Clay (17 page)

Janna inclined her head in assent. She could have recited Lainey’s many symptoms in her sleep. “She didn’t complete her dialysis last night. She has excess fluid from the fill stage.”

“It’s possible that’s a part of her pericarditis, all right, but we can’t be sure. We’re watching her fluid build up and will start dialysis as needed. Unless you’d prefer to see to it yourself?”

“Yes,” Janna said quickly. “Yes, I would.” No one else would be as gentle or as careful during the long drawn-out process as she would be. No one else could understand Lainey’s pain so well.

“Whatever you like. We’ll make the equipment available.” The doctor paused, then went on. “Just
remember that you aren’t superwoman. From what I hear, you’ve had Lainey’s care on your shoulders without relief for too long. It won’t help her if you collapse.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

He snorted, a soft sound of disagreement. “You’re dead on your feet this second but too keyed up to know it. Fatigue is funny. It can catch up slow or it can hit you like a fast freight train, but it will get to you one way or another.”

She met his gaze across the bed. “I don’t suppose Clay Benedict suggested you talk to me, did he?”

“Would it make any difference if he had?”

“None whatever.”

“Then no, Clay didn’t say a word. It’s just that I’m a poor, overworked country physician who’d as soon not be called out to see about you and Lainey two nights in a row.”

“I’ll do my best to remember that,” Janna said, and discovered that her lips could still curve enough to return a friendly smile.

“My other prescription,” Hargrove said, “is to let someone help you. You don’t have to do this alone.”

He reached to touch her hand, a light, impersonal brush of his fingertips that offered human warmth and understanding. At the same time, she thought she saw distinctly masculine appreciation in his eyes. She liked him, she discovered, and what was more important, she trusted him. With that last realization, came the knowledge that she didn’t quite trust Dr. Gower, hadn’t for some time. It was an idea with
unpleasant ramifications. She had no time to consider them, for Dr. Hargrove was speaking again, giving care instructions on his way out of the room.

“Any questions?” he asked as he stopped with his hand on the door’s edge.

“One,” she said, her glance satirical. “You wouldn’t be a Benedict cousin, would you?”

“On my mother’s side. How did you know?”

“It figured.” She gave a wry shake of her head, then added, “Thank you. For everything.”

“Just doing my job.”

The door closed behind him. It opened again almost immediately, however, admitting Regina and April. Clay was only a second or two behind them and carried a cup of crushed ice in his hand.

“You look a bit happier,” April said. “Everything is okay then, for now?”

“For now.” Everything would never really be okay until Lainey had a new kidney, but there was no point in saying so.

Taking the cup from Clay with a quick word of thanks, Janna fished an ice chip from it and fed it to Lainey. The small face of her daughter lit up with pleasure while she crooned in the kind of ecstasy most kids reserved for chocolate ice cream.

A small silence fell. In it, the noise of the television seemed loud. Behind Lainey, one of the women caught her breath with a strangled sound. Turning her head slightly, Janna saw tears standing in Regina’s eyes before she gathered the baby she held closer to her and pressed her face to her small cheek.

Her gaze was not focused on Lainey, however, Janna realized. It was on the wall-mounted television screen.

The news was on, showing a coiffed and suited anchorwoman in front of a neat but featureless ranch-style home as she announced the identification of the body of the teenager recently found in the swamp near Turn-Coupe. Her expression suitably somber, she turned to the woman who stood beside her in faded, baggy shorts and with disheveled hair, angling the microphone in her direction. “Tell us what your feelings were, Mrs. Bianca, when you learned that your son had been murdered for his body organs?”

“He was just a boy!” the woman cried, staring into the camera with swollen, red-rimmed eyes that leaked tears. “He finished his last year of Little League Ball just last week. He wasn’t wild, didn’t do no drugs. He made good grades in school, played in the marching band, wanted to be a marine biologist when he grew up. He was a good kid! What kind…kind of monster could do…do this to him?”

Hard on her last cry, a grainy picture appeared on the screen. Obviously a school photo, it showed a boy with a lopsided grin, a cowlick in his dark hair and the gleam of mischievous intelligence in his dark brown eyes. In a voice-over, the anchorwoman spoke of the continuing police investigation into the recent deaths of two teenagers. Then she returned the program to the studio anchorman who began to talk about the mayor and plans for a new football stadium.

