Shore Lights (45 page)

She wants to tell him, but she hasn't the vocabulary for love, and he is gone before she ever finds the words to tell him all he means—and all he would ever mean—to her
.

 
AIDAN MADE HIS way quickly down the corridor to the elevator bank, pushed the Down button, waited five seconds, then opted instead for the staircase. He startled a pair of X-ray techs who were taking a break on the landing. Their bodies were pressed close. Yin and yang. Part of the same eternal puzzle. They turned their heads toward the wall. He pretended he didn't see them.

Sometimes you had to grab happiness wherever you found it.

He was learning—oh, yeah, he was learning all right. He hoped it wasn't too late for him. Last night he'd had a glimpse of something wonderful, someone wonderful, but his track record didn't inspire hope. There was still a chance for Kelly, a chance for her to break free of old sorrows and guilt and build something wonderful for herself. He had screwed up too many times, let himself stand clear of love for way too long to make him believe he could ever do the same.

He pushed open the door marked
First Floor
and quickly got his bearings. Down the hall, two lefts, a sharp right, the huge swinging doors that led to the ER. He had long ago learned that the secret to access was all in the attitude. Act like you belonged there and you did. It was as simple as that. Nobody questioned his presence as he scanned the huge open room for Maddy. Central hub that served as the nurses' station. Doctors in lab coats milling about. A tech wheeling a portable cardio machine. A porter mopping a spill near the door to the lavatory. An old man with terrified eyes in Cube 1. A little boy holding his arm and crying in Cube 8. Curtains strung across other openings for privacy.

He walked past each cubicle, listening. Finally he heard a familiar voice, and the sound hit him like a jolt of pure adrenaline. Maddy's voice. He absorbed the sound, the feel of it, into his bloodstream.

He stopped in front of the closed curtain. “Maddy,” he said. “It's Aidan.”

The curtain drew back and he saw it all in an instant. Rose standing near the head of the bed. Hannah, pale and disoriented, her tiny body in constant motion. Fingers pulling at the covers. Talking, talking. Strange words he had never heard before. Nonsense words with an oddly familiar rhythm. The fear in Maddy's beautiful eyes. The brief surge of joy on her face when their hands touched. The sound of a heart—his own—coming back to painful, hopeful life.

A chance . . . even if it's one in a million . . . there has to be a chance for us
.

“How is she?” he asked as they stepped into the corridor.

“They don't know,” she said. “Her symptoms suggest any number of things.”

“Any one in particular?”

She was trembling. He hadn't noticed that before. “Meningitis.”

He reacted on instinct and so did she. He opened his arms to her and she moved into his embrace. Through clothes and muscle and bone he felt her heart beating in time with his.

He asked the name of the doctor, the residents, what tests they were running. He kept her talking, kept her focused on detail, not emotion, and after a bit the trembling slowed.

“No fever is a good sign,” he said, aware of Rose's curious, but not unfriendly, gaze.

“I know,” she said, resting her forehead against his shoulder for a second longer. “That's the one thing that's keeping them from ordering a spinal tap.”

“Kids are resilient,” he said. “They bounce back from things that would knock us flat.”

“I know,” she said again.

“They'll figure it out any minute, and once they get those meds flowing, she'll be her old self.”

Maddy tried to smile, failed, then tried again. “I want to believe that.”

“I believe it,” he said. “She's going to be fine.”

She met his eyes. “I'm so sorry about your grandmother.”

“So am I,” he said.

A doctor, flanked by a pair of eager med students, descended upon Hannah's cubicle. He could feel Maddy's focus shift to her daughter. As it should be.

She asked what room Irene was in and was about to say something when Rose joined them.

“They have some questions, honey,” Rose said to her daughter, “and I don't seem to know the answers.”

Maddy was away in a flash.

“I'm sorry to hear Irene is declining,” Rose said. “She has always been a role model for me, one of the few successful working women around when I was growing up.”

“There wasn't much Irene couldn't do when she set her mind to it.”

“Did you know that she's one of the people I spoke to when I was thinking of cashing in my 401(k) and opening the Candlelight?”

“You went to Irene?”

“Before I went to my banker.” She smiled at the memory. “She probably gave me better advice. You were still fighting fires, so you wouldn't know how instrumental she was in the formation of the Small Business Owners Association.”

“You're right. I didn't know any of this.” No surprise that Claire hadn't told him.

“We should talk sometime,” Rose said. “Your family and mine go way back. I owe Irene a great deal. The last few years have been so busy—I wish I'd found time to thank her.”

“She's in 312.”

Rose seemed to hesitate. If he didn't know better, he would think she was afraid. “You wouldn't mind?”

He shook his head. “I'd appreciate it.”

She cast a longing glance toward the curtain pulled across Hannah's cubicle, then straightened her shoulders. “Let's go,” she said.

 
ROSE WAS GONE.

Maddy stood in the middle of the chaos of the emergency room with her arms wrapped across her chest and tried not to cry.

