Forever Together (12 page)

Kate gripped Dan’s hand. “When will Kaylee
get my bone marrow?”

“Today. Once we have the
cells,
we’ll filter them through fine mesh
screens, then infuse them into Kaylee. If we don’t need them all,
we’ll freeze what’s left in a process called cryopreservation in
case we need them again.”

Kate hoped like crazy they didn’t need to put
Kaylee through another bone marrow transplant. That would mean this
treatment wasn’t a success and she didn’t want to consider that
possibility.

“Can I be with Kaylee when you do the
transplant?”

“It’s a straight forward procedure,” Doctor T
said. “If Anna and Tom are okay with you being there, then it’s
fine with me. When did you last eat and drink?”

“I had a couple of pieces of toast at six
o’clock this morning with a cup of coffee. I had a hot lemon drink
at about ten o’clock.”

“Lunch?”

Kate shook her head. “I haven’t had any
lunch. We were busy in the salon.”

“Good. I don’t want you to eat or drink
anything before the procedure. We’ll get you something after we’ve
finished.” Doctor T closed his file and stood up. “I’ll take you
upstairs. We’ve got a room ready for you in the surgical ward. You
can change into a gown and get started on the prep work with Doctor
Murray.”

Kate looked at Dan. “Will you tell Anna and
dad where I’ve gone?”

He stood up. “I’ll tell them now.”

“We’ll be on the second floor,” Doctor T
added. “Just follow the blue painted lines when you get out of the
elevator.”

Dan leaned down and kissed Kate’s cheek.
“Take care. I’ll come upstairs and stay with you after I’ve seen
Anna and Tom.”

Fresh tears filled Kate’s eyes. He didn’t
understand how much his support meant to her. No one did, except
Doctor T and the team of doctors she’d first seen in San Diego. She
was scared the transplant wouldn’t work. Without
Dan,
she wouldn’t have had room for anything
other than the panic tearing her in two.

“It will be okay,” Dan said as they walked
out of the room. “Kaylee’s getting the best possible care she can.
You’re giving her a second chance and that’s more than we could
have asked for.”

Kaylee wasn’t the only one getting a second
chance. Kate had been given something that didn’t happen every day.
She’d been given a second chance to make a difference. The promise
of what that could mean for Kaylee had brought her to Bozeman. All
she needed to do now was go through the procedure and pray it
worked.

***

Dan paced backward and forward, standing
guard outside the operating room. He’d given up waiting in the
family room. He was better off right by the doors Kate would come
through, rather than sitting in a chair half a floor away.

“Have you heard anything?” Tom walked toward
him. He looked exhausted beyond what anyone should have to
endure.

“A nurse came out about half an hour ago.
Everything’s going to plan.”

“That’s good.” Tom leaned against the wall
and closed his eyes. “I blame myself.”

“What for?”

“Kate. Kaylee. Hell, my life is so messed up
that I can’t work out where it all started going wrong.”

Dan understood the helplessness Tom felt.
Sometimes the only thing you could do was tread water and hope you
didn’t drown when the next wave hit. Anyone who thought there
wouldn’t be another wave was delusional. When you least expected
it, someone or something would sneak up on you and knock you
senseless.

“It’s called life,” Dan said. “It might not
look good at the
moment,
but
you’ve got a family that loves you. That’s more than a lot of
people can say.”

“I don’t understand how Kaylee got HLH. We
didn’t know it existed until six months ago and now she could...”
Tom slid down the wall, sitting on the floor with his head buried
in his hands. He started crying, great
racking
sobs that came straight from his heart.

Dan’s eyes filled with tears. The fear he’d
buried ripped to the surface leaving him as raw and vulnerable as
Tom. He sat on the floor and for the first time in years cried. He
cried for Kaylee, for the days she’d been in pain and upset about
what was happening. He cried for Patrick, his best friend and the
man who always had a kind word for everyone. And he cried for
himself and the hole in his heart that wouldn’t heal if Kaylee
died.

Tom blew his nose and rested his hand on
Dan’s thigh. “When did life get so hard?”

Dan took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
“Damned if I know.”

