Knowing that falling back to sleep was a total no-go at this point, Tess gave up the ghost and slid her feet to the floor, tiptoeing into the bathroom. Who knew when she’d get another shot at indulging in a shower with eight massage jets? Anyway, Jackson would probably only sleep in for so long. She made her way through her routine, letting the hot water loosen the tension that had knotted her muscles after last night’s conversation with Declan and enjoying the lather/rinse/repeat of it all…right up until she cut the side of her ankle while shaving.
“Ow! Mother f—” Tess bit her lip to kill the rest of her curse, although, the yelp she’d just let out hadn’t been delicate. The cut wasn’t too bad, she realized upon closer examination, but it was in one of the worst spots for movement. She wasn’t going to have any hope of getting it to stop bleeding unless she put some pressure on it. Turning the water off, she hopped out of the shower, searching frantically for—aha!—she snatched a wash cloth off the counter. Of course, it was snowy white. She was going to ruin the damn thing by the time this cut finally decided to stop bleeding.
“Plan B, Plan B. Let’s put that medical degree to good use,” Tess whispered to herself. She scanned the bathroom counter, thinking, thinking, and ah! Declan’s shaving kit was barely peeking out of his travel bag. Maybe he had a styptic pencil in there. It would sting like a sonofabitch, but it would do the job.
Grabbing a robe from the hook on the back of the door, Tess slung the fluffy velour jacquard over her shoulders, then hobbled over to the spot where Declan had hidden his bag in the corner of the vanity, under a bath towel. She reached for his shaving kit, but the red plastic case beneath it caught her eye, and she picked it up instead.
Wait, this couldn’t be right, she thought as confusion pumped through her, mixing with an odd shot of adrenaline. Why would Declan have a sharps container in his bag? They were specifically for safely disposing of needles, and none of the medication in Gupta’s trial was injectable.
There’s always the option to supplement the trial medication with insulin in a worst-case scenario…
Dread washed over Tess, sending a spray of goose bumps in its wake and making her heart pound faster in her chest. But no. That couldn’t be right. Declan couldn’t be on insulin, because he’d told her his follow-up had been fine. That the trial meds were working. That he was getting better.
The prescription insulin nestled next to the sharps container, with his name and Dr. Gupta’s right there on the packaging, said otherwise.
“Tess?” Declan came into the bathroom, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. “I heard you cry out. Are you…” He trailed off when he saw the sharps container in her hand, but still, he said, “You’re bleeding.”
She coughed out a sound of disbelief. “And you’re taking insulin. Call me crazy, but one of those seems like a way bigger deal.”
His shoulders dropped, but only for a fraction of a second. “I was going ta tell you once we got back.”
“You should’ve told me the minute you knew!” Tess said, her anger rising. “Insulin, Declan? It’s a huge deal!”
His eyes flashed, dark green and dangerous. “You think I don’t know that? You think I somehow missed the fact that despite all these trial medications, my kidney’s decided to go on a walkabout anyhow? That maybe I don’t understand how serious it all is? Because believe me, Tess. I do.”
Tess looked at the sharps container in her hand, betrayal seeping in beneath her anger. “And how long have you been lying to me about it?”
Declan’s pause was a warning that she wasn’t going to like his answer, and oh, it was spot-fucking-on. “Since my follow-up with Gupta after the repeat scans.”
“That was a week and a half ago,” she bit out. Blinking back hot tears—oh, my God, she would not cry on top of everything—she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I knew you’d be upset”—he waited out the noise she made as a non-verbal you think? before continuing—“and I knew we were coming to this wedding, where you’d need all your energy ta focus on dealin’ with your mam. I didn’t want ta throw you, and tellin’ you would’ve only done that.”
He had to be kidding. “So, you lied to me for my own good?”
“There’s a lot more to it than that,” Declan argued. “I know how much you wanted the trial ta work. I didn’t…” He broke off in frustration. “I didn’t want ta hurt you, Tess.”
