Bad For Each Other

by Kate Hathaway

  "And Shooter was in no shape to perform anything, Kick," Beau put in. "I'm sure nothing happened. She was dressed just like she is now. He was passed out. That's why she came looking for somebody."

  Charlie placed his hands on his hips, his mouth flattened to a thin line and his black eyes fierce. "He's gotta go. I don't care if we've got a replacement for him or not. He's done."

  The other men offered no argument. They all watched as the girl, looking very pale, made her way back to the couch. When she was seated, Charlie said, "I'm gonna call your daddy."

  He wouldn't have thought she could get any whiter, but she did. "I wish you wouldn't do that," she said, a panicky expression on her face.

  Charlie squeezed his eyes shut and scratched a hand through his hair. It turned his stomach to have to ask, but in this day and age, it was necessary. "Does he hit you?"

  She looked at him like he'd hit her. "No!" she answered with a huff. Blinking down at the floor she continued. "He's going to be so disappointed in me."

  O-o-oh, he knew what she was feeling now. One time he'd driven the pickup just a little bit tiddly and his dad caught him. He'd eat glass before he'd see that expression on his old man's face again. "Well, maybe you'll think real hard next time before you do something so disappointing," he said without a lot of sympathy.

  She raised her eyes to his pleadingly. "Couldn't you just—"

  "No. Either I call your daddy, or I call the police and they call your daddy. Now give me your number."

  She wrote the information on the hotel stationery in a wavering, childlike hand and gave the paper to Charlie. "You sound old," she said sullenly.

  He gave a humorless laugh and watched the other men turn their heads to hide their smiles. "Gettin' older by the minute," he agreed, picking up the phone.

  When he finished he spoke to the girl once more. "You can lie down in the other room until your father gets here." He watched her walk away, wiping her eyes, and then turned to Harlan. "Keep a lid on things. We're gonna go have a talk with Shooter."

  Grabbing his hat, he left the room with his brother.

  Molly walked alongside the stretcher as Tobie was wheeled to his room. With his admission, things had happened very quickly. He'd been probed, palpated, percussed, auscultated, x-rayed and stuck—in record time. An antibiotic now trickled its long, winding path through the clear tubing into his chest Tobie slept, exhausted, both from his illness and the procedures necessary to put a name to it.

  They had a tentative diagnosis. Sinusitis. Something most people shrugged off, or treated for the discomfort it caused. But for someone with a compromised immune system, such as Tobie, this was serious. Life-threatening. For him there was no such thing as a "common" cold.

  She waited, biting her nails, outside the door to his room while the hospital staff transferred him from the stretcher to the bed, attached whatever needed to be attached and saw to his comfort. She would spend what remained of the night at his bedside.

  Dr. Morrissey approached and, seeing his slow step, his sagging shoulders, she wondered briefly how he could bear to do this day after day. The victories were still too rare, and so hard won.

  He stopped next to her, leaned one hand against the wall behind her and clasped the stethoscope hanging around his neck with the other. "We're not sure what bug is causing his problem," he said without preamble. "I've asked for an infectious disease consult. Tobie's getting a broad-spectrum antibiotic. We should know within hours, a day at the most, whether he'll respond."

  Molly nodded, totally incapable of a verbal reply.

  "He's got some immune function, Molly. He's not completely without reserves anymore."

  His words were meant to reassure her, she knew. But they had the opposite effect. He had never, in all the time he had been treating Tobie, called her by her first name. His dropping of that last formality showed the measure of his concern.

  Before she could frame a response, he continued. "Have you called his father?"

  "Oh my God," she whispered past bloodless lips. Sagging against the wall, she put a hand to her face.

  He looked down at the floor and then back to her, his expression grim. "I don't want to alarm you," he said, pausing for a moment while she struggled for control. "But I think he should be told."

  She covered her mouth with both hands, swallowed hard, and nodded stiffly. Morrissey brought his hand from the wall to her shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. "You can use the phone in the office."