The automatic doors to the operating room
opened and Dan jumped to his feet. He recognized one of the nurses
pushing the bed.

“Everything went well. I’m taking Kate
through to the recovery room.” She looked
between
Dan and Tom. “Are you okay?”

Kate’s eyes fluttered open, then closed
again.

“We’re fine.” Dan walked across to the bed
and smiled at Kate. “How are you feeling?”

Her eyes opened and a slow smile spread
across her face. “All done. Lily would be proud.”

Dan frowned. Kate’s speech was slightly
slurred,
like she’d had one too
many beers at the local bar. He had no idea who Lily was.

“We’re proud of you,
too.
” Tom said. He held onto Kate’s hand as the nurses
wheeled her toward the recovery room.

Dan stayed where he was, giving Tom some time
alone with his daughter. He hadn’t realized how worried he’d been
about Kate until he saw her come out of the operating room. He’d
been so focused on bringing her back to the hospital that he hadn’t
stopped to consider why he was so stressed. But he knew now.

He’d been worried that the procedure wouldn’t
go smoothly. Kate had been scared. She’d gripped his hand until the
last possible moment, holding onto him, knowing he’d be there for
her.

He didn’t know when he’d started caring about
her, but he did. A lot. And he didn’t know what to do about it.

Tom poked his head around the doorframe. “Are
you coming in to say hello?”

Dan wanted to do a lot more than that, but it
would have to wait.

By the time he walked into the room, Tom was
standing beside Kate, staring at his sleeping daughter.

“Anna always says there’s a silver lining to
every cloud. Finding Kate is my silver lining.” Tom leaned forward
and kissed Kate’s cheek.

Dan didn’t know why they hadn’t kept in
contact and he wasn’t going to ask. Anna had mentioned years ago
that they’d tried to find Kate, but nothing more had ever been
said. Whatever the reason, she was here now, and that’s all that
mattered.

How long she stayed was another story.

***

Kate opened her eyes, frowning at the
sunlight pouring through the window. Dan sat in a chair beside her,
staring
into
the pages of a
magazine. “Is it any good?”

He looked up from the magazine and smiled.
Something inside her moved, realigned, then clicked into place.

“Not as good as seeing you fully awake.
You’ve been sharing all of your secrets for the last half
hour.”

Kate pushed herself upright, then dropped
back down when the room started spinning.

“Use this.” Dan handed her
a control
pad. “The button at the top will make
the
bed sit
upright. Don’t go too
fast or you’ll pass out.”

Kate hit the button and let the bed do the
hard work. She took a deep breath before pulling the pillow out
from under her head. “How’s Kaylee?”

“Hanging in there. Your dad left about
fifteen minutes ago to see her.”

“Have they started the transplant yet?”

“No. Doctor T said he’d come and get us when
they’re ready. Wait here.”

Dan disappeared and Kate took a moment to
rearrange the pink hospital gown she’d been wearing. It was big and
baggy and hung in all the wrong places.

“Do you need a hand?” Dan had returned with a
tray of food and
a drink.

“Only if you want to live dangerously.” She
settled back down in the bed, pulling the sheet up to her armpits
to cover her breasts. Food won out over a gaping gown any day,
especially when she was hungry.

Dan settled the tray on a table and wheeled
it across to the bed. “Who’s Lily?”

The smile on Kate’s face disappeared.

“You were talking about her.” Dan’s face
sharpened, focused on what she didn’t want to tell him.

She looked at the food on the tray and
decided she’d better eat something. Acid churned in her stomach and
she didn’t know whether it was from a lack of food or the
expression on Dan’s face.

She took a sip of orange juice, then bit into
a sandwich.

“Well?”

“I’m eating,” she said around a mouthful of
ham and tomato.

“You’re stalling.”

She kept eating. Dan stood beside the bed
with his arms crossed in front of his chest. He didn’t look as
though he was going anywhere in a hurry, so she ate slower.

“It’s just as well they didn’t give you a
three-course
meal. We’d be here
until Christmas.”

Kate wiped sandwich crumbs off her mouth and
stared silently at Dan.

“This is the part where you’re supposed to
tell me who Lily is.”

