by Nan Dixon
Carolina pushed open the door and hurried down the steps.
“Mamá.” She wrapped her mother in a hug. “How are you feeling? Should you be running around?”
Her mother air-kissed her cheeks. “Right now I’m fine, more than fine. I can’t believe these doctors. Always trying to scare me to death.”
Her mother’s black hair was long and curly. When it had grown back after her breast cancer treatments ten years ago, it had gotten curlier. Chemo curls. She smelled of—amber and sandalwood. Her blue eyes sparkled. There were lines around her mouth and eyes, but she was still beautiful.
And didn’t seem sick—at all. The tea churned in Carolina’s stomach. She’d run home from Nashville and missed her chance at a record contract. She bit her lip. “Is your cancer really back?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Her mother waved at the bags in the back seat. “Can you grab those, dear?”
Carolina gathered the bags. “I thought you were hurting for money.”
“I deserve some joy.” Her mother’s heels clicked on the steps. “I’m dying.”
Dying. The word smashed into her diaphragm, knocking the air out of her lungs. Her mother was her only family. If she died, there would be no one. She’d be alone.
“Come on.” Her mother held the door open. “Let me show you what I bought.”
Carolina dragged the bags up the stairs and into Mamá’s colorless living room.
“I found this incredible scarf so I had to find a dress. And, of course, I needed new sandals.” Her mother tugged the bags out of Carolina’s hands.
Carolina sank into the chair for the fashion show. How many times had her mother modeled beautiful clothes—clothes she couldn’t afford. The scarf was gorgeous—and expensive. But then, so were the dress and sandals. “Can you afford all this?”
Her mother twirled. “I deserve this. After I got pregnant with you, I had to give up everything—my career, my travels, my fun. Since my cancer is back, I refuse to go out looking like a hag.”
“Mamá.” She didn’t want to hear the tirade again, the one she’d heard all her life. She wanted the time they had left to be special. “Tell me exactly what the doctor told you.”
“There’s a big word.” Her mother waved her hand. “All it means is the cancer moved from my breast to my brain.”
Carolina released a heavy breath. “Metastatic?”
“Maybe.” Her mother spun around, holding up the dress. Then stumbled.
“What does Dr. Laster want to do?”
“Oh...stuff.” Mamá staggered to the sofa. “Not again.”
Carolina pushed out of the chair. “What’s wrong?”
“Maldición.” Her mother collapsed, holding her head. Her eyes filled with tears.
Carolina shot over to her mother. “Are you all right?”
“Headache.” Blood dripped from her mother’s nose.
“Mamá!” Carolina snatched up tissues and pressed them under her nose as her mother tipped her head back.
“How often does this happen?” Carolina grabbed more tissues.
“Headaches? Daily.” Her mother pinched her nose and moaned. “Bloody noses? Off and on.”
This was bad. “What can I do?”
“Shut the blinds.” Her mother sank into the pillows, closing her eyes. “Medicine. In the bathroom.”
Carolina ran around the room, pulling the blinds. Her mother winced at each clank. Dashing up the stairs, she stared at the bottles lining the bathroom counter. One after the other, she picked them up until she found one that talked about headaches. Shaking out a pill, she took the stairs two at a time and headed to the kitchen. After sniffing the milk, she poured a glass and hurried to her mother’s side. “Here you are.”
“Milk?” her mother waved her hand at the glass. “I want water. Or better yet, wine.”
“This is better for your stomach.” She helped her mother sit, forcing her to take the pill with the milk.
Mamá sank back, her fingers pushing into her temples.
Her mother hadn’t been faking. She was sick.
* * *
“AGENT CORNELL?” someone called. “Agent Cornell?”
Sage’s foot jerked from something poking his instep. He waved his hand, hoping whomever kept waking him would go away.
His hand wouldn’t move. What the...?
He forced his eyelids open, though grit sealed them together. Light drilled behind his eyes like a steer’s horn. His head pounded with each beat of his heart. Damn. Even his teeth hurt. “Turn. Light. Off.”