“But you did,” she said, that pain joining the emotional free-for-all building in her rib cage. “You lied to me! We’re supposed to be in this together, Declan. Me and you. God, in sickness and health was the whole fucking point! I can’t help you if you aren’t straight with me.”
“I was going ta tell you as soon as we got back home,” he said. “I swear.”
Tess closed her eyes, the reality of the situation kicking in good and hard. The trial hadn’t worked. It had been Declan’s last hope. “How long did Gupta give you before you need dialysis?”
His voice dropped to a whisper, but it didn’t soften the blow. “Eight weeks.”
Oh, God. Her head snapped up. “Only eight?”
“At best.”
Time slowed. Tess recognized the stop-beat moment—God, she’d spent years training her central nervous system to reflexively react to the tidal wave of shock and adrenaline that accompanied life and death situations. She had the span of exactly one breath to assess all the variables. To run through all the possibilities in her head. To know with absolute certainty which path would yield the best outcome, and what actions to take.
“You need to find your sister,” she said.
Declan, who had been moving toward her, jerked to a halt just shy of arm’s length. “Tess, I—what?”
“You need to find your sister,” she repeated, the eerie calm that always washed over her when things went completely tits-up taking hold. “The best way to get you healthy is to find a kidney donor now, before your functions get any worse, and Saoirse might be a match. We need to find her, Declan.”
“No. Even if I knew where ta look…no.” He shook his head.
But Tess refused to let go. “You don’t have time to be stubborn.”
“You think I don’t know how little time I’ve got?” Declan snapped. “I’m not goin’ ta waste it on a lost cause. When Saoirse said I was dead to her, she meant it. Gupta bumped me up on the transplant list. I’ll find a different donor.”
The tears Tess had kept at bay threatened again, but no. No. She could not fail at this. She would save him. “Are you seriously not going to at least try to find your sister to see if she’ll help you?”
“No, I’m not,” Declan said, emotion filling his stare and turning his voice to gravel. “It’s like I told you last night. I can’t place my hope in somethin’ I know is long gone. Even if I could find her, even on the off chance that she is a match, Saoirse is as dead ta me as I am ta her. She wouldn’t even give me the time of day, let alone a kidney.”
“You don’t know that,” Tess insisted, but Declan simply shook his head.
“I do. Promise me you won’t try ta find her, Tess. We’ll find a kidney another way.”
Once again, Tess measured the facts. Mentally compared all of the possibilities. Factored in all of the potential risks and the worst-case scenarios.
And then she took a deep breath and lied.
“Okay. We’ll do it your way. I promise I won’t try to find her.”
30
Tess sat in Dr. Gupta’s waiting room and tried like crazy not to fidget. The week and a half that had passed since she and Declan had returned from Elizabeth’s wedding had encompassed pretty much every emotion in the book, and probably a few that Tess had invented outright. She’d cycled through anger (the car ride home from the resort had involved an exchange of nine words total, only when absolutely necessary), then fear, then dread, then more fear, finally landing on her personal favorite: determination. She and Declan had gradually put their argument from the resort aside not lon
g after they’d settled back in at home—not that she wasn’t pissed that he’d kept his worsening condition from her, but holding a grudge, even a well-founded one, wasn’t going to help his health any. Plus, the phone call she’d made to Parker, then the subsequent one he’d made to his former Station Seventeen-mate, Shae McCullough and her fiancé, James Capelli, who ran tech and surveillance for the Thirty-Third Precinct’s elite intelligence unit, were going to piss Declan off plenty.
The conversations Tess had had after that, including the text she’d gotten from Charlie an hour ago? Were probably going to make him never want to speak to her again, and call her selfish, but she’d wanted the time they had before that to be spent as happily as possible.
“Hey,” Declan said, stepping into the waiting room. The dark circles under his eyes had grown more pronounced this week, his energy levels taking a definite dive. The front-and-center reminder took a jab at Tess’s chest, but she forced herself to smile.
“Hey.” She stood to kiss him. “You ready?”