  He walked with her to his cubbyhole on the unit and shut the door softly when he left to give her some privacy. She sat for a few moments, clenching and unclenching her fists to try to stop their trembling. As it was, she had to punch the number Charlie had given her three times before she could get it right. He was staying in a hotel tonight, she remembered from their conversation earlier. She should be able to get through to him directly. The phone rang twice, three times.

  "Hello?"

  A woman's voice. She must have gotten the number wrong anyway. "I'm so sorry," she said, glancing at the wall clock. Two-thirty. It was an hour earlier where Charlie was, but still very late to be waking the wrong person. "I must have dialed wrong. I'm trying to get in touch with Charlie Cochrane..."

  "Who? Oh, Kick."

  Molly heard recognition in the voice. She felt as if she had opened a door onto blackness and stepped into an abyss. "Is he there?" she asked, aware that she couldn't conceal her disbelief, her shock. Seconds passed, as if the woman were actually searching.

  "He...he had to leave...for a while." She sounded half-asleep, or half-drunk. Or both. "He should be back soon." Apparently that was meant to be helpful.

  Molly took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "Can you give him a message?"

  "Sure."

  That eager-to-please tone again. This was unreal.

  "It's very important." In a few terse words Molly gave the information and hung up. She sat for some time, unblinking, staring at the phone.

  Then, summoning all of her will, she struggled for composure and went to sit with her son.

  Charlie opened the door to his hotel room, past weary, closing in on stuporous, in time to hear the girl's father tell her, no, she couldn't ask for Mr. Cochrane's autograph and she wouldn't be allowed to keep it if she got it. He decided straight away that he liked the man.

  He introduced himself and shook hands, sparing a glance for the girl sitting very subdued on the couch. She'd remember this night for a long time to come. If her head had cleared any.

  Father and daughter rose to leave, Harlan holding the door for them, when the girl lifted her chin suddenly and turned to Charlie.

  "A woman called," she said, "while you were gone." Charlie shifted his startled gaze to Harlan, disbelieving. "I don't know anything about this. I was in the can, Kick. Not five minutes."

  His fatigue giving way to dread, Charlie addressed the youngster. "What'd she say?" What else could happen this god-awful night?

  With obvious effort the girl strove to collect her thoughts. "She said...Tony...?"

  "Tobie," Charlie provided, gritting his teeth.

  "Yeah." She rubbed a hand across her brow as if that would clear the fog, while Charlie fought the urge to shake her. "She said he had a...crisis?" She looked at him blankly. "You're supposed to meet her at the hospital."

  Charlie felt as if he'd been gut-punched. He turned to Harlan who stood, hands spread, an apology on his lips, and interrupted him.

  "Get me a flight."

  Chapter 14

  Molly watched as the brilliant orange beam piercing the slats on the hospital window blind widened and paled, even as the room around her grew brighter. The sun was coming up.

  It hurt to close her gritty eyes, and her shoulders were stiff from holding them hunched. She hadn't slept at all. The old terror had returned. The unspeakable fear that Tobie would slip away from her forever while she slept unaware.

  A nurse Molly hadn't seen before came into the room to check
Tobie's IV and hang another of those small plastic packets of fluid containing the antibotic. She smiled at Tobie when he roused as she took his vital signs and listened to his chest. Molly observed her every move with unwavering scrutiny.

  Tobie drifted off again quickly. The nurse smoothed his sheets and turned to Molly. "His temperature is down a little," she said in a low voice.

  "He's getting better?" She knew anxiety suffused her words. She felt so useless amid the procedures and techniques and contraptions that sustained her son.

  "He's holding his own."

  A noncommittal response if she'd ever heard one, Molly thought as the nurse adjusted the blinds and left the room. Caring though the hospital staff were, they didn't share the desperate, single-minded intensity of her hope and her fear for Tobie.

  Only one person did.

  She needed him with her.

  There. She'd said it, if only to herself. Admitted it. Through the endless hours of the night, she'd kept the flood tide of her thoughts of his betrayal at bay behind the seawall of her will. Now they spilled over, swamping her, choking her. She pressed a fist to her mouth, rocking disconsolately, as her tears flowed.

