Of Flesh and Blood (47 page)

Erin wrapped her arms around Liesbeth and pulled her into a hug. Tyler took her other hand and gently squeezed it in his.

After a few moments, Liesbeth shook free of both of them. She looked sternly from one to the other. “I wanted you both to know about your family history. I needed to tell you what terrible damage secrets can do. If Maarten had only shared his story like so many other Holocaust survivors did . . . maybe then he wouldn’t have stayed up every night of his life with the ghosts.”

Liesbeth shook a crooked finger at each of them. “But promise me you will not remember Opa that way.” She patted the photo album with the
flat of her other hand. “Maarten was a wonderful man who rose above this terrible, terrible thing.”

Erin smiled warmly at Liesbeth. “Opa was the best grandfather any kid could want. That’s how I will always remember him.”

Tyler reached out and stroked Liesbeth’s arm. “Now I have even more respect for him, if that’s possible.”

Liesbeth dabbed at her eyes and smiled. “You know? I don’t think Maarten would be angry with me for telling you.”

“I am so glad you—,” Tyler began when the phone jangled in his pocket.

Jill!

Frantically, he dug it free and brought it to his ear. “Jill? What is it?”

“Ty,” she rasped, and stopped for several breaths. “Come home.”

Jill lay sprawled on the carpet in the same spot where she had collapsed minutes earlier. The spasms in her abdomen were more intense now, gripping her in wrenching waves. Her head lay only inches from a small pool of her own drool and vomit. The rank odor made her retch again, but there was nothing left to throw up. Her light-headedness had lessened since she’d crumpled to the ground, but even in her fog, she recognized that she must have been severely dehydrated to have fainted for the first time in her life.

The
C. diff
infection was leaching every drop of fluid from her. She could not believe how much had poured out already. But all she could think of was how badly the circulation to her uterus—and to her fetus—must have been compromised in her dehydrated state.

Our baby! Why did I send you away, damn it, Tyler?

Jill now realized how feeble her plan had been. She had hoped to ride out her infection at home and treat it with oral metronidazole, an old-fashioned antibiotic that was safe in pregnancy and used to be universally effective against
C. difficile
. But the medication wasn’t working. Besides, she could no longer keep the pills, or anything else by mouth, down. She needed intravenous rehydration. It was a risk Jill had hoped to avoid. If the doctors got wind of her
C. diff
infection, they would insist on treating her with the newest, most potent antibiotics to tame the superbug. She shuddered at the prospect. Those drugs were well known to cause miscarriages and birth defects.

In her mind, her whole future rode on this pregnancy. She considered it a miracle that she ever conceived in the first place. It probably would never happen again.

How can I take a medicine that might destroy or mutilate our baby?

Jill heard a door slam on the main floor. The rumbling thuds of running feet vibrated on the ceiling above her. A few seconds later, the bedroom door burst open and Tyler rushed in.

“
Jill!
God, Jill.” As he knelt down beside her, the sole of one foot sank into the collection of her bodily fluids, but he didn’t seem to notice or care.

Jill tried to smile but wasn’t sure if her lips even cooperated. “It’s not as bad as it looks, Ty. I just need an IV. A few bags of saline. That’s all.”

He shot his hand to her brow. “You’re burning up.”

With all her strength, she arched back from his hand. “I know. I’ve picked up a bug. Don’t get too close.”

The warning didn’t deter him. He reached out and stroked her cheek tenderly. “What bug?”

“There’s a stomach flu going around my lab,” she lied. “We think it’s the Norwalk virus. Whatever it is, I’ve got more than just morning sickness.”

Tyler pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

“No.” Jill shook her head. “You drive me. Please, Ty.”

“Can you even stand up?”

She swallowed. “I’ll try.” She buried her hands in the rough carpet and pushed herself up, but her elbows began to buckle as soon as her chest lifted off the ground.

“Let me.” Tyler slipped his hands underneath her waist and then hoisted her up, cradling her in his arms.

She turned her head from his face, desperate not to expose him to the superbug she carried. The deceit gnawed like a toothache, but Jill saw no other option; if he knew she had
C. diff
, he would force her to take those antibiotics that would be toxic to her baby.

“Ty, Norwalk virus is ultracontagious,” she said. “You need to get me a mask. Both of us.”

