more than tenfold. If the baby does survive, she is at marked increased risk for heart and kidney defects, limb malformation, and even brain damage.”

“Ah, crap, Jill. That’s tough,” Erin muttered.

“I just want to try to see if I can beat this
C. diff
without damaging my baby,” Jill said, her eyes glistening. “She . . . survived my dehydration to the point of shock. If I can stay better hydrated and keep the metronidazole down—”

“Metronidazole won’t fight off this superbug. We both know that.”

“It’s almost a miracle that I ever became pregnant. It won’t happen again.”

“You feel that way now. I remember when I first got—”

“I’m not you, Erin!” Jill snapped. “Life doesn’t always fall into place perfectly for me. I didn’t get my instant two-child family as soon as I hit thirty.” She snorted. “I wish.”

Jill’s jealous outburst only deepened Erin’s sympathy. She reached out and touched her sister-in-law’s shoulder. Jill tensed at the contact, but Erin left her hand in place. “I’ve been incredibly lucky. I don’t deny that. But now is your chance. You and your baby.”

“I can’t risk exposing her.” Jill shook her head. “I just can’t.”

“I’m not sure you have a choice.”

Jill stared at Erin for a long moment. “If you were in this situation—this bed—instead of me, what would you do?”

Erin squeezed Jill’s shoulder. “I just lost a patient to this miserable superbug. Her heart was shot, and she didn’t stand a chance in the end. But she left two young children behind. It was so awful.” She waited a moment for her voice to cooperate. “Kristen was one of the best moms I’ve ever seen. She would have done
anything
for those kids. No matter what.”

Jill’s eyes glistened. “You see!”

“Don’t
you
see, Jill?” she said gently. “If you don’t make it through this, neither does your baby. How is that possibly any better than taking the medication?”

Jill broke off the eye contact and turned her head away.

Erin could tell by the soft snuffling sound and gentle shake of Jill’s shoulders that she was weeping. Her heart sank. She wondered if she had only made matters worse. “Get better soon, Jill, okay?” Erin whispered.

Erin removed her hand and was about to turn away when Jill reached up and caught her wrist in a tremulous grip. “I’ll think about it, Erin. I will.” She paused. “Thank you.”

Erin smiled. “Can I come see you tomorrow?”

“Please.” Jill released her grip.

Erin headed for the door, stopping only to tear off her soiled gown, mask, and gloves and toss them in the biohazard waste bin. Outside the room, Tyler and William stood at the nursing station talking to a short woman with a dated bob cut, whom Erin recognized as one of the infectious disease specialists.

“Erin?” someone called to her in an English accent.

She looked over to see Dr. Bal Dhillon nearing. His stiff smile complemented his starched white lab coat. “Bal, hi. Are you looking after my sister-in-law, Jill Laidlaw?”

“I am. Or at least I was, until I passed her care over to the very able Dr. Hansen.” Dhillon pointed to the woman with Tyler and William. He shuffled on the spot. “Erin, I hate to bother you while you are with family, but it is important.”

“What, Bal?”

“There has been a stabbing. A nasty one.”

“In Oakdale?” she said in disbelief. Violent crimes were so rare in the sleepy well-to-do town that assaults or car thefts made the local paper; a murder would mandate the entire front page.

“A domestic dispute,” Dhillon said. “A man stabbed his common-law wife twice in the chest. The paramedics just phoned. They are on the way.”

Stabbing
. Erin’s mouth went dry. An image of Sesi, the lovely Kenyan nurse, popped into her head. She could almost hear the woman’s mournful scream the moment before the machete blade tore through her abdomen.

“ETA is less than five minutes,” Dhillon went on. “The victim’s pulse is very thready. I was hoping—”

Erin waved her hand to interrupt. “Bal . . . I . . . you better page the on-call team. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m on a medical leave right now.”

“Yes, yes. Of course.” He bowed his head apologetically. “Dr. Fujimora and his fellow are scrubbed in on an urgent bypass. The backup surgeon is at least forty-five minutes away.”

Erin’s heart thumped in her throat. The victim would surely require
surgery, and she was not convinced that she would be able to operate if overcome by another anxiety attack. She tried desperately to conjure up a better excuse to avoid getting involved.

“Trauma ETA two minutes!” a voice bellowed on the overhead speaker.

A nurse called out to Dhillon from the desk. “Bal, they’ve lost the pulse in the field!”

“Traumatic cardiac arrest. The poor woman.” Dhillon sighed. His head hung a little lower. “I am sorry, Erin. I had no right to ask.”

Erin looked over his shoulder and called out to the charge nurse at the central desk. “I’ll need a thoracotomy tray!” she said, referring to the chest-cracking kit.

“Already waiting,” the nurse called back almost nonchalantly.

Bal smiled his gratitude as he turned for the large resuscitation room, Trauma One, beside Jill’s room. Erin trudged after him, her feet heavy.

She could not shake the looping mental image of Sesi being repeatedly stabbed in the chest and abdomen. Erin looked down and saw that her fingers had begun to tremble. The invisible hands, which she had kept at bay for days, encircled her neck again. Her breathing grew more difficult with each step nearer to the room.