  Damn him. And damn her treacherous heart.

  She needed—wanted—Charlie.

  Molly sat quietly, absorbing the silence and the peace. Tobie' s nurses had told her she could grab some breakfast while they gave him his bath and did their physical evaluation. She had chosen instead to duck into the little chapel in a wing off the unit

  She couldn't pray, not really. She'd started out angry, accusing, decrying the unfairness of Tobie's situation. Then she'd progressed to bargaining. I will be a better mother. I will overlook my husband's transgressions if his presence makes Tobie happy. I will never ask another thing for myself. At the moment her thoughts were reduced to a single plea, repeated like a mantra, over and over. Let Tobie live.

  Charlie slid into the pew alongside her. She knew it was Charlie, though she didn't raise her head to look at him. From the corner of her eye she spotted the jeans, the boots, the hat he set on the bench next to him. "Are they still busy with him?" she whispered, dispensing with any other words of greeting.

  "Yeah." He kept his voice low, too, though it echoed in the small confines of the hollow room. "Another five minutes, they said. Morrissey's there."

  She stared at her fingers, clasping and unclasping them, waiting. She didn't have to wait long. "What happened, Molly?"

  Her shoulders slumped as she let out a breath. "I don't know. He was fine. More energy. He'd been able to have a few friends over. I told you that."

  Her eyes still downcast, she watched him spread a long-fingered hand over each knee and tried hard not to think about where those hands had been. What they'd been doing. The two of them would deal with that later.

  She licked her lips. "Maybe he picked something up from one of the children. I noticed he was a little stuffy yesterday. Maybe I was...inattentive...neglect—"

  The hands on his knees clenched. "Don't do this, Moll. Don't second-guess yourself. No one could take better care of him than you. I don't blame you. Don't blame yourself."

  She didn't respond. He made an impatient sound and grasped her chin, twisting her head to face him. "Look at me!" he growled.

  She did, her eyes wide, hurt and despair shining in them.

  He relaxed his hold immediately. Cupping her jaw in his broad palm, he touched the tip of one finger to a tear at the corner of her eye. His voice was gentle, but determined, when he spoke again.

  "We're not going to lose him, Molly."

  She nodded weakly, angry with herself that words from him could reassure her, but reassured all the same.

  After a time they rose to return to Tobie's room. On the way Molly pondered what had struck her during that brief glimpse of Charlie's face. His fear and concern were plainly revealed. Unshaven, eyes red-rimmed, he looked older, haggard, the creases around his mouth and eyes deeper.

  It took longer to register in her mind how he didn't look.

  He didn't look guilty.

  Charlie rolled his head back and around on his shoulders, hearing the crackle as the kinks worked themselves out Morning had given way to afternoon and Tobie still slept.

  He'd wakened a few times to take something to drink and complain, but he'd seemed a little disoriented, and that scared Charlie more than anything. His temperature wasn't normal yet, but it hadn't spiked again the way Molly said it had when he was admitted.

  Wait and hope. Filled with restless, impatient energy, Charlie had never been any good at that.

  In the chair next to his, Molly got some much-needed sleep.

  He glanced her way in time to see the elbow she had propped, chin in hand, on the wooden armrest slip and jar her awake. She blinked a few times and then settled back into the same precarious position. With a loud sigh Charlie nudged his chair closer to hers and nestled her head against his shoulder.

  He tangled his fingers in her hair and pressed a kiss to her brow. The first kiss either had given the other since he arrived. He laid his cheek on the top of her head and tried to swallow his bitter, bitter disappointment

  Neither of them had mentioned that phone call. Instead, like the elephant in the living room nobody wanted to acknowledge, they'd just kind of tiptoed around it.

  He tried to see things from Molly's point of view. She had a problem with trust Understandably. He knew he should explain. But what if she didn't believe him? What, then? He didn't think he'd be able to stand seeing her shift her gaze away, suspicious, skeptical, unwilling to look him in the eye.

