Miracle (15 page)

“Ssssh,” Sebastien crooned. Without appearing hurried he pressed the nurse-call button.

“What are you scared of?” Tom demanded. “Can’t I … love you … even if I’m kickin’ the bucket?”

Sebastien shivered. His guard undone, he gazed blankly at Tom. Amy still hadn’t left the room. Now she made a soft sound of distress. Sebastien shut his eyes. Why had these two troublesome people come into his life at the same
time? He was surrounded by love for which he hadn’t asked. And they wanted him to love them in return, which he simply couldn’t afford.

“Sebastien.” Amy was obviously struggling to say something. She faltered, hugged herself, then stepped close to the bed and bent over Tom. The boy’s eyes flickered toward her. “Tom,” she said softly, “Dr. de Savin is sad to be leavin’ you. He just doesn’t know how to say so. He’s sort of like a turtle who won’t come out of his shell because somebody hit him on the noggin once.”

“I … a turtle … 
mon dieu
,” Sebastien said. “What foolishness!”

“Like a turtle,” Tom whispered. Then he looked at Sebastien, his anxiety fading visibly. “Okay. I … love you. I understand. You’re a turtle.”

A nurse stepped inside the cubicle. Sebastien gestured to her to stand by, while he continued to speak with Tom. “You’re a very troublesome patient, you know, and your Minnie-Mouse friend has been a mischievous influence—”

Tom’s eyes rolled back. Alarms sounded from the machines attached to him. Sebastien whipped the sheet from Tom’s body. “Amy.
Get out.
”

She made a horrified sound and backed from the room as the nurse rushed past her. Sebastien studied the heart monitor near the bed. There was electrical activity, but no regular heartbeat. The nurse called a code for the emergency team. Sebastien planted the heel of one hand on Tom’s unmoving chest. He began CPR and continued it while people filled the room, along with a crash cart bearing a defibrillator. Routines were followed precisely. Procedures were attempted. They failed.

I won’t let you go. You can’t die
, Sebastien told Tom in silent fury, the despair rising in him. The potency of it frightened him; he had let himself become close to Tom, and now he was paying the price.

For the third time he shocked Tom’s heart with the defibrillator. The lines on the heart monitor leapt, found an erratic rhythm, and clung to it. Nurses and residents kept working and watched in breathless silence, an almost palpable atmosphere of hope pervading the cubicle. Sebastien ground his
teeth and stared at Tom’s ashen, lifeless face.
Damn you, have the courage to fight. Don’t be a coward
.

He passed a hand over his forehead and found a sheen of sweat there. Shame nettled him. He was cursing a sick child for being helpless. But the fury, his own helpless rage, would not let go.

“We’re losing him again,” a nurse said. “No pulse.”

Sebastien stepped back. “Let’s get him to the OR. I’m going to reopen him.”

In the operating room he opened Tom’s chest and found what he had feared. Several sutures from the previous surgery had not held. Blood poured from Tom’s heart, flooding the chest cavity, soaking Sebastien’s hands.

“He’s bleeding out. He’s gone,” a resident said.

“No.” Sebastien issued soft, fierce orders. Hands moved around his, helped, obeyed, tried to match his skill and failed. He cursed the heart silently, bit the inside of his mouth until it bled, fought to remedy another surgeon’s poor work, while blood streamed everywhere. But he was winning. He could
feel
it.

There was no dramatic moment when life changed to death, just a slow defeat that pulled every ounce of energy from Sebastien’s body. Finally, it was time to stop pretending that death had not come. Sebastien stood in stunned silence, with his hands still inside Tom’s chest. Dully he stared at the carnage that had once been a wonderful little boy. He stepped back, blood dripping from his gloved fingertips. “I guess we can close now,” someone said wearily.

A few minutes later Sebastien went back to Tom’s cubicle, where the photograph of him—grinning on a sunshine-filled day—promised all the future an eight-year-old could want. Several residents followed him, curious about his mission. He ripped the photo down and tore it in two.

