Clay

by Jennifer Blake

  God, he felt helpless. Guilt seized him as well, as if he’d somehow wished this on Janna with his insistence that she face the possible consequences of bringing Lainey so far into the swamp. Certainly there was no satisfaction in being right.

  Something had to be done. There was only one possibility that he could see.

  He hesitated a second, then asked in soft query, “Janna?”

  “Yes,” she answered in a voice like tearing silk. “The hospital. We have to go.”

  “I’ll be back from Arty’s with the airboat by the time you get her tubes out and throw what you want to take with you into a bag.”

  She frowned at him. “My car’s outside.”

  “Twenty minutes to Turn-Coupe by water, three hours to Baton Rouge by car. Your call.”

  She closed her eyes while she drew a deep breath. Then she opened them again. “Hurry.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  On the way out, he snatched up the cell phone from the kitchen table and punched in a number. Seconds later, he was talking to Roan. In less than half a minute, he had the promise of an ambulance and police escort waiting for them when they docked at Grand Point. Tossing the phone back down, he hit the porch at a dead run.

  The rain had stopped, but the lake steamed in the dark like a giant cup of black coffee. Digging a paddle into the murky liquid, he sent the boat flying toward Arty’s place.

  When Clay returned, Janna was standing on the dock with Lainey, wrapped in a sheet, in her arms. She was pale and her hair straggled around her shoulders in long, shining hanks, but he’d never in his life seen anything that twisted his guts with so much longing, respect and possessive passion. Leaping to the dock, he bundled mother and daughter into the airboat, and then shoved off again. As the gap widened between the rickety dock and Jenny, he sprang back onboard. Dropping into his seat, he turned to Janna. “All set?”

  She nodded with a jerky movement of her head. “Just go.”

  Something in her face as she met his gaze in the dashlight clutched at his heart. He felt the full weight of responsibility for this move press down on his shoulders. Over and above that, he acknowledged a flash of pride that she had enough confidence to follow his lead, plus something more that he didn’t dare examine. The dependence and gratitude in her face were unwanted, even as he felt his stomach muscles clench to board-hardness with his determination not to fail her.

  Voice deeper than expected, he said, “Hang on.”

  The airboat roared into life, then Clay sent it flying toward Turn-Coupe. Trees, water, fog, blown spray; these things whipped past and around them. He narrowed his concentration to the stretch of water just ahead of the boat as he negotiated twisting channels and stretches of open lake he knew so well that he could have followed them blindfolded as well as in the dark. The airboat skimmed the water, bouncing on a soft cushion of air and spume, dancing around curves, answering his slightest touch instantly and with consummate grace. Time spun past as well. He glanced at Lainey. In the faint glow of the running lights, the girl appeared comatose, uncaring for the wind of their passage that whipped her hair across her white face. Clay pushed Jenny into a higher speed.

  Minutes that seemed like eons later, he swerved from the main channel into the long, fingerlike cove that would lead him home to Grand Point. Ahead of them, he caught the welcome flash of blue and red lights, saw the shapes of an ambulance and Roan’s police unit. Over the airboat’s roar, he called to Janna, “Almost there.”

  “Yes. I see,” she said with a catch in her voice before she brushed Lainey’s hair away from her closed eyes then pressed her lips to the top of her small head. She looked away then, but not before Clay caught the sheen of moisture in her eyes.

  A mere fragment of time later, he was slowing, letting the airboat slide up to the Grand Point dock under its own impetus. Hands reached out to pull the boat in and secure it. Med techs in blue-and-white saluted Clay and spoke quietly to Janna as they took Lainey from her. They transferred the child to a waiting gurney with care and dispatch, then loaded it into the ambulance. Janna climbed inside and settled at the head of the gurney. The doors closed, and the emergency vehicle rolled away.

  Clay put his hands on his hips as he stared after the ambulance, watching it disappear around the bulk of the main house, headed for Turn-Coupe. His responsibility was over; Lainey’s well-being was out of his hands. He should have been relieved, but only felt empty inside.

  Roan had left his patrol unit and walked out to stand beside him on sun-warped boards of the dock. “You did it, huh? Got the woman and the kid here where you wanted them?”

  Clay met his cousin’s stern, assessing gaze in the blue flash of the lights from his patrol unit. “It’s not like that.”

  “Isn’t it? Even a little?”

  He shook his head. “If Lainey doesn’t make it…”

  A corner of Roan’s mouth took on an odd curl. “Think her mother will blame you?”

  “She could.”

  “With reason?”

  “God, no!”

  “What I thought.”

  As his cousin fell silent, Clay said in brooding tones, “Lainey should be at Children’s Hospital in New Orleans at the very least, maybe even Oshner’s Medical Center. Someplace with a major kidney unit.”

  “Simon Hargrove’s a good man,” Roan said, speaking of the head physician and surgeon at the Turn-Coupe hospital. “He knows what he’s up against and is waiting to get started. He’ll make the right decisions for her.”

  Clay nodded. It would have to be enough. For now.