Janna felt as if a hard fist gripped her heart and
was squeezing it. Her chest hurt, her jaws ached as she clenched them, and her brain felt on fire. It was one thing to know about a teenager’s death, but something else to see his face, to understand that he had really and truly lived but did so no longer. Dear God, she couldn’t stand it. And it didn’t help to hear Clay’s whispered curse in the subdued quiet.

“I’d like to kill whoever did it with my bare hands,” April said in tones of soft loathing.

“Think about that poor woman.” Anguish threaded Regina’s voice, and her arms tightened around the baby in her arms. “What a horrible thing to have to live with, knowing that your child died in fear and pain.”

The baby she held, disturbed, perhaps, by the movement, gave a small wail. The adults turned toward the sound, partly in concern, but also, Janna thought, in relief from the mental pain of what they’d just seen.

The sound attracted Lainey’s attention as well. “A baby,” she said in a small voice that was thin and scratchy from disuse. “Can I see?”

Regina looked at Janna. “Is it all right?”

Coolness descended over her as if she were being splashed with ice water. “She isn’t infectious, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, no!” Regina’s fine, redhead’s skin almost glowed with her fiery flush. “I just didn’t want to get in the way or tire her or…or maybe hurt her without knowing it.”

“I’m sorry,” Janna said in abrupt embarrassment. “Yes, it’s fine.”

Regina’s smile was still a shade anxious and she glanced at Clay as if for corroboration. At his nod, she stepped forward, holding out the baby. Lainey opened her small arms as naturally as breathing, and Regina, carefully avoiding her tubes, settled the infant against the girl with its tiny head resting on Lainey’s small shoulder.

The little one, disturbed by the move, opened her dark eyes. Baby and child regarded each other in solemn and silent communication. Then a slow smile bloomed across Lainey’s face, rising to shine in her eyes. “Oh,” she breathed in quiet wonder. “She’s beautiful. And just perfect.”

“You, too, honey,” Regina said softly. “You, too.”

Warmth toward Regina filtered through Janna. But at the same time, she allowed herself to accept something that she’d kept carefully cordoned off in her mind until that moment. Other mothers also had their perfect, beloved children, and for them, as for her, the idea of death for those children was unendurable.

It might have been that incident, though it could have been Dr. Hargrove’s half-comical warning or even simple exhaustion, but the idea of allowing Regina or April to sit with Lainey for a short time began to seem like a possibility.

There was no dramatic turnaround in Lainey’s condition over the next hours, but she did improve by slow degrees. Her blood pressure eased downward
until it was as close to normal as it ever came; her excess fluid drained the way it should once dialysis was begun, and the sound of her heartbeat faded to its usual sandpapery whisper. Her low-grade fever remained and she was still a sick little girl, but the danger of losing her was no longer immediate.

April and Regina Benedict had not stayed long that afternoon. Clay saw them out and didn’t come back for several minutes. Janna assumed a family conclave of some kind was held in the hallway, but Clay didn’t mention what was said when he returned, and she didn’t ask. Afterward, however, there was a constant stream of visitors, most of them cousins of one degree or another. The first was Betsy, who was plump and outspoken, with frosted blond hair and an almost overpowering friendliness. Kane Benedict, the stern yet engaging attorney who was married to Regina, showed up around sundown, apparently on his way home. Luke joined him shortly afterward, a Benedict whose dark hair, warm smile and effortless charm gave him a strong resemblance to Clay. They left only after Roan returned, as if they felt some obligation to wait for the changing of the guard, or so it seemed to Janna.

It was almost a relief when Roan left again at last, since it seemed that the small hospital room had become a male enclave with a surfeit of tall, overwhelmingly masculine men stuffed into it. Of course, even one Benedict male added to Clay’s constant presence seemed one too many. She was glad he was there doing the visits, regardless, since she had no
idea what to say to his cousins and her brain seemed too sluggish to produce anything more than mere commonplaces.

