With Every Breath (10 page)

She didn’t look up from her paper work. “Trevor, if you don’t rein in that ego, I will be forced to have you deported back to Scotland. They do that for disagreeable aliens.”

“Your threats are as terrifying as a newborn kitten.” He fought back the smile that threatened to emerge. No matter how miserable his morning, all he had to do was walk within ten feet of Kate and listen to her sling an insult at him and he felt better.

“Patient rounds in ten minutes,” he said, snapping up his stethoscope from the desk. He needed to keep pretending Kate was just another employee. It had been getting harder to ignore the electricity that hummed between them, but he would do it.

Because if Kate knew all the dark secrets he carried, she would faint from the shock of it.

6

K
ate found Trevor the most fascinating and frustrating man she’d ever known. Far from being the dull, one-dimensional person she once assumed him to be, he had the strangest quirks. Although the patients loathed the vile concoction of cod liver oil steeped with the bone marrow he required them to drink, Trevor willingly swallowed a dose each day.

“The patients whine about the taste all the time,” Trevor said. “I’m trying to prove to them it’s not that bad.” He poured a healthy dose of the cloudy yellow liquid into a shot glass and tossed it back without flinching.

“I can’t even bear to
smell
it,” Kate said while suppressing a shudder.

“The Vikings used to swear cod liver oil sustained their strength on long ocean voyages. Come on, have a glass.”

She lifted her chin. “I’d like to believe that medical science has progressed since the Vikings stormed the globe.”

He had other odd practices. Trevor was always the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave at night, though sometimes he disappeared for hours in the middle of the day.
“I’m on the roof,” he would tell Nurse Ackerman before leaving the clinic.

“What does Dr. Kendall do on the roof?” Kate asked the nurse.

“Lord only knows,” Nurse Ackerman replied gloomily. “Something dire, I’m sure.”

Not that Kate had time to worry about what Trevor was up to on the roof. What she really wanted to know was why he’d changed his name.

Each time she asked him about it, he stonewalled her, so she had taken to poking around the hospital, looking for clues. She studied every framed certificate, diploma, and award on the wall outside the conference room. He graduated from Harvard with a medical degree when he was only twenty-two. Then he spent several years with the world-renowned Dr. Robert Koch, studying tuberculosis in Berlin. He also did research in Paris at the Pasteur Institute.

Strangely there were two years during which he had no diplomas or awards. She would be tempted to think that perhaps he’d been doing something fun or interesting with his life, except this was Trevor. The man didn’t have a recreational impulse in his entire body.

She asked him about those missing two years one afternoon when she was helping him file expense reports in the hospital’s administrative office on the first floor. “Had you finally had enough of work and took time to sit back and enjoy your vast wealth? Play golf with the robber barons?” He didn’t look up as he slotted a folder into the dense drawer of files.

“Yes, Kate, I was playing golf with the Vanderbilts. When will you have the projections for the white blood cell counts completed?”

It was typical of the way he brushed her off, but she enjoyed the challenge. The more he evaded, the more determined she
became. “I notice your Scottish accent is almost completely gone. We could barely understand you when you first showed up at school. What part of Scotland are you from?”

“The part where people mind their own business.” The filing drawer thumped as he closed it. She followed him back upstairs to the office they shared. Before they reached the office, Nurse Ackerman intercepted them. “Doctor, there has been another mention in the newspaper.”

“Another article?”

Nurse Ackerman had a distinctly uncomfortable look on her face. She shifted from foot to foot and swallowed before answering. “Not really an article. More of a picture, sir.”

He snatched the newspaper from the nurse’s hand. Even from a few feet away, Kate could see what looked like one of those obnoxious political cartoons. A gangly man dressed in black clothes had a grotesque grin as he waved a syringe in the air while tap-dancing in a graveyard.
Dr. Death Strikes Again
, the caption read.

Kate grimaced. Even for someone with no feelings, that had to hurt. But Trevor’s face was like stone as he folded the newspaper and tucked it under his arm. “Kate, go back to finishing the files.”