“Nice attitude,” one of the doctors muttered. “Real professional.”

Sebastien grabbed him by the shirt front and was drawing back a fist when the others latched onto him. The resident looked terrified.

Sebastien turned the resident loose and shrugged off the restraining hands. He went to the table beside Tom’s bed,
jerked the drawer open, and took Amy’s video token. No one was brave enough to ask him what he was doing. Or to comment when he went back to the operating room and kissed Tom on the forehead.

Amy forced herself to sit down and stop pacing around the waiting room. People shared the room with her; people pretending to watch
Hill Street Blues
on the television set in one corner, pretending that they weren’t nervous.

Amy shivered. This was the big leagues of waiting rooms. She checked her watch. She’d been in here for an hour. Something awful must have happened. Her fears were confirmed a few minutes later, when Sebastien appeared in the doorway. His beautiful suit had been replaced with green surgical scrubs, rumpled and baggy. His hair looked damp, as if he’d had a shower.

His face was set in a strained, impatient expression. He beckoned her briskly even as she hurried over. “Let’s go.”

“What happened?” He smelled of antiseptic soap, and the skin of his face was red, as if he’d scrubbed it very hard. Amy pressed her hands to her throat and shook her head. “Oh, no, oh Sebastien—”

“Don’t cry.
Walk.
” He grabbed her hand and led her down the hall, almost pulling her.

“Where are we going?”

“As far as we can.”

He tugged her into an elevator. They leaned against the wall. Amy felt the hard, hot clamp of his hand on her wrist. She was afraid, but not so much
of
him as
for
him. She’d never seen so much anger in anyone’s eyes. “The little boy died,” she said wretchedly.

“I lost him. He
gave up.
”

“Why do you talk about it that way? As if it were your fault? You tell me not to feel guilty all the time, but you—”

“Don’t analyze me,” he said in a voice full of warning. The elevator came to a stop at the basement parking level. He pulled her over the threshold and swung her to face him. “I’m not in a mood to be kind to you. I don’t want your simple little sentiments.”

“How about this, then?” She knew she was losing her mind, because a sane person wouldn’t do what she did next. She flung both arms around his shoulders and hugged him ferociously, and when he tried to push her away she held on. And then she stomped on his foot.

He made an ominous sound, lifted her by the elbows, and pinned her against the concrete wall beside the elevator doors. He looked furious, disbelieving, and desperate. “Are you insane?”

Her teeth were chattering. Her feet dangled against his legs. “Bingo. Stop it! Stop it, Doc! I feel like a real small sumo wrestler.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want to make you happy. I want to go wherever you want to take me. Anytime. Forever.”

His anger shook them both. Between gritted teeth he said, “I’m not taking you with me when I leave for Africa. You’re too young. I don’t want to be bothered with you. Do you understand?
I will never take you with
me.”

“I
said
wherever you want to take me.
Anytime
. Forget about the forever part. Stop arguing. We only have a week. Doc, I’m sorry about Tom. I’m so sorry—”

“Be quiet! Do I look like I need your sorrow? Do I look like I care?”

She was crying now, big tears sliding unnoticed down her cheeks. “Yeah.”

“Dammit! Don’t cry!” His throat convulsed. He put her down, his fingers tightening on her arms. “Don’t, don’t—”

“Doc, it’s okay, it really is. It’s okay for you to cry, too.”

“It’s useless! Nothing is helped by it!”

“So what’s the big deal, then?”

He shut his eyes and swallowed harshly, struggling for control. “Your logic … evades me, evades the issue—”

“The issue is simple. People die. You can’t die for them. You hurt. You cry. After grieving you feel better.” She struggled out of his grip and slid her arms around him again, then put her head in the crook of his neck. “Aw, Doc, you’re such a sweet guy, and you don’t even know it.”