Johnnie, the nurse who had been on duty when Lainey was admitted, stuck her head in the door just before the shift changed, around ten-thirty. Seeing Janna and Clay, both sitting upright but silent and half asleep, she raised her brows. “You two still here? Jeez, the stamina of youth. Never fear, reinforcements are on the way. I saw April pulling into the parking lot just now.”

“April has arrived,” the author said from behind her. Easing past Johnnie’s broad form, she stepped into the room with a laptop computer under one arm and a woven bag over her shoulder from which protruded the unmistakable roll of a piece of unfinished needlepoint. “I’ve come to stay, too, and I don’t want to hear any arguments. You’re dead on your feet, both of you. Dedication to a child is a lovely thing, but there’s no use being a martyr about it.”

Janna, staring at April through eyes that were heavy with fatigue, was torn between annoyance and a strong urge to fall on her neck in gratitude. Lainey would be safe enough with her, she knew. And yet it was so hard to overcome years of being her daughter’s sole guardian and protector, years of being all she had to depend on.

“No martyrs here,” Clay said, climbing stiffly to his feet and stretching with his hands at the small of his back. “You can take over until daylight, anyway. Right, Janna?”

“You go,” she said. “I can sleep on the love seat.”

“No way.” He moved to stand over her, taking hold of her hand. “The twenty-four hours are up now, and everything is under control. You need a real bed and a few hours of nice, cool darkness without racket or people coming and going every ten minutes. On your feet, Kerr. You’re going if I have to carry you.”

Any other time she’d have blasted him. Now she stared into the rich blue of his eyes, seeing the hard determination that covered his concern, and she couldn’t quite manage it. She sighed, then let him pull her to her feet.

It was still necessary, however, to warn April exactly what to watch for and when, to show her a couple of small details about the continuing dialysis, and tell her all the things that Lainey liked and disliked. She kissed her sleeping daughter and brushed a hand over her cheek, then turned away. After two steps, she swung around again for yet more instructions. She was still talking when Clay took her by the shoulders and steered her from the room into the hall.

The night air that greeted her beyond the hospital doors was soft and pleasantly warm after the air-conditioned frigidness she’d left behind. A gentle breeze lifted her hair and brought the scent of the crape myrtle that stood in the islands of landscaping around the hospital building, with spent blossoms littering the ground around their feet like fallen confetti. Breathing that tantalizing scent, Janna became uncomfortably aware that her clothing, her hair, even
her skin carried the sour, chemical odor of the hospital.

The parking lot was nearly empty as she and Clay walked toward it. The security lamps placed at regular intervals made yellow pools of light in the metallic paint of the few cars that were left and picked out the black streaks of skid marks in the concrete. It was quiet, almost too quiet, or so it seemed to Janna. She was used to big metropolitan medical complexes where people were always coming and going and the sound of traffic was omnipresent. There were no streets at all on this side of the hospital, however; it faced only a wooded area thick with pine trees and an undergrowth of briars and the vines crowding along its edges. The security lamps didn’t reach far into the thicket.

Clay touched her arm, guiding her in the direction of a dark green SUV parked about halfway between the woods and the building. Glancing at it, she asked, “Are you borrowing someone’s transportation?”

“It’s mine,” he said with a shake of his head. “Luke and Roan went out to the house and drove it back for me.”

“You being so sure that I’d leave when you thought I should?” she asked, her voice even.

“Being so sure I didn’t want to walk.” He took out a key and unlocked the SUV’s passenger side door, then pulled it open for her.

She flung a quick glance at his set face. Aware that she had said the wrong thing, she tried to find a way to rectify it as she climbed into the high vehicle. Clay
gave her no help, but held the door with grim patience as he waited to close it behind her.

Abruptly the night exploded. Fire spurted with red light from the margin of the woods. Dull thuds sounded against the side of the SUV.

“Get down!” Clay yelled, even as he gave her a hard shove that sent her sprawling across the center console. The door slammed behind her.

Shots. Someone was shooting at them!

Even as her brain made sense of the noise and motion, another burst of gunfire rang out. Clay’s footsteps pounded around the vehicle. He needed to get inside, and fast.