Kate swallowed. “You have to promise you
won’t say a word about this to anyone.”

Dan nodded. “Who is she?”

“Lily’s not alive anymore. She died when she
was three years old.”

Dan waited for her to continue, only the
words wouldn’t come easily.

Kate bunched the bed sheet in her hands.
“Lily was my sister.”

“Tom hasn’t mentioned another daughter. Did
your mom have a baby with someone else?”

Kate shook her head. She
saw
a flash of surprise in Dan’s eyes before he
hid whatever was running through his mind.

“You’re telling me Tom doesn’t know he had
another daughter? How did that happen?” He looked genuinely
puzzled.

“Mom was pregnant when dad left. She didn’t
tell him.”

Dan sat down in the chair looking as shocked
as she’d been when she’d realized the truth.

“Mom’s different to most people. She didn’t
tell him straight off and then it was too late.” Even to her own
ears Kate sounded like she was making excuses for her mom. And she
was, and it hurt all the more because she didn’t believe a word of
it. Her mom should have told Tom he had another daughter, but she
hadn’t.

Dan leaned forward and stared into her eyes.
He had questions. More questions than she had the time or strength
to answer. “How did Lily die?”

Kate hesitated before answering. Even though
she couldn’t have changed the outcome, she felt like she’d let
everyone down. Her mom’s silence had a price and she was about to
find out what it would cost.

“Lily had the same autoimmune disease as
Kaylee. She had HLH.”

Dan didn’t move. He didn’t speak. It was as
if the end of the world had come crashing down and he’d been sucked
into an emotional black hole.

“She had HLH?”

Kate nodded. “We didn’t know until it was too
late. The doctors did everything they could, but nothing
helped.”

“Did you donate your bone marrow to
Lily?”

Kate’s
eyes
filled with tears. “It didn’t work. Lily died three weeks after the
transplant.”

***

Dan stood in the doorway of Kaylee’s room. He
watched what was going on with a detachment that would have worried
his Army Psychologist. Everyone except Doctor T seemed to be going
through a roller-coaster of emotions. It left Dan feeling empty,
distracted, and angry.

They could have helped Kaylee sooner if Kate
had been honest about her sister having HLH. If she’d attempted to
find her father and tell him about the
daughter
he didn’t know he had.

Because of the secrets Kate and her mom had
hidden, Kaylee was in serious trouble. She wasn’t doing so well and
it tore at his heart.

Kaylee was tossing and turning in bed. She
wouldn’t listen to anyone. Doctor T tried to distract her, but she
wasn’t having any of it. Even the chance to eat ice cream wasn’t
enough bribery to calm her down.

She’d tried to take the catheter out of her
chest, the tube that fed her a regular diet of drugs. The catheter
was important. Without it, Doctor T wouldn’t be able to give her
the stem cells harvested from Kate’s bone marrow.

Dan wasn’t sure if the medication she was on
was making her agitated or if she’d simply had enough of everyone
poking and prodding her.

Kate sat in a wheelchair beside Kaylee’s bed
looking more upset by the minute. “Do you want me to tell you a
story about a pirate princess?” Kate asked.

Kaylee scrunched her face into a wicked
frown. “I don’t like princess stories anymore. They’re stupid and
not real.”

Anna sat on the edge of Kaylee’s bed. “What’s
wrong, honey?”

Kaylee big blue eyes filled with tears. “I
want to go home.”

Anna’s eyes misted over. “I know. We all want
you to come home. But first we need to let Doctor T and the nurses
make you well.”

“Why am I yellow? Toby said it means I’m
getting sicker.”

“Something inside your body isn’t working how
it needs to. Kate’s going to share some of her blood with you so
you can get better.”

“Like Toby?” The hope on Kaylee’s face was
too much for Dan. He turned and walked out of Kaylee’s room.

He didn’t know where he was going. All he
knew was that he needed time alone, time to gather his
strength.

He took his face mask off and thought about
Toby. He’d been so excited when he’d told them he’d be going home
soon. His treatment
for
Leukemia
had finished and so far everything looked good. Kaylee would miss
him, probably more than anyone realized.