He shuddered and took her in a harsh, desperate embrace, his hands digging into her back and shoulders. She
held him like that, standing in the muggy, dim recesses of a stark place, and listened to him cry.

She knew that she was an adult now; she had no fantasies about him changing his mind and taking her along when he left for Africa. She didn’t deceive herself that she could bridge the gap between their ages and cultures, or their status in society. But for now, he was hers.

He pressed his cheek against her hair. She drew one arm from around him and lifted her hand to the tears on his face. He was very still and accepting as she stroked them with her fingertips, even angling his face so she could reach both sides.

But when he spoke, his voice was bitter. “Is this your idea of making me happy? This is a rather fascinating first for me.”

“Doc, you’re so dumb sometimes.” She cupped his face in her hand and patted it gently.

“Enough. I’d hate it if anyone beside you saw me like this.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

They walked swiftly to his black Ferrari, their hands entwined so tightly that Amy’s fingers ached. When she was seated in the passenger side, he leaned across her and grasped the seat belt, then jammed it into its clip.

“Put yours on, too,” she said.

He stroked a hand down one side of her face, brushed his fingers over the small bandage on her chin, but ignored her order entirely. Amy felt a sad, poignant exhilaration as he jerked the car out of the parking lot and sent it rushing into the blue dusk of the summer evening.

They were silent while driving through urban streets draped in dogwoods; Amy clung to the armrest and watched Sebastien’s expression of fierce concentration as he whipped the powerful car onto an interstate between office buildings that glinted in the setting sun.

He was not driving toward his town house. She settled in the seat and tentatively rested a hand on his shoulder. When she looked at the speedometer it read ninety. Her heart thudding, Amy watched the utter confidence of his hands. Even the fury inside him couldn’t destroy their skill.
A sense of safety washed over her, instinctive and unquestioning.

Take me there fast, take me there so fast that I never look back
.

In an hour they reached the foothills of the mountains north of Atlanta. The night rushed black around them, and the highway was empty. “Where are we going, Doc?”

He gave a rough, startled laugh, as if disgusted with himself. “I don’t know. I don’t even know where we are now. How is that for irresponsible behavior?”

“Pretty nice try, Doc. But I think you can do better. If you really want to get lost, let’s get off this highway and find a nice dirt road.”

He did, and a few minutes later the Ferrari was spewing gravel down an alley of forest. The tops of the trees made inkblots against a sky full of stars. The road left the forest and slid between old pastures with fallen-down fences. It rose up a steep hill toward the crumbling silhouette of a chimney.

Sebastien plowed the car to a halt at the top, sluicing the front wheels into the grassy roadside. “More suggestions?”

“This is my kind of territory,” Amy told him. “You gotta roam it on foot. Comeon.” They left the car and she grabbed his hand. On a silent, mutual signal they broke into a run across matted grassland wilted by the summer heat.

A dizzying time later they collapsed on the slope of a valley that stretched for miles. Lights winked in the distance; cars sped along unseen country roads. A new moon was rising; Amy looked at Sebastien sitting beside her in the faint light but couldn’t read any of his emotions.

“Feel better?” she asked, her voice squeaking.

“Yes. Somehow …” He put his arm around her, and she leaned gratefully into the crook of it. He rested his head against hers and they watched the night sky.

“Wherever Tom is, he’s okay,” Amy whispered. “I hope you believe that.”

“Tonight I choose to believe every good thought you give me.”

“Sometimes you just have to throw back your head and—”

“Howl at the moon?” He hesitated for a moment, then
gave a long, bloodcurdling yell filled with anger and pain. It reverberated through the night, silencing the insects, making Amy shiver. He did it again. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she twisted to hold him. She caught his face between her hands and kissed him.

He made a harsh sound but took everything she offered, then wound his arms around her and returned fierce, raw energy so erotic that she shuddered and moaned against his mouth. He pulled back. “I said that I wasn’t in the mood to be kind to you. There is too much going on inside me tonight. It makes me reckless. This can only hurt you. Now stop—”