  “Think I’ll head on over there, see to it that the kid gets checked in all right,” Roan said, tipping his head in the direction of his police car. “You coming?”

  “Try leaving without me,” Clay answered.

  Janna was seated in front of the admissions desk, filling out forms, when Clay hit the hospital emergency room. He lifted a hand, but didn’t stop. From somewhere in one of the back examining rooms, he could hear Lainey moaning. Following the sounds, he found her stretched out on an examining table while Dr. Hargrove checked her and the duty nurse, who happened to be Clay’s cousin, Johnnie Hopewell, tried to keep her still.

  “It’s okay, punkin,” he said quietly as Janna’s daughter turned piteous eyes in his direction. “I’m here.”

  The nurse, a plump, motherly sort with curling dark hair and a hundred-watt smile, looked up. “Speak of the devil,” she said cheerfully. “I was just telling Lainey that you’d show up any minute.”

  “Darn right,” he replied though his gaze was on the little girl on the table.

  “Benedict,” Dr. Hargrove said in greeting as he reached across the patient for a handshake. “Glad you’re here. Our girl is not good. She’s had a sudden spike in her blood pressure, maybe from emotional causes, maybe from infection. It probably brought on the seizure her mother described, as well as her unconsciousness when she first arrived. She seems to have a degree of paralysis on her left side, and I’ll bet my next year’s house note that her hemoglobin is low. We can’t rule out other problems without a battery of tests. But the main thing is to get her stabilized and her blood pressure down. Speed counts as much as accuracy right now.”

  Clay nodded, since the news wasn’t too far from what he’d expected. “Think you can handle it here?”

  “Yes, if I’m right,” Hargrove answered with precision. “It’s a matter of finding the right combination of drugs as fast as possible. But she can be airlifted to Baton Rouge or New Orleans, if that’s what you want.”

  “It’s her mother’s decision.” The Flight for Life medical helicopter had been an option in the back of Clay’s mind all along. It was common practice for rural hospitals to airlift critical patients to more sophisticated centers, and it would mean access to expert treatment for Lainey.

  “My mistake,” Hargrove said. “I need to know, though, one way or the other.”

  Clay gave him a level look. “You can still get things s
tarted, can’t you?”

  “I have the mother’s signed permission, if that’s what you mean.”

  Every second counted, Clay knew, and his gut instinct warned that time was running out. The elevated blood pressure could still cause a full-blown stroke with attendant brain damage, complete paralysis or even death. If Lainey were his child, he wouldn’t want treatment delayed an instant longer than necessary.

  “Do it,” Clay said. “I’ll clear it with her mother.”

  Johnnie, who had been following the exchange between him and the physician, said, “This young lady said she’d let me give her a couple of little sticks if I promised to use this stuff I have here to numb the skin and keep it from hurting. Well, and if you’d hold her hand.”

  Clay could see that the “little sticks” in question were going to stretch to several for tests, medications and to insert a heparin lock for the IV solution and antibiotics that waited nearby. Even knowing Lainey was in good hands, the best available within a hundred miles, Clay still cringed inside to think of it. He could feel sweat pop out between his shoulder blades and across his forehead. The last thing under the sun that he wanted to do was to stay in the same room when so many needles were plunged into anyone, especially Lainey. It was too much like feeling them pierce his own skin.

  And yet, how could he refuse? Lainey was willing to endure it if he stood by her. Her courage touched him as nothing ever had before. He couldn’t chicken out while she needed him, was ashamed that he would even think of it. It was such a little thing, after all, and the knowledge that he could help her by doing it seemed to ease the ache in his heart.

  Clay picked up the small, cold fingers that lay on the disposable paper sheet tucked under Lainey’s frail arms. His quick wink brought a watery smile to her pinched face, but the terrified resignation that lay behind the effort almost killed him. In that moment, he’d have given anything to be able to take the pain for her. Anything.

  “Yeah, she’s a brave kid, and my sweetheart to boot,” he said, his voice husky and his eyes never leaving hers. “Hold on tight, punkin. It’ll be over in a few seconds.”

  Lainey gave him a solemn nod, then her thin fingers curled firmly around his palm. He held her tense gaze a brief moment longer, until her small nod signaled that she was ready. Then he looked across her at Johnnie and Simon Hargrove, and his hard stare said plainly that they’d better make damn sure that they didn’t hurt her an iota more than necessary and that the seconds he’d promised were all that it took to get the job done.

  By the time Janna arrived five minutes later, Lainey lay quiet and still with her eyes closed so her long lashes rested on her small, puffy cheeks. Clay glanced up as the door opened. He saw Janna put her hand to her mouth while the color receded from her face until it was bloodless.

  “Sedated,” he said in sharp explanation. “Just a mild tranquilizer and Benadryl to prevent a reaction to the packed blood cells they’ve started. It made her sleepy. That’s all.”

