Deacon
“Hey, Donnie. I heard you’re feeling a little rough.” I paused at the doorway to Mr. Crew’s room, remembering something Emma had told me about giving patients a modicum of control by not entering before I asked permission. “Is it okay to come in and talk with you right now?”
The man in the bed turned his head slightly, wincing as though even that slight movement cost him strength. “Sure, doc. Come on . . . in. Join . . . the party.”
I strolled in, carefully schooling my face to hide my dismay. Donnie Crew had been kicking ass in this second phase of his treatment for multiple myeloma. We’d harvested his stem cells, and then we’d blasted him with heavy-duty chemo to kill off as many of the cancerous cells as possible. He had tolerated all of that well. I had thought that we were on schedule for his transplant this week.
And then suddenly, as all too often happened, he went downhill fast. I’d spent a day watching his numbers and hoping like hell that this was just a weird glitch—that happened sometimes, too. We couldn’t always pinpoint the whys of symptoms. But when his fever had spiked last night and I’d had to order oxygen for him, I had that gut feeling that things were about to go south fast.
The frustrating part was that cancer-wise, Donnie looked great. If I could keep him alive long enough to get these stem cells into him, he’d probably go into remission again. The keyword wasif.
“What’s the good word. . . doc?” Donnie’s face was bloodless, and his eyes were dull. His chest was rising and falling too fast for my liking.
“There’s a ton of good news, my friend.” I rested one hand on his bedrail. “You are on the verge of kicking myeloma’s ass. We just need to get you over this little bump in the road.”
He glanced away, his gaze going unfocused. “Doesn’t feel like that, Deacon. Feels like this is the cliff that fuckin’ disease . . . is about to push me off.”
“Pneumonia’s like that. You know this. I know you’re not going to love the idea, but I suggest we move you up to ICU, where we can give you every possible chance to fight. Then once you recover, we can bring you back down here and get those fresh stem cells on board, okay?”
Donnie blinked rapidly. “I don’t know, doc. I’m thinking maybe it’s time to make that graceful exit. You know? Maybe I got my bonus time. Maybe now it’s time to bow out . . . I’m awful tired.”
“I get that, Donnie. I really do. You’ve been through so much. But that’s not the reason to stop fighting—it’s the reason to keep on going.” I knew I was walking on a fine line here. I couldn’t force Donnie into continuing his treatment—I could only present all the options and hope he took the right one.
As if he’d read my mind, he shifted to meet my eyes again. “What happens if I don’t go to ICU?”
I heaved a long breath. “If you elect to stay down here, there’s a limit to how much we can do. We can give you oxygen as we’re doing now, and we can administer some meds, but basically, we’ll just be plugging holes in the dike and. . . . keeping you comfortable.” Palliative medicine was a good thing. It was sometime the most merciful choice, and I was a strong proponent of knowing when it should be brought in. But this wasn’t one of those times.
Donnie blinked. “And if I go up to ICU . . . what happens there?”
I tried to modulate my voice, to keep it neutral. “They’ll give you strong antibiotics to fight the infection. They’ll do some tests to see exactly the best way to do that. And they’ll do whatever they can to help you breathe, too.”
“Will I have to go on the ventilator?” I heard the fear in his tone.
“It’s a possibility.” I hated to say it, but being honest was my job. “If you need more than a nasal cannula, they might have to intubate. But they know what they’re doing, Donnie. You’ll be comfortable, and they’ll do everything they can to get you off the vent quickly, too.”
“I don’t like the idea of the ventilator. I don’t want to die hooked up to machines. I don’t want . . . machines keeping me alive.”
“We wouldn’t let that happen. You have a DNR, and we would honor that. But having a ventilator help you breathe doesn’t mean it’s keeping you alive.”
He didn’t answer me, but from the troubled expression on his face, I knew he was weighing the options. I wracked my brain, trying to come up with a compelling reason for him to take my advice. And then just like that, it came to me.
“Donnie, do me a favor. Think about this for a few minutes. You have time—we caught this early. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to have Emma—Dr. Carson—weigh in on this. Would that be all right with you?”
He nodded, his eyes closing. “Sure. Bring in the nature doc. Why . . . not?”
“Great. I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”
I hustled out of Donnie’s room, heading for the nurses’ station. Emma had a small office of her own, but she was almost never in it. She preferred to spent her time with the patients and did most of her paperwork while sitting with them in the solarium or at the central computer here at the station, where she was accessible to anyone who needed her.
Sure enough, she was perched on the edge of the rolling chair, scrolling through something on the computer screen. She was wearing a short, flowered dress that hugged her tits and her ass, but not in a trashy way—just enough that my mouth was watering. I could see the side of one of her legs, long and bare as she tapped her toe in time to some rhythm only she heard.
I’d had my hands on that ass—over her clothes, not under—more than once in the three weeks since we’d gone on our date to the beach. By mutual consent, we were very circumspect at the hospital, treating each other with respect and the same sort of friendliness we showed the rest of the staff. But we’d eaten dinner together at a variety of restaurants outside of Harper Springs, gone to the movies three times and even played miniature golf in Lakeland one afternoon. Most evenings when we weren’t working, we were together; if we didn’t have an official date, we often ended up sitting outside at her trailer, talking and making out until the bugs drove us to say goodnight.
I was enjoying this slow-moving courtship we had going. I loved kissing Emma, and holding her in my arms, no matter where we were, was an incredible high. But there were plenty of nights when I had to remind myself why we were being so cautious. Neither of us wanted to be the subject of hospital gossip, which was why we didn’t go anywhere together in Harper Springs, including my house. I had nosy neighbors who were all too interested in my visitors or in noticing cars that didn’t belong to me parked in the driveway. Out at her trailer, in the middle of nowhere, we were definitely safe from prying eyes. But I didn’t want to make love to her for the first time on the lounge chair I’d brought for us at Walmart, because I’d fallen through one of her wicker chairs, making Emma laugh until she cried.
Nor did I particularly want to have sex with her for the first time in her trailer. Her bed was narrow, and there was that pervasive smell of sulphur that never seemed to quite disappear, no matter how many candles she burned. I knew she was uncomfortable whenever I had to go into the trailer with her, and the last thing I wanted once we finally got naked was for Emma to be tense or anxious.
But damn, I was ready to get her naked.
