Patient Privilege (21 page)

"He's gone!" she cried out.

Erik knew without asking who she was talking about. His knees weakened, and he had to place a palm against the cool, yellow-painted cinderblock wall to steady himself.

"I made my rounds this morning, but he wasn't there. Angel's gone!"

Chapter Thirty-Six

It took Roni saying the words more than once before Erik could process them enough to fully grasp the news. Angel had left. His patient ran away, left the program, and Erik couldn't pull it together enough to react. His heart started racing. Sweat beaded on his brow, making him feel clammy. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't take a deep breath to save his life. The whole entire world crumbled down around him.

"Oh, God," Erik rasped as his fingers tried to grip the wall. "Why, Angel?" It felt like someone ripped his heart out of his body. A wave of nauseating fear rushed through him, twisting his stomach again. If something happened to Angel, he knew he would never be able to live with himself. "Oh, God," he cried as tears began to redden his eyes.

"Erik?" Marshall gasped.

"Dr Daniels?" Roni reached out for him.

Marshall brushed his hand over Erik's cheek. "Baby, you're pale."

Roni's eyes widened with shock, yo-yoing back and forth between the two men.

"I'm okay. I need…" Erik lifted up from the wall. Fingers trembling, he gripped at the nape of his neck. The pressure helped with the pounding tension. He paced in a small circle while his mind struggled to get it together. "We need… I need to find him. I need to find him before he destroys himself."

"Okay," Marshall said, gripping Erik by the shoulders. "Calm down. We'll find him. I'll take you wherever you need to go, okay?"

Erik nodded, fighting to hold back the tears burning his eyes and tightening his throat. How would he explain it if they managed to break free? How could he justify crying over the patient who ran away? He couldn't. But crying over the
one
who got away, he could.

Marshall took Erik by the hand and led him back down the hall, through the double doors, and out to the parking lot. Erik didn't trust his voice enough to protest, to tell his ex-partner he needed to deal with this problem alone without that telltale quiver. He didn't trust his tears to stay hidden.

Marshall opened the passenger door to his Land Rover and Erik climbed inside.

As Erik dialed Jon's number, he couldn't help but wonder if his conversation with Angel is what made him leave the program. After all, Angel did offer to drop out just so they could be together. He couldn't help but wonder if Angel would've stayed at the clinic had he not taken the call, had he not been so completely honest with the kid about his feelings. Obviously, he wasn't far from blaming himself for this, and the longer the phone rang, the more he wondered if going after Angel was really the right thing to do or if he just needed to let it go.

"Hello?" Jon answered with a hoarseness that made Erik believe he'd been sleeping.

"Jon, it's Dr Daniels." Erik's voice wavered. He had to clear his throat before he could speak again. "Angel's gone. He left some time during the night."

"What? No. Why?"

Erik could lie and say he didn't know why, or he could face the truth of his bad decisions. Better still, he could avoid the subject and get the facts so he could try to save his patient from the worst mistake of his life. "I need to know where he might have gone. I know of the one motel, but weren't there others?"

"Yeah. Three. They're all on the same city block. I'm coming too," Jon said. Erik could hear the ruffling of sheets, could hear another man's voice groaning in the background.

"No. I don't think that's a good idea, Jon. Your news shook him up quite a bit."

"This is my fault?"

"I didn't say that, Jon. People drop out of rehab programs all the time. The important thing right now is that we find him and get him back on the right track before he does something stupid."

"Right." Jon paused. "Dr Daniels, please find him. I… I don't want anything to happen to him. I do care about him, you know?"

"I know, but I think he's having a hard time believing people care. Jon, I swear I'll do my best to find him," Erik responded dutifully. "I'll call you when I know something."

"Please do," Jon said in a soft voice. "If you need me…"

"I should probably do this myself."

"But I want—"

"Jon, this isn't about what you want. It's about what Angel needs." Erik kept his voice stern. No way would he give Jon a chance to argue. Jon didn't need to be there when Erik found Angel. No one did.
If
he actually did manage to find him. "I'm going to look for him and I'm going alone. That's final."