“You’re back.” A woman in nausea-inducing pink scrubs patted his leg. She ignored his request. “Hopefully, for good this time. Happy Labor Day.”
“Back?” he croaked. An antiseptic smell invaded his nose. Hell. He was in a hospital. “Labor Day?”
She brought a cup with a straw to his mouth. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness for two days.”
The water eased the dryness. Damn—two days? What had happened?
The nurse puttered near his bedside.
He lifted his hand but it wouldn’t move. “What the—?”
She unstrapped his hand. “I don’t think you need these anymore.”
“Why?” He pushed the word out. Exhaustion closed in on him like a tornado across the prairie.
“You pulled out your IV. And catheter.” She moved around the bed and released his other hand. “We couldn’t have that.” She checked his blood pressure, listened to his heart and lungs. He could barely sit up for her. And when he did, he swore his head would explode.
“Do you think you could eat?” she asked.
He wasn’t sure he could hold a fork. “Sure.” “I’ll order food.” She made notes on a computer. “There’s another agent who’s been waiting for you to wake. I’ll call him.”
Sage closed his eyes. If he didn’t move, his headache receded—a bit. He slowly raised his hand. Lifting his arm had him gritting his teeth and moaning. Bandages. Covering the left side of his head. Yet he couldn’t remember how he’d been hurt.
Shoes squeaked on the floor. “Pain?”
“Oh, yeah.” If he could call a cattle stampede in his head pain.
The nurse clicked away on a computer. “You have standing orders for meds when you wake. I’ll be right back.”
The door squeaked as it opened and closed.
He focused on the pain as it pulsed with his heartbeat. Each beat was an ice pick in his head. He counted. Got to four hundred and eighty-three before the door squeaked again. The nurse bustled back into the room, a syringe in her hand. She pushed the meds into his IV. “That should help.”
Warmth ran up his arm from the IV site. He should be asking what she’d given him. He should be asking her name. He should be asking what the hell happened. But words wouldn’t move from his brain to his lips. Too much effort.
Sage’s body melted into the thin mattress.
He must have slept, because when he cracked his eyes open, Kaden was sitting next to his bed working on a laptop.
Sage grunted.
“How’re you feeling?” Kaden asked.
He swore.
“That good?”
“What happened?” Sage shifted and the pain in his head didn’t roar to life. The meds must have taken it down a bit.
“What do you remember?” Kaden asked.
“Woods.” Sage remembered crouching in the woods. “Mosquitoes. Friggin’ sweat.” He frowned. Pain drilled behind his eyes. “They’d opened a window, so I wanted to find out how many perps. Dog. There was a dog.”
“Anything else?”
His memory was blurry. “Did the dog attack me?”
“Yeah.” Kaden got up and paced. “Bullmastiff. Over a hundred pounds.”
Sage touched his head. Two
days unconscious? “This is from a dog?”
“Well, a dog and a bullet.”
“I took a bullet?” Sage cursed.
“It winged you.” Kaden’s gray eyes narrowed. “The dog smacked you into the cement block of the house. Not sure why he didn’t rip out your throat.”
Why couldn’t he remember? “Did the team get the heroin?”
“Yeah. But the one who shot you escaped.” Kaden leaned on the windowsill, a frown pulling down the corners of his mouth. “I told you to wait.”
“Wait?”
“I was moving to cover you, but you charged in.” Kaden paced back to the bed. “Again.”
“But we got the drugs off the street?”
Kaden set his fists on the edge of Sage’s bed. “Of the three men, one is in custody, one is in this hospital, but the leader escaped.”
Sage closed his eyes, trying to recall anything besides the memory of heat and humidity. His stomach roiled. “I... I can’t remember.”
“Rest, kid.” Kaden moved away from the bed. “Margaret’s stopping by later.”