The look of irony on his face wasn’t lost on her. “I s’pose.”
The terms of the trial were still in place even though the meds weren’t working, which meant poking and prodding, no matter what. Of course, if Tess’s plan worked, he wouldn’t have to endure it for much longer.
It’ll work. It has to work.
“Good afternoon, Declan. Tess.” A scrubs-clad nurse waved from the doorway leading back to the exam rooms. “You can come on back.”
They went through the now-familiar motions of a vitals check and updated health history (“how are you feeling?” had never been a more loaded question) before Gupta joined the party. She reviewed Declan’s labs, and ugh, the results made Tess’s stomach hurt.
“The good news is that the insulin is keeping you relatively stable, for now. Any problems with the insulin pump? Soreness, redness, signs of infection?” She gestured to the pump that delivered insulin on the regular via a port that had been placed in Declan’s abdomen the day after they’d returned from the wedding.
“No, ma’am,” he said.
“Good.” She continued to go over some of the symptoms he might see in the upcoming week. Tess’s cell phone buzzed, the incoming text from Charlie sending her heart into her throat, but, God, this was the only shot they had at a solution.
“Well, if you don’t have any questions, then I think we’re good until next week,” Gupta said, but Tess took a deep breath and shook her head.
“Actually, there’s one more thing we need to discuss,” she said, prompting confused frowns from both Declan and the doctor. Her pulse raced fast enough to tempt her toward dizziness, but she had to stand firm. There was no other choice.
“Declan’s got a living blood relative that he didn’t tell you about. A half-sister,” Tess elaborated.
“Tess,” he hissed, his eyes wide with surprise and dark with the growing anger she knew would come. “I already told you. We’re not doin’ this.”
Gupta’s brows traveled up toward her hairline. “If you’ve got a half-sister, there’s a chance she might be a match for a direct donation. That’s something we should definitely pursue, especially considering how advanced your kidney disease has grown.”
Declan’s jaw tightened, and he sent his words through his teeth. “We’re not pursuing it.”
Tess inhaled. Exhaled. Then said the thing with the potential to save his life, even though it might ruin the only true love she’d ever known.
“Actually, we are. Because your sister is a type and tissue match, and she’s sitting in the waiting room right now.”
Declan blinked, certain he’d misunderstood. Tess couldn’t have just said that Saoirse was here, just a handful of feet away.
“I don’t understand,” he said, his voice shaking despite his efforts to steady it. “That’s not possible.”
“It’s very possible, because I found her,” Tess said. “When we got back last week, I reached out to Parker’s friend, James Capelli. He works for the RPD’s intelligence unit. I asked him to run a full search for any Saoirse Flanagans he could find, and then we went through all of them until we found her. She moved around quite a bit before settling back in Ireland two years ago.”
“You called a detective?” Declan ground out, at which point Gupta lowered the electronic chart in her hand and quietly excused herself to give them a bit of privacy.
“Capelli’s a surveillance expert, but yeah. Pretty much. You said you’d had trouble locating her when your mother died, and I didn’t want to waste any time.”
“I also said I didn’t want you ta try and find her, and you promised me you wouldn’t,” he snapped, the words leaving the nasty aftertaste of anger in his mouth. Christ, how could Tess have betrayed him like this, when she knew full well what Saoirse had done? “And not only did you find her, but you told her I’m sick?”
“Of course I told her you’re sick, Declan,” Tess said, emotion rising in her tone. “You need a kidney, and you’re out of time.”
All the fear, all the anger and betrayal and pain he’d ever felt over his mother dying so suddenly and his sister abandoning him—of losing the only family he’d ever known—came rushing up to the surface, and damn it, Declan couldn’t cage it. “You don’t get ta make this call for me, Tess! You had no right!”
Tess’s shoulders locked into a rigid line, her stare filling with fight and fire. “Someone had to make it, and it wasn’t going to be you! You’re so scared to hope that you didn’t see the answer that was right in front of your face. But I’m not afraid to hope, Declan. Not when it comes to this.” Here, her voice softened. “Not when it comes to you. I won’t lose hope.”