"Understood," Jon said as he hung up the phone.

With a hard sigh, Erik closed his eyes and sank down in the passenger seat of Marshall's Land Rover. Tears filled his eyes as he mumbled directions to his ex. Concern and fear rose like a ball of fire in the back of his throat. He could feel Marshall looking, watching him with curiosity. If he tried to explain everything now, he would break down and fall apart. Erik couldn't afford to do that. He had a patient to save.

No, more than that. He had a person he desperately cared about to find and save and protect.

They pulled up to the first motel. Marshall drove straight up to the front door. Erik charged right up to the front desk and asked the surly old man behind the counter if Luke Jacobs or a guy calling himself Angel had checked in. The man shook his head and Erik proceeded to describe Angel's spiky, black hair and dark eyes, his hard jaw and high cheekbones. The clerk insisted he hadn't seen anyone like that. Erik's heart sank, but this was only the first of three possible places he could be. Hope wasn't lost. Not yet.

The tale remained the same at the next two places. He even went back to the room he and Jon had found Angel the night they'd brought him to the clinic. He banged until his knuckles were red and raw. No one ever answered. No one had seen Angel.

Everything seemed to fall apart. The world whirled around him in a blur of noise and bleeding colors. Erik hugged his body tight, trying to steady his breathing, but each breath felt like a stab to the chest. His throat knotted. Tears filled his eyes again. The hope he'd been clinging to became a thin veil of emptiness closing in around him. He sank down against the wall outside the motel room as he stared blindly into the setting Los Angeles sun.

He heard footsteps charge up beside him, but Erik didn't bother to raise his head. It didn't even compute. Devastation kept him in a tight little bubble nothing in the world could penetrate. His heart and mind kicked him in the metaphorical ass. Guilt tasted a lot like bile rising in the back of his throat.

Marshall's warm arms and caring voice finally penetrated Erik's safe bubble. His ex-partner pulled him into his arms and pressed his cheek against Erik's head.

"Baby, we'll find him, I promise."

That moment, in Marshall's arms, with all hope of finding Angel quickly fading, Erik fell apart. He trembled and sobbed, panted and shook. His fingers locked around Marshall's arm. "I failed him," Erik cried. "I tried so hard and I failed him."

"You did the best you could, baby. He made the choice to leave."

"It was my fault."

"No, it wasn't. You did everything you could." Marshall gathered Erik from the filthy concrete and held him tight against his body as they walked back to the Land Rover. He opened the passenger door and helped Erik get situated in the seat. "Let's get you home. You can take a hot bath then lie down and rest. We'll figure something out."

Erik laid his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. He would let Marshall take him home, console him and care for him, if that's what Marshall sincerely wanted, but eventually the truth would have to come out. He would have to bare his soul, even if it meant destroying everything he'd worked to put back together.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

By the time Marshall and Erik reached the old, decaying apartment building Erik called home, the sun had set and the sky had turned almost completely black. Guilt and worry gnawed at Erik's gut. He imagined Angel's life as this perfect piece of plain white paper. It had so much potential. It could've become a beautiful work of art or well-written story, an amazing love poem or… or anything Angel wanted it to be. Then Erik imagined his hand wrapping around the page and crumpling it into a useless ball. That's what he'd done to Angel. He'd stolen the kid's chance to make something of himself, and now Erik had no choice but to move on, even if the idea of it killed his heart.

Marshall's Land Rover rounded the corner. It shimmied and jostled as it trod over the broken concrete of Erik's apartment's driveway. The bouncing made his stomach tighten and turn even worse than it already had. He imagined a sickly shade of gray tinting his flesh.

Erik finally managed to look up, lifting his eyes away from the floorboard he'd seemed so fascinated with. It was still just light enough for Erik to make out the dark figure sitting at the bottom of the steps, its arms steepled against its knees, hands locked under the chin. A ratty backpack sat beside the figure's feet. But it wasn't until the Land Rover's headlights circled the parking lot that Erik could make out the messy, black spikes and hard jawline, the pouty lips and dark eyes. His heart nearly stopped.