  Hell, the situation would be funny, if it wasn't so sad. He tried to picture his own mother in like circumstances. If she called his father's hotel room in the middle of the night and a female answered, there'd be hell to pay, for sure. Come to that, he doubted there'd been a single instance, other than when his mother was in the hospital adding to the family, that his parents had spent a night apart.

  Given the way he made his living, he and Molly wouldn't have a marriage like that. They had to deal with the separations. All the more reason that their relationship had to be based on trust A trust it seemed impossible for her to extend.

  "Dad."

  He glanced over at the bed to see Tobie leaning on the side rail, clear-eyed, an urgent expression on his face. "I gotta pee. Dad."

  Charlie smiled. "No, Tobie. It just feels that way. You've got one of those tubes in. Goes into a bag. See here?" He tried to reach the bag, but couldn't without disturbing Molly. Using the toe of his boot, he lifted it a little away from the side of the bed so Tobie could get a look at it. The nurses were in periodically, measuring the contents, observing, nodding meaningfully, writing something on that clipboard hanging at the foot of the bed. Charlie didn't know what to make of it. Looked like pee to him.

  Tobie peered over the rail, then picked up the sheet, took a gander at himself and shrugged. "Did you bring me my buckle?" he asked, already off on another tangent.

  Charlie laughed out loud. "Not this trip. I'm workin' on it."

  Tobie gave his father a more thorough appraisal. "You don't look so hot, Dad."

  "Well, you're lookin' lots better."

  Charlie was saved further criticism when Dr. Morrissey walked in, pleased to see his patient so animated. Molly stirred and rubbed her eyes while he checked Tobie over.

  "I think we've got this bug on the run, Tobie," Morrissey said, more for the benefit of the boy's anxious parents. He turned to address them. "We'll continue the course of antibiotics, but he's showing a good response."

  Charlie gripped Molly's hand and felt her answering squeeze. For the first time since that moment in the chapel, their eyes met And, for the first time since his arrival, she smiled at him.

  She 'd sounded very young.

  The thought nagged at Molly. That was the one piece of the jigsaw puzzle that didn't slip easily into place, that had to be forced. And in the forcing caused the whole picture to buckle. />
  Sitting there in the hospital room, listening to her men snore softly, she had plenty of time to think. Plenty of time for that thought to nag.

  She'd played games with Tobie until he figured he'd beaten her enough and decided to take a nap. Sprawled awkwardly in the vinyl chair next to her, Charlie slept the almost comatose sleep of the exhausted. The blameless? The innocent?

  She didn't know. But the very fact that she harbored doubts about what had gone on the previous night counted for something.

  She'd sounded very young.

  Not just the quality or tone of her voice, although they had given the impression of a girl still in adolescence. The way she expressed herself, her inflection, her eagerness to please, all suggested someone still in her teens.

  She'd sounded very young.

  And that flew in the face of everything Molly knew about Charlie. She remembered vividly how he had wrestled with his desire for her while she was still in school. She cringed, recalling the times she'd all but thrown herself at him, and he'd held back. Not all that many girls in her class had graduated virgins. But she had.

  So had Charlie, if she were to believe what he said. And she found, despite the lessons gleaned from her own family life, that she was inclined to.

  The truth of the matter was, when you came right down to it, Charlie was a bit of a prude. He had a very strong sense of what was proper. He didn't hit on fans, easy as it would be for him, and he didn't bother to hide his disgust for stars who did. He didn't consider women prey. He preferred a relationship with a partner, an equal.

  Still, last night there'd been a young woman in his room who knew who he was and awaited his return. What explanation could there possibly be?

  You would never ask, Moll. Only accuse. Charlie's words came back to lacerate her. How many times had she lashed him with her suspicions, rejecting his denials, until finally the denials ceased? What had it cost them? And their son? And what of the new life she had only begun to suspect grew within her?

  A nurse stepped into the room with Tobie's dinner tray and set it on the over-bed table when she saw he was asleep. She spoke a few words to Molly, glancing frequently at Charlie. She had started for the door when she saw him wake, and paused.