Once again, Kara was there placing a soothing hand on his arm. “Go on in,” she told him. “I’ll find a place to park the car and meet you inside.”
He started to argue, but she chose that moment to glare at him and bark, “Go,” in the no-nonsense voice he rarely heard from her, but which he knew meant business when he did.
Pulling over to the curb in front of the E.R., he said, “Are you sure?”
She rolled her eyes. “Go, Lucas. Your family needs you.”
Because she was right, and because guilt and worry had him nearly ready to jump out of his own skin, he chose to believe her. Leaping from the car, he said, “I’ll go find out what’s going on and then wait for you in the E.R.”
“Go be wherever you need to be. Just text me and tell me where to meet you.” As she crossed to the driver’s side, she nearly shoved him up the walkway.
With worry for his sister beating inside of him, he took off without looking back.
* * *
KARA BREATHED A HUGE SIGH of relief as she watched Lucas all but fly through the E.R.’s front door. On the drive here, he’d been so wired that she’d feared he would take off under his own power. Not that she blamed him. Between his sister and finding out about her own illness, big, strong protector Lucas had to have been in hell. She was glad she’d come, even though she knew she had no business being here. She’d planned on going straight home after lunch and putting her feet up and instead, here she was, jockeying for a parking spot at one of the busiest hospitals in the city. But it wasn’t like she’d had a choice. Lucas was messed up, though in typical Lucas fashion he was doing his best to hide it. There was no way she could leave him alone to torture himself.
Besides, she decided as she finally found a parking spot in the very last row of the main parking lot, the waiting rooms were filled with couches. She’d just find one and use it to put her feet up while they waited. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it would have to do.
By the time she walked through the doors herself, nearly twenty minutes had passed since she’d dropped Lucas at the E.R. She glanced around, but he was nowhere to be found, and a quick check of her cell phone showed that no text had come through, either.
He must be even more shaken up than she thought. Lucas was not the kind of guy to leave a lady waiting somewhere for him, or to forget to do something he was supposed to do—even in an emergency.
She knew enough about HIPAA to know that the person at the check-in window wasn’t going to give her any information on Lisa Montgomery. Still, Lucas had said she was in surgery. Maybe they could at least point her toward the surgical waiting rooms?
But she had just approached the desk when Lucas came around a corner, looking paler and more frazzled than she had ever seen him. She rushed to his side. “What’s wrong, Lucas? Has something else happened to Lisa?”
What she meant, of course, was had Lisa died, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words, not when he looked so bad.
He shook his head, but he was completely dazed, his pupils much larger than usual. It was her turn to take his wrist and check his pulse. It was way too fast.
“She’s still in surgery,” he finally answered.
“Okay, then, it’s only a matter of time until we hear something.” She wrapped an arm around his waist for support, and began propelling him down the hallway he had come from. “Where are your mom and Jenn? Let’s go wait with them.”
He shook his head, fumbled a small, white business card out of his pocket. “I need to make a phone call first. I have to go outside to use my cell.”
“Okay. Let’s go.” She glanced down at the card, saw it bore the name Lt. John Russell, homicide, Atlanta Police Department.
She started to ask what was going on, but the look on Lucas’s face warned her not to say anything, so she pressed her lips together and simply waited. She’d find out what was going on soon enough.
It didn’t take long. John Russell must have answered on the first ring, because it was only seconds before Lucas was involved in an intense—and frightening—conversation. He didn’t have the phone on speaker, so she only heard one side, but what she could hear was more than bad enough.
It appeared that Lisa had been driving under the influence. They didn’t have the results back from the hospital’s blood draw, but there were numerous witness reports of Lisa’s erratic driving in the minutes leading up to the crash, not to mention the fact that the go-cup in her car had been filled with a mixture of cranberry and vodka.
But the worst part—the part that had Lucas trembling and her on the verge of throwing up yet again—was the fact that Lisa had crashed into another car. A car filled with a mother and her three children, two of whom were in surgery in the same hospital wing as Lisa and one of whom was in critical condition. The mother was injured but stable, as Lisa had crashed into the passenger side of the car.
Closing her eyes, Kara whispered a little prayer—for the family Lisa had hit and for the twenty-six-year-old herself. She had done a terrible thing and the consequences were going to be awful. But still, Kara prayed she lived to face them.
After ten of the longest minutes of her life, Lucas hung up the phone. His color had gone from pale to gray. She knew exactly how he felt. She was more than a little green around the gills, herself. She might not be Lisa’s actual sibling, but Kara had known her since Lisa was nine years old. She’d always been selfish and impetuous—her parents had raised her to be so, despite Lucas’s repeated, and unheard, objections—so the fact that this had happened wasn’t entirely unexpected.
It was still horrible, though. Both Kara and Lucas had hoped that when Lisa was finally forced to learn that the world didn’t revolve around her, the lesson wouldn’t cost her, or anyone else. But that obviously wasn’t to be, and what happened now was going to cost everyone involved, and especially that innocent family, much more than they could ever pay.