He carried her through the doorway and toward the staircase. “Don’t worry about that now, honey.”

She squeezed his arm as hard as she could. “You’re no help to me if you’re sick, too!”

His pace didn’t slow as he rushed her up the stairs through the main floor, but he muttered, “I have a mask in my briefcase.”

She wriggled in his arms. “Go get it now, Ty. Please,” she implored.

He hesitated and then stopped and laid her down on a couch in the family room. “I’ll just go grab it.” He turned for the stairs.

“It was so . . . messy . . . down there. Wash your hands!” she called after him.

He disappeared for a few moments. The rush of running tap water from upstairs eased her conscience slightly.

I don’t deserve him
. Again, she had an unwelcome flashback of stumbling onto that intimate moment between Tyler and Nikki at the nursing station on the SFU.
But I can’t lose him now
.

When Tyler reached her again, he was clutching a surgical mask. He leaned toward her and tried to slip it over her head, but she drew back from his touch. “I’ll do it.”

He nodded and held out the mask for her. She took it from him, careful not to touch his hand, though she longed for the reassuring contact. With trembling fingers, she fitted it over her face.

Jill looked up into Tyler’s worried eyes. “Where’s yours?” she asked.

“Don’t need one.” He pointed to the surgical mask that now covered most of her face. “That’s an N-ninety-five particle mask, Dr. Laidlaw. No bugs can penetrate it.”

“Right,” she said, but still turned her head when he hoisted her back up into his arms.

Tyler carried her out to his car. He laid her down across the backseat. Before he left, he reached out and squeezed her arm lovingly. “It’ll be okay, honey.”

Despite the coarse chills and fever raging through her, Jill felt so much safer in Tyler’s presence. She mustered a smile for him.

Eyes closed on the ride to the Alfredson, Jill could tell from the engine’s high-pitched whine and the way she was pulled into each corner that Tyler was driving well over the speed limit. It reminded her of a worried father racing a wife in labor to the hospital. A lump formed in her throat at the thought. If she had any fluid left in her, the tears would have poured.

When did I become such a sentimental marshmallow? Damn these hormones!

Tyler abandoned the car across two of the ambulance bays in front of the emergency room. He raced around to Jill’s side of the car and reached in to lift her from the seat, but she waved him back.

“Let me try.” She pushed herself up to sitting and swung her feet out of the car. She clutched the headrest in front of her and managed to pull herself upright. The ground swayed violently beneath her. Her legs buckled. She expected to collapse again at any second. Just before she dropped, Tyler’s hands slipped under her armpits and steadied her weight.

“It’s going to be okay, Jill,” he repeated, as he ushered her twenty or thirty long steps toward the sliding doors.

Everything will be okay
, she repeated to herself, despite the cramps racking her abdomen and the violent chills shaking her.
Our baby will be okay. She has to be
.

Inside the brightly lit modern entrance to the emergency room, Tyler led Jill toward the triage check-in desk. She stumbled several times but, as he was basically holding up her weight, they made it to the triage desk without a fall.

Several patients sat in the waiting room while others lined up at the registration desk, but no one was waiting at the triage desk. The gray-haired, motherly triage nurse rose to her feet as soon as she saw them approaching. Tyler lowered Jill into the wire-framed wheelchair stationed at the desk in front of the tall pane of glass with the inset microphone and speaker.

The nurse—Helen, according to her name tag—possessed that same welcoming, but slightly wary expression that Jill remembered all too well from her medical school rotation through the emergency room. She had hated the experience. The chaos and unpredictability of the ER conflicted with her need-to-control personality.

“What’s the problem, hon?” Helen asked in a friendly Southern accent.

Before either of them said a word, a stocky security guard with a Marine-style crew cut hurried toward them waving wildly toward the ambulance bays. “Sir, you can’t park there,” he hollered.

“My wife is sick!” Tyler snapped.

“She’s in good hands now,” Helen said to him. “Why don’t you go let those poor paramedics back into the parking lot again?”

Though her head swam and she felt as if she might fall out of the chair at any moment, Jill nodded her encouragement. “I’m okay, Ty. Go.”

He hesitated a moment and then turned for the door.