His pulse slammed against his eardrums, the rapid thump-thump-thump-thump pressing at his temples as she continued. “I’ve only spoken with her twice, once to tell her you need a kidney, and then again when she found out she’s a tissue match. I didn’t ask her to give you a kidney, and she hasn’t offered to do so. But she wanted to see you face to face. I know that this is hard—”
“You don’t,” Declan insisted, his emotions like a living thing in his chest.
But Tess just shook her head. “I do. I know you’re scared she’ll say no, and I know you’re angry with her about the past. I know you are furious with me, and I know I deserve it. But I will never, ever give up on you. This is the best chance you have at getting a viable kidney, and I will not let you die on my watch.” Where before her voice had softened, now it turned to steel as she stood up and said, “I would do anything to save your life. Including this, even if it means you’ll never forgive me. But your sister is here, and she wants to see you. Please. Just give this a chance.”
For one bright beat, Declan wanted to believe as Tess did. He wanted to hope.
But then his defenses roared back to life, reminding him, in no uncertain terms, what happened every single time he dared to hope. When he’d left Ireland. When his mother had died. When he’d had to leave the Air Force. He always ended up burned and alone.
This time wouldn’t be any different.
“You’re right,” Declan said, his shoulders snapping into place and his heart slamming closed. “I won’t ever forgive you. You knew I didn’t want this. You knew how much I had on the line, how I felt, and still, you did what you wanted. But here’s the truth, Tess. You can’t save everybody, and you sure as hell can’t save me. And since that’s the only reason you married me in the first place, as far as I’m concerned, we’re through.”
31
Tess was numb. No, wait. That wasn’t quite right.
Other than the gaping hole in her chest, Tess was numb. But her legs had gotten her all the way back down to the ED, even though she’d covered the three hours left in her shift before she’d even gone upstairs for Declan’s appointment. She’d slipped out of Dr. Gupta’s office through the staff exit—not because she didn’t want to see Saoirse, whom Charlie had picked up at the airport and brought to the hospital, but because
she didn’t want to see the woman before Declan did. Well, provided that he would actually come to his senses and talk to her. And provided that she, in turn, wouldn’t smash him into tiny bits by saying she had no intention whatsoever of considering kidney donation, even if it would save his life.
No. No. Declan might be furious at Tess for what she’d done, enough to end things, even. But she would not lose hope. Saoirse had listened to Tess when she’d called. She’d agreed to undergo the preliminary testing, then said she wanted to see Declan, that she “had things ta say that were best done face ta face.” She could still save him.
Even if that would mean that Tess lost him forever.
“Who pissed in your Cornflakes?” Don asked, interrupting her from her zombie impersonation.
“Oh. I, uh…” She aimed at a half-hearted attempt to come up with a snarky comeback, and missed wide. “I don’t know.”
Don frowned. “Dr. Michaelson?” He was beside her in an instant, and huh, who knew the big guy could move so fast. “Oh, no you don’t. Come with me.”
Tess followed him into the lounge, because why the hell not, where he looked at doctors Young and Boldin, who had been catching up on charts at the table. “Hey, Romeo and Juliet. Yes, you two,” Don barked at the interns, whose eyes had gone wide. “Go find the Rat Pack and tell them to get down here right now. All six of them.” After a beat, he added, “Why are you still here? Go.”
Tess had to give the interns credit. They worked quickly. Not even two minutes after Don had sent them packing, Charlie, Parker, Natalie, and Jonah came barging into the lounge, with a breathless Harlow and Connor bringing up the rear a minute later.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” Natalie asked, and Don shook his head.
“I don’t know what happened, but something isn’t right. You need to fix her,” he said, pointing a beefy finger at each of them. “I can’t carry the entire sarcasm load around here by myself, you know.”
Beyond Just Us (Remington Medical Book 4): A Single Parent Marriage of Convenience Romance Page 27