Lucas turned to her, pulled her into his arms and just held on. She let him, holding on to him as tightly as he was holding her. Giving him as much comfort as she could, even as she took comfort from him, as well. Comfort for what he was going through but comfort also for everything that had happened in her life over the past few months.
Comfort for the illness she’d seen in Eritrea and hadn’t been able to cure.
Comfort for the illness she had suffered there, as well.
And finally, comfort for the risk her baby—their baby—was facing.
Eventually he let her go, pulled away. “Tell me,” she said.
“I don’t even know where to start. I don’t think Lisa has a drinking problem. I mean, I’ve obviously missed a lot of stuff, but I don’t think I’ve missed that. I asked Jenn and she says no. But what other explanation can there be? Why would she be drunk at ten-thirty in the morning if she wasn’t an alcoholic?”
Kara could imagine a couple scenarios, including one where the very irresponsible Lisa—who didn’t work because she lived off her trust funds from her father and grandparents—had been out partying all night and had only then been returning home. Another possible situation was an early brunch that had included Bloody Marys, mimosas or even vodka cranberries, as they had found in her car.
She said as much to Lucas, who stiffened as anger flitted across his face. When the silence stretching between them grew uncomfortable, she asked, “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” He slumped against the wall. “Any suggestions?” From
his tone of voice, she knew it was a rhetorical question.
But she did have a suggestion. Several, in fact. “I think we should go back upstairs and wait for news.”
“Yeah. I guess.” He made no move to get up.
“Don’t you want to go back up? I assumed your mom and Jenn were up there.” And she knew Lucas would never leave them to wait and worry on their own. It wasn’t in his makeup.
“They are. Jean-Claude’s up there, too.”
“Jean-Claude?” She wasn’t familiar with the name.
“Mom broke up with Nicholas a few weeks ago. Jean-Claude is her new boy toy.”
Which would explain his reluctance to go back upstairs. Still, he should be with his family. He would feel a million times worse if the doctor came out to speak with them and he wasn’t there.
He sighed deeply and ran a hand over his troubled face. For the first time in all the years she’d known him, he looked defeated. Like he just couldn’t imagine how he was going to find his way out of the latest mess his family had gotten themselves into.
Which meant she’d have to find a way to steer him through it, because she absolutely couldn’t stand to see him like this.
“When did your mom say they expected to be done with the surgery?”
“She didn’t know. I asked at the nursing station and was told that it looked like a couple more hours. They couldn’t give me any more information than that—not even what was wrong with her besides internal bleeding. I guess they rushed her into surgery pretty quickly after arrival.”
“So, we have a while to kill, right?” She glanced at her watch. “Let’s go down to the cafeteria, get something to eat. I’m betting you skipped breakfast again and I’m under order to eat every couple of hours.”
Both Julian and Dr. Beaumont had made it clear that with her weight loss she couldn’t afford to skip meals. No matter how nauseous she was and even if it meant turning around and puking everything back up.
The reminder of her own precarious health was all it took to get him moving. “I think the cafeteria’s in the basement here.” He grabbed her hand and tugged her down the hall.
“Tell me what the detective said. We need to make a plan to help Lisa when she recovers. She’s going to need it.”
“If she recovers.” His voice was grim, maudlin even, but she took it as a good sign that he was taking charge again. That was the Lucas she knew.
She knew the hospital well through her work with the CDC, so it only took her a couple minutes to find the elevator that led to the cafeteria. There weren’t many people around at that time of day, so within five minutes the two of them were seated at an empty table, each with a huge chef’s salad and a bowl of vegetable soup with some crackers.
Her stomach turned over at the smell of the soup, but Kara ignored it as she forced down one bite and then another. Across from her, Lucas was doing the same.
“So, what did the detective say?” she finally asked when both their bowls were empty.
“Nothing good. We won’t know what she’ll be charged with until everyone makes it out of surgery. Besides, he wouldn’t give me specifics—we’re not on the same side here, technically. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but there’s a part of me that thinks my sister deserves to go to jail for what she’s done. My God, she could have killed those kids and their mother. She might have. We don’t know.”
“Let’s just take it slow, okay, and not borrow any more trouble than we already have. I’m guessing the basic charges are going to at least be DUI with injury, which, if I’m not mistaken, is a felony. Which means you need to get your sister a lawyer as soon as you possibly can.”
He looked at her in astonishment. “A lawyer? Right now we don’t even know if she’s going to live.”
“She’s going to live, Lucas. You need to believe in that even if you can’t believe in anything else right now. And when she does recover, she’s going to need a lawyer. Because I can promise you, the police and the D.A. aren’t hanging around the hospital, simply waiting to see what’s going to happen. They’re gathering evidence against Lisa, evidence they are going to use to convict her.”