Kid. Sage cringed at the nickname. But when Sage had joined the Savannah FBI office, Kaden had taken him under his wing. “Am I in trouble with the boss?”
“Maybe. She’d have preferred to capture all three, but one of the guys has already given up the next level.” Kaden rubbed his hand through his short hair. “And they’re new names in the drug distribution business. The hole that Bole and Salvez left when we picked them up has already been plugged.”
“I...” It took too much effort to make his words and thoughts come together.
“You’ve got to start listening, Cornell. When you have a team—use the team.”
“Uh-huh.” Unfortunately he’d heard that before. But to be effective, to be of service to his country, he needed to take risks. It was the Cornell family way.
Damn, what would his father say?
CHAPTER TWO
CAROLINA GRIPPED HER mother’s hand as they waited for Mamá’s oncologist. Her fear of losing her mother was back. Mamá had had a CAT scan yesterday and they were here to review the results.
Were these the same miserable chairs they’d sat in ten years ago? Carolina had been fifteen and she’d focused all her energy on helping her mother through radiation and chemo to fight her breast cancer.
It’d been a week since she’d arrived and they were fighting the same ten-year-old battle. Maybe after Mamá received treatment, Carolina would return to Nashville and resurrect her career. Maybe Mamá could come live with her.
“Rosa. Carolina. Good to see you.” Dr. Laster, her mother’s oncologist, entered the room. “Rosa, you have some choices to make.”
Apparently, Dr. Laster was still as straightforward as Carolina remembered. The doctor turned a computer screen toward them and moved around the desk to stand between her and Mamá. “You have tumors in your brain, here and here. And a new one since your scan a month ago.”
“Wait. A month ago?” Carolina asked. When her mother had called, she’d sounded like she’d just gotten the news.
Dr. Laster nodded.
“Mamá. Why are you only discussing treatment options now?”
“I took that cruise with the law firm.” Her mother waved her hand. “I didn’t want to look hideous.”
“But your health?” Carolina couldn’t believe this.
Dr. Laster squeezed Carolina’s shoulder and shook her head.
“They were just headaches. I’ve had them for months.” Her mother pushed back her hair. “Dr. Laster will make the tumors go away.”
“Rosa, I told you—” Dr. Laster took her mother’s hand “—your prognosis, even with treatment, is less than a year.”
Less than a year? Tears slipped down Carolina’s cheeks. She’d thought Mamá would be treated and survive. How could she lose her beautiful, flighty mother?
“Don’t cry, darling.” Her mother smiled. “I’m not that easy to get rid of.”
They laughed. Carolina’s chortle a little more watery than her mother’s or the doctor’s.
“This time is different.” Dr. Laster took Carolina’s hand, sympathy filling her eyes. “Rosa, I need to confirm that Carolina is authorized to discuss your medical care and condition with your care providers.”
“Yes. Yes.” Rosa waved her hand.
“As I said before, please work with a lawyer and create your health directives. It’s time to get your affairs in order so you don’t have to worry in the next few months.”
Health directives. Affairs. Next few months. Carolina’s head swam.
“How I wish for an affair,” her mother sighed. “But I only loved Carolina’s daddy. He’s been dead twenty years.”
Her mother sounded like she’d abstained from sex for twenty years, but that hadn’t been the case.
Carolina choked out, “What are the next steps?”
“Whole brain radiation therapy. Two weeks. This will keep you comfortable, Rosa.”
“Comfortable?” Carolina’s hands trembled. “Won’t radiation eliminate the tumors?”
Dr. Laster settled into the chair next to her mother. “If you’re lucky. But waiting has—hurt. I wish you’d come in months ago when you started having the headaches.”
Her mother waved her hand. “I know you’ll fix me.”
Her mother had ignored headaches and put off therapy for a cruise. Carolina tried to swallow the lump in her throat, but it was stuck.
Dr. Laster took them through the next steps. Her assistant booked appointments. Preliminary visits. Follow-up visits. Consults. Carolina wrote them down because her mother wasn’t paying attention.
