Page 41 of Hate To Want You
There’s a long, drawn out second in which I hold my breath waiting for his reply.
“Yes.”
Chapter nineteen
Max
To my surprise, the world doesn’t implode now that I’m dating Heidi in secret. Fine, it’s only been a week, but that week has been…dare I say, good?
After our first official date, cliché as it was to simply go for dinner, we made plans to hike the trails of Dogwood Cove on our next day off. This time, we’re avoiding the hot springs and the memories held there. When she admitted over a fucking text message that she knew I was naked in the water, I just about lost it and drove to her house to make good on the fantasy she described having that night.
It’s gone unspoken that we’re taking it slow, given both of our past experiences with relationships. But that goes against everything my body wants, even though it is exactly what my head says I need. Unfortunately, the stolen kisses in supply closets, brief touches of our hands as we walk down the hall, and text messages that are becoming increasingly risqué are only serving to increase my primal desire to have her in every conceivable way.
It’s been months since I was with anyone intimately. And my hand is a poor substitute for the tight, wet heat of a woman’s body. I’ve increased my runs in distance, speed, and frequency. But even that isn’t enough to outrun the continual list of filthy things I want to do with Heidi.
Take right now, for instance. She’s bending over my shoulder to read an MRI report with me, and it’s taking all my self-control not to pull her into my lap and kiss her senseless.
And she knows it, the little temptress. Because when she reaches out to point at something, her hand drags across my bicep. When she turns to say something, she doesn’t shift away, no, she keeps her mouth close to my ear, tormenting me.
“Dr. Donnelly? Dr. Morgan?”
We spring apart as if we were caught in the act. Curtis, one of my favourite nurses to work with because of his calm, steady demeanour, is standing on the other side of the desk. His eyes look troubled, which is unusual for him.
“Yes?” I say, standing up and casually stepping away from Heidi.
“I think you need to come and see Teagan.”
An ominous sense of foreboding comes over me. We both hurry over to her room, pulling on masks, gowns, and gloves before we go in. Maya is hovering over the bed, clutching Teagan’s hands.
Heidi goes to her side, while I go straight to Teagan. Her breathing has slowed to a disturbingly slow rate, and I can hear the fluid rattling around with every inhale. She’s semiconscious, her eyelids fluttering open when I gently squeeze her shoulder and say her name before closing again. The effort it’s taking her body to breathe is clearly taking a toll.
This is the part of cystic fibrosis that I hate the most. The way everything can seem to be improving one moment, and then crash the next.
After listening to her heart and lungs, I don’t need to look at the monitor to know what I’m going to see. But I do anyway. Her oxygen saturation is horrendously low. She’s febrile again. And when Curtis silently hands me the results from her latest blood work, it confirms my sinking suspicion.
Teagan’s body is shutting down, and there’s not a fucking thing I can do. As a responsible minor, she has the legal right to express her wishes for resuscitation. And last year, after a particularly bad bout of infections, Teagan and her family came to an agreement. If her body began to not respond to treatment, and her prognosis was poor, she didn’t want extraordinary measures. No breathing tubes, no CPR, no ICU admission. Teagan’s family knew from the outset that her diagnosis was a life sentence. But none of us could predict when the end would come.
We’ve staved this moment off for over a decade. And while so many CF patients go on to adulthood, I know in my gut that Teagan’s end is coming sooner than any of us wanted.
I remove my gloves and walk over to Maya, whose shoulders are shaking with silent sobs. Heidi has her arm around her, and when she meets my gaze, I give a subtle shake.
“Maya, I’m sorry. Our options are limited,” I start, fighting back my own emotions. I have to hold it together until I’m alone. Teagan and her family need me to be strong. “We can try a few runs of dialysis to pull off the excess fluid, but the microbiology report came back on the sputum sample, and it’s not good.”
“It’s that one we can’t pronounce, isn’t it?” Her voice is shaky as Maya lifts her gaze from her daughter to me. “The one that starts with ‘P.’”
“Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Yes. And she’s not responding to the antibiotics anymore.” I give her a sad smile, remembering different times when Teagan came in with lung infections that she’d recovered from. She’d always want to know how to pronounce the technical names.
“If you can name it, you can tame it,”she’d say, and we would fist bump.
But there will be no fist bump this time. No taming of this bacteria.
“She hated dialysis,” Maya says. “’No more tubes, Mom.’ That’s what she said last night. I didn’t understand why, but now I suppose it makes sense. She knew she was getting worse.” Teagan’s mom sinks down into the chair beside the bed and drops her head to the mattress, overcome with tears.
I drop down to my haunches next to her. “We’ll do everything we can to make her comfortable, Maya.” The words are hollow-sounding, even to me. The end of a child’s life, whether it’s sudden or expected, is a gut-wrenching experience for everyone involved. Even us practitioners — nurses and doctors and therapists — it breaks our hearts every time. The helplessness as we stand by, offering what little comfort we can, watching families say goodbye to their kids far too soon.
Heidi leans down to Maya. “Can I call your husband for you, Maya?”
She nods and Heidi steps out to contact Teagan’s father. From what I remember, he works out of town a lot. I can only hope he’s not far away right now. From the looks of things, she doesn’t have much longer.