Helen rose from her seat. She slipped on a pair of gloves as she came around the desk wheeling a machine toward Jill for measuring vital signs.
She pointed to Jill’s mask. “What’s that all about? Are you concerned about catching something here?”

“I work here,” Jill said. “Dr. Jill Laidlaw. I’m a neurologist. I have gastroenteritis. I think it might be Norwalk. We’ve had a few cases in my lab.”

“I appreciate your precautions, Dr. Laidlaw. Thanks. That Norwalk is one contagious little critter.” Helen winked. “And in one hour I’m off for vacation. Don’t need to take it home to my daughter and grandkids in Florida.”

“Helen, I’m six weeks pregnant, too.”

Picking up on the worry in Jill’s tone, Helen smiled kindly. “Don’t worry, we’ll take extra good care of you,” she said as she unhooked the blood pressure cuff from the machine and wrapped it around Jill’s upper arm. She pressed a button and the cuff instantly began to squeeze tighter. As it measured the blood pressure, Helen pulled out an electric thermometer and sheathed it in a disposable cover. “Open up, hon.”

The nurse stuck the thermometer under Jill’s tongue. A moment later, the blood pressure machine uttered three long worrisome beeps. Helen’s eyes darted to the reading and the reassuring smile slid off her lips. Then the thermometer offered a lower-pitched long single beep. Helen glanced at it and shook her head ever so slightly. She whipped the cuff off Jill’s arm and dropped the thermometer on top of the machine. Stepping in behind the wheelchair, Helen shoved it so hard that Jill jerked forward as she flew toward the sliding frosted doors that led to the inner treatment area of the ER.

“What is it?” Jill asked.

“Your blood pressure is low. Too low. And your temperature is over forty degrees Celsius. I need to get you onto a stretcher. Get some fluids in you.”

“Am I in shock?”

“That’s for the doctors to decide, hon.” They passed through the doorway and into a room abuzz with noises and activity. “I just want to get you into a stretcher right away.”

The lights began to swirl around Jill until they coalesced into one bright blur. She was vaguely aware of her head falling toward her knees but could do nothing to prevent it. She heard Helen yell something, but it sounded as though the nurse was speaking underwater.

The bright white light tunneled into a single point.

Jill’s forehead slammed against something hard.

Her world went dark.

Tyler raced around the emergency room’s parking lot without finding a nearby spot. Giving up, he ditched his car in the on-call doctors’ lot behind the ER and then sprinted back to the entrance. As he squeezed through the sliding doors without waiting for them to fully open, his shoulder caught and dislodged one of the doors off its track with a crunch, but he didn’t stop to assess the damage.

The security guard jumped up from his desk at the noise and called to Tyler to stop. Tyler could not see his wife or the triage nurse anywhere in the waiting room. Ignoring the shouts from the guard, he flew straight for the next set of frosted doors and ducked sideways through them as soon as they parted.

While very familiar with the children’s hospital ER, Tyler had never stepped foot inside the Alfredson’s adult emergency room before. He stopped a moment to gain his bearings. The nursing station sat in the middle of the open room, with bays and beds circling it like spokes on a wheel. People, equipment, and stretchers were everywhere, most of them in motion.

Tyler turned to the short young man in scrubs who passed right in front of him. “Hey,” he called out. “I’m Dr. McGrath. My wife, Jill Laidlaw, just came in. You know where she went?”

Without stopping, the man shrugged and said, “Not a clue. I’m just the ortho resident.”

“Dr. McGrath!” A large woman in a lab coat beckoned to him from a few feet away.

He recognized the woman holding the basketful of test tubes as one of the lab techs who occasionally came to the SFU to draw blood from his cancer patients.

She pointed her arm straight down toward the far wall. “They just placed her in Resusc Two, Dr. McGrath.”

“Thanks!” Tyler nodded his gratitude and started for the resuscitation room, but he was halted by a voice from behind.

“Hey, sir!” the panting security guard called out. “You can’t just run in here like that—”

The lab tech waved the security guard off. “It’s cool, Charlie. His wife just went to Resusc Two.”

Tyler’s stomach sank as he realized that the room alone was enough to convey the gravity of Jill’s condition. He ran to the glassed-in room the woman had pointed to. The door was open but covered by a curtain. He pushed the curtain out of the way and bounded in.