“I thought you wanted the projections for the white blood cells.”

“Later.” He turned and stalked down the hallway. After exchanging a brief look of commiseration with Nurse Ackerman, she followed him. The office door was closed. She rapped on the door and entered without waiting for permission.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Trevor was sitting at his desk, elbows braced on the armrests, his hands steepled before him. He stared out the window and didn’t respond to her question.

How precisely did you ask a man why he was so hated? Trevor could be blunt, unfriendly, and rude, but this level of disparagement went beyond a personal tiff. A respectable newspaper would not be running these articles unless there was something behind them.

She stepped farther into the office. “Trevor?”

“Kate, we’re not going to discuss this.”

The legs of her desk chair scraped the floor as she dragged it over to Trevor’s side of the office. She took a seat close beside him, letting him know she didn’t intend to let this drop. “I think the employees are entitled to know why someone is calling you ‘Dr. Death’ and writing ugly stories about the clinic.”

He whirled to face her, and she blanched at the anger on his face. She held up her hands. “I don’t believe a word of it, but burying our heads in the sand won’t make the problem go away. Have you spoken with the journalist who is writing the stories?”

“Yes. He won’t reveal who’s passing information on to him. Some sort of nonsense about protecting his sources. It’s probably just a bunch of paranoid people threatened by my work. It won’t be the first time doctors studying contagious diseases are vilified. I’ve already demanded a retraction from the editors at the
Post
.”

“Demanded?” That sounded like Trevor. Clearly it wasn’t working or they would not have printed that cartoon today. “Who did you speak with?”

“The clerk in the front of the building. He said the editor wasn’t available.”

“Not available to angry people who barge in and demand retractions. There are better ways to go about this sort of thing.”

“And what would the dauntless Katherine Livingston recommend?”

She ignored the sarcasm in his voice and chewed the side
of her thumbnail as she analyzed the problem. This needed to be handled carefully. She didn’t know anyone at the
Washington Post
, but she knew plenty of other people in high places. A lifetime of serving people at her mother’s dinner table had earned her that.

“Honey catches more flies than vinegar, and you seem to drink vinegar by the gallon,” she said. “It wouldn’t kill you to actually smile now and again. Or get to know some of the right people.”

He stiffened, and the air grew even frostier. “I’ve never been impressed by people who make friends to oil their way to the top.”

That statement explained so much, and Kate fought to keep her voice pleasant. “You’re asking the local people to support a clinic that treats a horrifying, contagious disease in the middle of their neighborhood. You need to build friendships and alliances, and I can help you with that. Come to my mother’s house for dinner. She serves lots of important people who work at different places throughout the city. Congressmen, ambassadors, trade officials. If I work very hard, I might be able to persuade her to serve a standoffish doctor who seems to delight in offending people.”

He folded his arms across his chest, lowered his chin, and glared at her. A muscle twitched in his cheek, but he didn’t deny the truth of what she said. If this was just about Trevor, she wouldn’t subject her mother to his company, but across the hall there were thirty-two people who needed him. Those people needed a champion, and she needed to prop Trevor up to assume that role before his reputation was in shreds.

She bumped up the pressure. “My mother is the best cook in Washington. She serves a Brunswick stew so tender it will melt in your mouth. The scent fills the neighborhood, and people would sell their firstborn child to get a place at her table.”

“And these are the sort of people you think will improve my reputation?”

She wanted to smack him, but this argument was too important to lose. “Dinner is served at six o’clock. Come to the Norton Boardinghouse on H Street, and be nice for once. Don’t ask for a newspaper editor’s head on a platter. It’s important to establish friendships before calling in favors.”

“It sounds like a colossal waste of time.”

“Six o’clock. Tonight.”

He shook his head. “No good. I am assisting Dr. Flynn with a pulmonary surgery this afternoon. I can’t be there before seven.”

She returned to her desk and opened a file of hemoglobin statistics. “Take the green streetcar line to H Street. Come late if you must, but I
will
see you at dinner tonight.”