The doctors were still in there with Hannah. Poking. Prodding. Shining lights in her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her ears, tossing questions at Maddy faster than she could answer them.

When she asked why they wanted to know, what were they thinking, where did they think this was headed, their answers provided little comfort.

We don't know. . . . It could be . . . We're worried about . . . Symptoms consistent with . . . Move swiftly but with great caution
. . .

They were moving Hannah up to the third floor to free up space in the ER. The plan was to run a spinal tap—they called it a lumbar puncture, as if that made it sound more friendly—if no other explanation for her symptoms revealed itself within the next few hours. At the moment there wasn't an OR available, but the second one opened up, Hannah would be top priority.

Maddy stepped out of the crowded cubicle, looking for Rose. She had been out there minutes ago. Maddy had heard her talking to Aidan. The sound of their voices had given her comfort. Her mother hadn't been there for Hannah's birth. She hadn't been there for her granddaughter's baptism. Maddy had believed she would never forgive her mother for cheating them all of something meant to be shared. But the relief she felt knowing Rose was on the other side of the curtain had almost been enough to wipe away the past. She needed Rose's strength, her determination, her belief in bending fate to meet her own needs.

She needed her mother, and, once again, her mother was nowhere to be found.

A fine anger began to burn deep in her gut.

“Good news,” said one of the nurses. “They found a room on three. We'll move her up as soon as they send somebody for her.”

Maddy nodded her thanks. The hot coal of anger had grown so big it was choking her. She had cried herself sick the afternoon she gave birth to Hannah, praying that she would look up and see Rose standing in the doorway to the labor room, but of course that had never happened. Through the entire nine months of her pregnancy she had yearned for her mother. Longed for her presence. Sometimes she dreamed about her. But Rose had kept her censorious distance, ashamed perhaps of Maddy's single state or, more likely, disappointed that her unambitious daughter had chosen the most traditional path of all.

A huge orderly with a clipboard tucked under his arm smiled at Maddy.

“Hannah Bainbridge-Lawlor?” he asked.

Maddy nodded and gestured toward the cubicle. “She's ready.”

You should be here, Rose
, Maddy raged as she walked behind the rolling bed that bore her baby girl. Not for her. It was too late for that. She should be there for Hannah.

Disappointment, strong as bile, burned through her as the elevator climbed to the third floor. Hannah deserved better. Wasn't that why Maddy had moved clear across the country, so her little girl could be surrounded by family and old friends?

Well, where were they? Where was her family? Where were her aunts who usually couldn't wait to stick their noses in her business? Where were her happy-go-lucky cousins? Where were the nieces and nephews? Where were her old friends, the ones who claimed they would always be there for each other, through good times and bad?

But most of all, where was her mother?

Anger followed her down the corridor, past the nurses' station, and it finally exploded into fury when she saw her mother leaning over Irene O'Malley's bed as if it were the only place on earth she needed to be.

ROSE SPOKE GENTLY to Irene as she sat next to the bed. It was clear the old woman was as much a part of the next world as she was part of this one, and Rose could only wonder what supreme act of will or stubbornness kept her clinging to life.

She opened her heart to Irene. She thanked her for the help she had given her along the way. She told her about Maddy's homecoming and the pure delight that was Hannah. Her voice broke when she tried to talk about her granddaughter and she was grateful to Aidan when he stepped in and tactfully changed the subject.

She had just managed to pull herself together again when she looked up and saw Maddy looming in the doorway. She felt a fist grab her heart.

“Hannah.” She could barely say her granddaughter's name. “Is she—”

“They put her next door,” Maddy said in clipped tones. “She asked for you. I told her you'd left.”

Rose felt her cheeks burn with heat. “You were busy with the doctors. I asked Aidan if he would mind if I said hello to Irene.”

The look of betrayal in Maddy's eyes sliced straight through to the bone. “Gotta keep those business contacts fresh, don't you, Rosie?”

She turned on her heel and disappeared.

Something inside Rose snapped, but she managed to control it long enough to kiss Irene on the forehead and murmur an apology to Aidan, who was standing in the corner of the room, looking supremely uncomfortable.

“Obviously my daughter and I have some unfinished business,” she said in an attempt at humor that fell as flat as her expectations.

Maddy was striding down the corridor toward the elevators, her long legs eating up the distance much faster than Rose could match. She broke into a run designed to make her look foolish and vulnerable, two things she would normally never allow.

“Maddy, please!” she called out, her dignity rapidly falling by the wayside. “Wait, Maddy, please!”

Maddy didn't break stride. She reached the elevators, hesitated, then pushed open the door marked
Stairs
.

Rose was no athlete, but her adrenaline was pumping hard and fast. She felt herself gathering speed as she sprinted past the elevators just as Maddy was about to disappear through the doorway.

“Rose! Is that you?”

Oh, God.

Maddy stopped where she was. Rose kept moving toward her.

“Rose DiFalco! I heard you were here.”

Rose knew how a deer felt during hunting season. Isolated. Trapped. No place left to run.

“Good to see you, Carol. How are the grandkids?”