When it was time to go, Carolina gathered her purse and her mother’s. Mamá left the room first.
Dr. Laster put a hand on Carolina’s arm. “I didn’t want to say this in front of your mother, but her behavior may become erratic. It’s important to make sure you have authority over her care.”
“It’s already erratic.” Since she’d arrived, Carolina had noted Mamá’s mood swings. They were more than her mother’s normal flightiness. “When the headaches hit, they’re bad.”
“Keep using her medication. Try massage if it gives her relief.” Dr. Laster handed her pamphlets and a business card. “Call me anytime. And use the nurse line, too.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m sorry to be seeing you again.” Dr. Laster gave her a one-armed hug. “I’ll make Rosa as comfortable as possible in the time she has remaining.”
Time remaining. Each phrase struck blows at her heart. “Thank you.”
She hurried into the waiting room. Her mother stared at the fish in the fish tank. “I want an aquarium.” Mamá pointed a finger at an angel fish and laughed. “I need angels watching over me.”
Carolina wrapped her arm around her mother’s shoulder. “Where would we put it?”
“You’ll figure it out.”
Carolina guided her to the car. Hopefully, Mamá would forget the aquarium. Her mother had had a lot of crazy ideas lately. Most of them forgotten.
She needed to talk to her mother’s attorney. Fast.
She wasn’t returning to Nashville. She was here for the duration. For Mamá.
* * *
SAGE TUCKED THE thin blanket around his waist. There was nothing heroic about lying in bed with a bare ass while his boss visited. At least the catheter was gone.
Agent-in-Charge Margaret Mason sat next to Sage’s hospital bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Better.” Heat spread across his face. Great, now he was blushing.
She raised an eyebrow. “I was told you were having dizzy spells and headaches.”
How could he answer? “I am. They’re...better.”
“The good news is that the bust you were on netted us the next dist
ributors up the line.”
“Good.” He nodded. Then had to cover the wince.
“The bad news.” Margaret tapped her finger on the mattress. “Kaden says you rushed in without waiting.”
“I still don’t remember him telling me to wait.” But some of his memory had returned. “Since our intel was faulty, it seemed prudent to assess the situation. We didn’t know there was a third man or a dog.”
Margaret’s eyebrow crept a little higher. “And if you’d stayed back as instructed, I might not be visiting you in the hospital.”
He swallowed. “If there hadn’t been a dog, they wouldn’t have known I was under the window.”
She nodded. “But it was unusual we had this much information. Sage, you need to listen to your partner.”
“I... I will.” Was his job on the line? Sweat raced down his spine. He was worthless without his job.
“I understand the doctor hasn’t cleared you for duty,” Margaret said.
“I’m hoping to change his mind.” Bile crept into his throat. He couldn’t spew in front of a superior. “I’m being released tomorrow.”
“That’s good news.” Margaret stood. “I want you back on the job.”
He relaxed. “That’s what I want, too.”
How else could Sage live up to his family’s code of honor? Sitting around, seeing if his vision cleared and his head stopped hurting wasn’t their way. From his father who was a Medal of Honor recipient, to his oldest brother, the fireman, who ran into burning buildings, and his other brother who was a rescue diver in the Coast Guard, he needed to make them proud.
Margaret pointed a finger at him. “Heal and follow doctor’s orders.”
“Will do.” When the door closed behind her, Sage exhaled. That ordeal was over.
Getting to his feet was iffy. This morning he’d almost taken a header just getting to the john. Second time should be easier.
He threw off the blanket, eased his legs over the side and stood. The world wobbled. He hung on, not caring that his ass was flying free. Scooting around the foot of the bed—next time he would exit the other side—he lurched to the wall, collapsing and catching his breath.
In the bathroom, he did what he needed and clutched the door and then the door frame. It was four or five steps to the bed. Easy. His head swam with each step. The last step was more a stumble. He face-planted at the foot of the bed.