As soon as Erik realized the guy he'd been searching for sat—quite literally—right at his front door, his breath hitched and his stomach sank down to his toes. It felt like a dream.

"It's him!" Erik gasped, finger stabbing out toward the person at the foot of the steps.

"Angel?" Marshall asked.

"Yeah." A grin spread across Erik's face. "Yeah. It's Angel."

He leapt from Marshall's barely-stopped SUV and charged straight for the kid. The rush of excitement and the relief he felt charged his pulse and drove his speeding feet. To find his patient there at his home was a miracle Erik never would've expected.

Angel stood, opened his mouth to say something but he didn't have a chance to speak before Erik's arms wrapped around him and their lips met. He held Angel tight against his body, claimed his lips with more passion than he'd ever kissed anyone before. Relief wound through his body and exploded in his chest. The crumpled ball of paper began to unfurl and a soft pallet of colors drew the most amazing picture Erik could've imagined. He saw Angel's life become the miracle Erik knew it had the potential to be. He saw perfection.

Everything in the world felt right again. It didn't matter if Angel ran off to get high; he had come back to Erik's place. He was still alive. If anything had happened in those hours, it didn't matter because anything, everything could be fixed now.

When their lips finally tore apart, Erik's wide eyes searched Angel's beautiful, magical face.

"Are you okay?" he asked, hands running down the muscled length of the kid's arms.

"I'm okay."

"Did you…?"

"Get high? No. I walked to some little art gallery and looked around for a while. Then I sat in the park and sketched. I waited until I thought you would be home then I took a bus over here. You're not mad, are you?"

"No. God, no," Erik laughed, hugging Angel tighter. "I'm glad you're safe. I'm glad you didn't run away to get high."

Angel's eyes lowered. He swallowed hard. "You won't want me if I'm high."

Erik gripped the kid's chin and gently lifted his head until their eyes met. They stared at each other for a moment before Erik slowly pressed his lips to Angel's. Their eyes closed as the kiss carried them away from the world around them. The kiss carried them to heaven, away from the drugs and the strife, away from everything keeping them from embracing their feelings for each other.

Angel's hands cupped Erik's cheeks, his tongue slipped inside Erik's mouth. Those lips felt twice as good as they had before, because this time around, Erik wanted the kiss. This time around, it was welcome. They held each other, oblivious to anything and anyone around them, including Marshall. They'd been so enthralled in each other, neither had heard the car door slam.

"Um… what's going on?" Marshall asked arms crossed over his chest, brow arched.

The kiss broke. Erik lowered his head, half ashamed, half afraid of confronting Marshall about this. He didn't want to talk about Marshall in front of Angel and didn't want to talk about Angel in front of Marshall. And though he hadn't really been committed to either of them, he felt like he'd wronged them both because he'd kept secrets from them.

Erik finally raised his head. Angel looked over his shoulder. The three of them stood in silence as tension made the air around them feel suffocating.

"Marshall," Erik said in a soft voice. He turned around to face his ex-partner and the hurt on Marshall's face nearly blew him away. "I think we need to talk."

"Yes, it appears we do."

Erik fished a ring of keys from his pocket then handed them over to Angel. "Can you wait in my apartment? I really need to take care of this."

Even as Angel grabbed his backpack from the step and tore up the stairs, Erik didn't look away from him. He wouldn't take his eyes off Angel until he felt nothing could hurt him, not even himself. He watched Angel disappear behind the door to his home then looked back to find his ex-partner fuming.

When Marshall and Erik were finally alone, he looked up at Marshall and his heart skipped a beat. He'd silently practiced this speech many times over the last few days, had it down to a perfect, non-confrontational account of the years they'd spent together and how they both seemed much happier and healthier apart from each other. The speech would've ended with "no matter what, I'll always love you". The matter of his new feelings for his patient would've been left out because it wouldn't have helped the situation, but the time for hiding secrets had passed. Nothing had happened the way he'd planned.

No matter how he arranged the words, he couldn't find an easy way of saying them. There was no easy way of breaking his ex-lover's heart.