7

T
revor held on to the worn leather strap as the streetcar pulled near H Street. The streetcar was nearly empty at this time of the evening, but he preferred to stand when he was nervous. The surgery took longer than planned, but the patient was doing well. Surgery was an intellectual challenge he enjoyed, and it was so much easier than making chitchat like Kate wanted him to do tonight.

But she was right. He needed allies, because the situation was a lot worse than Kate knew. In addition to the negative coverage in the newspapers, he had been getting threatening letters delivered to his home address. The newspaper articles were tame compared with the virulence in the letters he received at home. And those anonymous letters were written by someone who knew a great deal about his personal history, mentioning too many private details for it to be a coincidence. Whoever was behind this campaign was not so much afraid of tuberculosis as someone who despised him. Someone who wanted to see him ruined.

He tightened his fist around the strap. Medicine was the only thing he had in the world. He had devoted his life to cramming
his head with every scrap of medical knowledge he could dig up. He’d risked his life in the relentless quest to find, tackle, and slay the dragon of tuberculosis.

When the streetcar slowed to a halt, Trevor sprang to the ground, wondering how long Kate expected him to play nice at dinner. He’d been in surgery for three hours, on top of a long day at the clinic, and all he really wanted now was to collapse in bed.

Kate lived on a nice street lined with white granite buildings and a row of trees along the walkways. Elegant black lampposts were already illuminated, sending a warm glow along the boulevard. The Norton Boardinghouse was a four-story town house with bow windows and shiny black shutters. Lights illuminated the first floor, and lively conversation leaked from behind the front door.

Was he supposed to knock? He rapped, but when there was no response he opened the door and stepped inside.

The aroma of simmering beef and warm apple cider surrounded him. He followed the boisterous voices to an oversized dining room crammed with people. A group of men in one corner had pulled their chairs to the side with their heads in earnest conversation. Others sat at the table, enjoying huge slabs of apple pie while a man with a thick accent recounted witnessing the coronation of the Russian czar. There was no sign of Kate.

He stood awkwardly in the entrance of the dining room. It was warm in here, and he didn’t know what to do with his hands. What a mistake it was to come here.

A pretty blond girl spotted him and sprang to her feet. “You must be Dr. Kendall!”

The conversation sputtered to a halt, and twenty heads swiveled toward him. The girl wended her way around the table and held both hands before her.

“Kate is still helping in the kitchen, but she told me to be on the lookout for you. I’m Irene Bauman.” She inclined her head to one of the men clustered at the far end of the room. “That’s my father with the white mustache in the corner. He’s a justice on the Supreme Court!”

What precisely was he supposed to say to that? He cleared his throat and shifted. “Very nice.” Maybe he should make a point of telling the judge this country needed better laws to keep vicious newspaper reporters on a leash.

The girl tugged his arm and dragged him toward the table. “We saved a seat for you. This is Tom Wilkerson; he works at the Patent Office. And Charlie Davis, congressman from Pennsylvania. And this is Harvey Goldstein; he’s a journalist for the
New
York Times
.” The formalities continued until she must have introduced twelve people, all of whom were blurring in his mind.

“You came!”

Finally Kate made an appearance, and relief trickled through him. She held pots of tea in both hands, double doors swinging closed behind her. She handed the teapots to a serving girl and then hurried around the table to greet him.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t make it,” she said.

“The surgery took longer than expected. A resection of an upper lobe on the lung. It’s a tricky operation.”

Strange, for she really did look happy to see him. She guided him to a chair and told the pretty blond girl to stop clinging to him. Then Kate left to get him a bowl of Brunswick stew, which was good because he was famished. When she set the bowl before him, he almost wept from the aroma. The first bite was an explosion of flavor, shredded beef in a sauce that was both spicy and sweet.

Everyone else had already finished their meal and was jabbering away, but he was eating and therefore spared from having to
make conversation other than an occasional nod. It was always such a challenge to think of things to say with strangers, but he liked listening to Kate talk with the people crammed around the table. The way she bantered and sparred kept everyone on their toes. The man from Russia complained that the newly installed hot water tank was inadequate.