Page 53 of Hollywood King
Twenty-Two
Cathy
The sun roseover the beach, and I lay back on the lounger watching it haul itself over the edge of the ocean. I should be happy. This place had turned out to be paradise. Well, after the first couple weeks of rigorous IV therapies and treatments. Now, I all I had to do was get my weekly injection therapy and wait. After three months, if the cancer was gone, I’d live. If not…I might have bought myself some time at least.
Not for the first time, I thought about Heath. Was he with Isobel right now? Were they tangled in damp sheets after an early morning love-making session? I pushed the thoughts away before I let myself imagine the scene. A boulder installed itself on my chest whenever I thought about him.
I’d vowed he’d never get involved in my treatment and care. At the time, I thought I was doing us both a favor. Now, after watching two of the ten trial participants pass on, my understanding of the situation had changed. Only pride had kept me from calling him, begging his forgiveness, and asking him to come.
My strength grew day by day. I could walk a mile up and down the beach now, and my coughing spells had stopped. Doctor Johnson seemed encouraged by the results, and I was hopeful, but careful where I flashed it around.
Wind swept some sand over the end of my blanket, and I shook it out and re-tucked my chilled feet under the edge.
Hope.
What a strange concept. It was highly probable I’d survive this, but what did I have to go back to? A numb void had entered me from the first day I arrived. As if my brain tried to keep itself safe by not committing.
The sun finished its climb and separated from the water’s edge in the distance. It was my cue to go inside and start my day. My very important purpose filled day. I missed that feeling. Saving people’s lives, doing things which made marks on the world. Rationally, I knew it had only been a couple months away from the hospital, but every day stretched to a year in my mind.
Hope.
But not in that. If I hoped I’d return to medicine, I feared it would break me when eventually I failed to. The cancer has come and gone three times before. This being the fourth. If I reach remission, how long do I have?
I wrapped my blanket around me, hoisted myself off the chair and across the sand to a small stairway leading up the medical compound. My room sat at the top corner so I could look out at the ocean. The perks of being the only MD in the program. They did it to be kind. Only another doctor would understand what I was currently missing in my life.
Everyone was asleep or in an IV session so the halls were silent. A burst of typing at a computer, probably Jill, the morning nurse doing her paperwork, cut the silence as I unlocked my door and entered.
I immediately knew something was wrong. The space felt tighter, pregnant, and waiting for something to happen. I surveyed everything and spotted a small velvet ring box in the center of my, formerly unmade, now perfectly neat bed.
Someone broke into my room to do my chores and bring me jewelry. The world needed more burglars like that. I snagged the box and sat down where it rested. The diamond inside was the biggest I’d seen in my life, and in Hollywood, that is saying something. An ash gray pear cut glinted at me. Only one man knew my taste in jewelry, and could afford a rock like this.
I didn’t want to say his name. If he wasn’t here, if his only contact had been a cold piece of stone, the precarious peace I held with hope right now would shatter.
A tear slid down my cheek before I realized I started crying. I squeezed my eyes closed, and his finger traced my cheek, catching the tear before it fell off my chin.
“Open your eyes, Cat.”
Did I read hallucinations were a side-effect of the treatment? It didn’t matter I needed to look at him. He knelt in front of me, one hand braced on the bed beside me, and the other still hovering against my face.
“Say something,” he whispered.
Words failed me.
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even move.
“If you can’t say something, I will. I love you, and you can say all the mean hateful things you want to me, but I’m not going anywhere without you again.”
I launched myself into his arms, and he wrapped them tight around me. Then he stood up, bearing my weight easily.
His chest rumbled, and I pulled back. “Are you laughing?”
“Yes,” He sat me on the bed carefully and came down beside me. “I spent hours creating this Machiavellian level plan to make you see reason. It turns out, all I needed to do was show up.”
I chuckled at his use of the word Machiavellian. “Wait, what was your plan?”
He cupped my hands, one in each of his. “Seduce you, obviously. I have to play to my strengths.”
A laugh burbled out of me, mingled with tears rolling down my cheeks. I sobered and met his eyes straight on. “Heath, I’m so sorry. I don’t even know why you’re here after the way I treated you.”