“Rightly so, if she really did what they say she did.”
Kara nodded as she placed a hand over his where it rested on the table and squeezed. “I’m not saying otherwise. I’m just saying she’s going to need an attorney who is looking out for her.”
“Who was looking out for those kids?” he asked. “Who was looking out for their mother? God, Kara, I’m just sick about this.”
She started to answer him when her stomach went into full-blown revolt. Knowing exactly what was coming, she jumped up from the table and made a mad dash for the cafeteria door and the bathroom she had seen when they’d gotten off the elevator.
She didn’t make it and ended up getting sick in a trash can right outside the cafeteria door. She vomited over and over again, until the water and soup were long gone from her stomach and she was just dry heaving. It hurt and was embarrassing, considering the number of people walking by, and at one point she had to battle tears as well at the never-ending waves of nausea.
She fiercely battled the tears. It was a close call, though, especially when she finally lifted her head and saw Lucas standing right behind her, a glass of water in one hand and a napkin in the other.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HE EXTENDED THE CUP OF water, with the simple instruction, “Rinse.” Which she did, before reaching for the napkin. It had killed him to stand by and do nothing as Kara threw up, and it was killing him now that he could do nothing for her. No wonder she looked like hell—if she couldn’t keep any food down how was she or the baby supposed to have a fighting chance?
“This happen a lot?” he asked, rubbing her back in what he hoped was a soothing manner
“A few times a day.”
“Morning sickness?”
“I’m assuming. Except it didn’t hit until after the DHF, so it could be a side effect of that.”
“You said the fever didn’t cause any damage.”
“It didn’t. Nothing major, anyway. Besides, we don’t know if the vomiting is because of the pregnancy or the disease, so we just have to wait a while and see if it goes away.”
“And in the meantime you starve to death?” He glared at her. “I don’t think so. You need Compazine.”
“I’ve got a prescription for it in my purse. I’m not an idiot, Lucas.”
“I never meant to imply that you were.” He held out his hand. “Give it to me. We’ll get it filled at the pharmacy here.”
“It can wait—” She started to object, but he glared at her and she stopped. He was furious, absolutely enraged, and he wasn’t sure why. He just knew that he felt he was shaking apart from the inside out. It wasn’t a feeling he cared for. The anger made it better, but not by much.
“Obviously, it can’t.” He went back into the cafeteria and cleared off their table before buying a banana, a few packages of crackers and a ginger ale. “We’ll drop off your prescription on our way upstairs. In the meantime, you can see if this will settle your stomach.”
She took the food from him. “Thank you.”
“For what?” He hadn’t done a damn thing except get her pregnant at the worst possible time. She shouldn’t be thanking him. She should be kicking his ass.
“Lucas—”
He cut her off by raising his hand. Whatever she wanted to say to make him feel better, he didn’t want to
hear. Not right now. But it wasn’t her fault that he was so pissed off at himself and the world, so he softened his voice when he asked, “Are you sure you’re okay? You can take my car home if you’d like, go get some rest. I can pick it up whenever.”
“I’m fine. I just traveled halfway around the world. I think I can handle an elevator ride,” she told him with a roll of her eyes.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know exactly what you meant.” She smiled at him but her eyes looked sad. It only made him feel like a bigger heel.
He smiled, tried to joke. “Here I was thinking you could handle a worldwide epidemic. But if all you’ve got in you is an elevator ride—”
“Ha-ha. You’re so funny.” But he saw her lips twitch as she took off down the hall. Which was a good sign, even if it was more than he deserved.
When they climbed into the elevator, he grabbed her wrist. Stroked his hand over the sensitive inner skin of her wrist. The look she shot him told him, clearer than words ever could, that she was on to him. He grinned sheepishly, then did what he’d always intended and took her pulse for the second time that day.
When he was finished, she started to pull her hand away, but he held tight and threaded his fingers through her own until they were holding hands. She shivered a little, looked startled, but he didn’t let go. Neither did she, though she did look like she wanted to ask him what he was doing.
He didn’t have an answer for her because he didn’t know himself. He was operating on instinct and right now, he wanted to touch her. Needed to touch her. It blew him away that they had made a baby together, that she was carrying his child. And while he still didn’t know how he felt about the baby—especially considering all the problems they were facing—he knew he cared about Kara. Knew he wanted to make this whole thing as easy on her as he possibly could.
The elevator came to a stop and they dropped off her prescription before heading back upstairs to the surgical wing. He took it as a particularly good sign that she kept her hand firmly in his as they stepped off and strolled down the hall. It might just be because she felt sorry for him having to deal with his mother, and Jean-Claude, again, but he was shaky enough that he didn’t mind the support. Which was a surprise in and of itself, but he was finding that he could accept things from Kara that he wasn’t willing to take from anyone else. She calmed him down, centered him. He hoped he did the same for her.