  Janna stared at him a long moment, then looked toward the different IV racks around the head of the bed. Finally she met the gaze of Clay’s cousin who had been detailed to remain with the patient and check her blood pressure at ten-minute intervals. As Johnnie added her nod of reassurance, Janna looked around for a chair. Locating one against the wall, she dropped into it then closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wallpaper behind it.

  “There was so much paperwork because I don’t have insurance,” she said, her voice uneven. “I don’t know what I’d have done if Roan hadn’t stepped in and told them to let it go. This is a strange hospital for Lainey, with doctors and nurses that she doesn’t know. I was afraid she’d be terrified. They kept saying you were with her, but I couldn’t be sure.”

  Clay wanted to ask why she would think he was unreliable, but it wasn’t the time or place. Voice even, he asked, “You saw Hargrove?”

  “He told me the next twenty-four hours will be crucial.” Her lips curved in a hard, tight smile. “Of course they always are.”

  “Then you know about the possible airlift.”

  She opened her eyes. “He mentioned it. Apparently you didn’t think it was necessary.”

  “Not so. Say the word and it’s done.”

  She studied him as she absorbed the message behind his simple statement, that he was perfectly willing to defer to her wishes. Finally she said, “I’ve heard mothers of other renal patients talk about helicopter airlift. It costs thousands.”

  And she’d said there was no insurance, Clay remembered. He tilted his head. “You’d be for it if cost wasn’t a problem?”

  “But it is.”

  “I got that part. Not to worry, there are ways.” Clay tried for a casual, offhand note, but wasn’t sure how well he succeeded. The look his cousin Johnnie gave him said she suspected that what Clay had in mind involved his own pocketbook, still he knew she wouldn’t interfere.

  “Charity.” The corners of Janna’s mouth turned down and she looked away toward the window where the light from outside security lamps made an artificial dawn. After a second, she asked, “Do you think she’s in good hands?”

  “You can’t beat Hargrove and his staff. As for the hospital, it may not have every space-age gadget in the book but it has everything that’s important.”

  Her chest rose and fell with a deep breath. “They seem to care about what happens to her instead of seeing her as just another problem. I’ve had enough of big hospitals, anyway. I think…I’d just as soon she stayed here.”

  For a single second, Clay felt a surge of sheer masculine satisfaction that she’d accepted his judgment. Then reality set in. If anything happened to Lainey, it would be his fault. Again. Still, he could take that possibility so long as he was allowed to stick close enough to fix anything that might go wrong.

  “I’ll tell Hargrove to move her into a private room,” he said, and turned toward the door.

  Janna frowned and opened her mouth to speak, but Lainey made a small, moaning noise at that moment. Janna came to her feet in a rush and stepped to the bed. Reaching out an unsteady hand, she brushed her daughter’s arm as if to draw comfort from the touch as much as to give it.

  Clay watched her for a second, though he was almost sure she’d forgotten he was there. She was pale and her hair was tangled from the rough night and rougher airboat ride. Her clothes looked as if she’d slept in them, which she had. But no other woman had ever made him feel such drawing pain around his heart. He wanted to take her in his arms, to shelter and protect her and make everything right in her world. He wanted her to turn to him, to accept what he had to give, including the deep mingling of his body with hers in that most ancient of comforts against pain and grief. There was raw need in his impulse but that wasn’t all of it. It felt timeless, elemental, the ultimate answer to the fear of hovering death.

  It wouldn’t work. She had no use for him or his protection, especially if it involved physical contact. The sooner he accepted that, the better off he’d be. Clay turned on his heel and went quietly from the examining room.

  Roan was standing near the glass doors of the emergency room entrance, talking to a med tech, when Clay strode into the vestibule. As his cousin turned toward him, the fluorescent lighting from overhead gleamed on the star of his office. With a last word for the uniformed medical attendant, he walked to meet Clay.

  “So what’s the decision? The girl staying or is Hargrove shipping her out?”

  “Staying,” Clay answered in clipped tones.

  Roan gave him a long look. “You don’t sound too happy about it.”

  “I never knew making decisions about the best thing for a kid was so hard.”

  “Welcome to the real world. But I guess this means I can tell Luke to stand down?”

  “Luke?”

  “I’ve got him on alert, out at the airport.”

  Clay stared at his cousin a long moment. Luke’s small plane and his crop-dusting experience had come in handy before, b
ut he didn’t fly for just anybody. In any case, the Flight for Life helicopter would have been point-to-point service and have carried medical personnel to care for Lainey. “Why?”

  “I figured Oshner’s in New Orleans would be the most likely transfer. The girl would go on the helicopter, of course, but that would leave her mother stranded four hours away, just when she was needed most.”

  Surprise threaded Clay’s voice as he said, “Good thinking.”

  “It’s a family emergency,” his cousin told him, his gaze clear. “One of our own is in trouble.”

  “Me? How’s that?”

  “Don’t play dumb.”

  Clay stared at Roan a moment before understanding moved over him in a shock wave. “The blood and tissue tests?”

  “Positive, according to Doc Watkins. He said you and young Lainey Kerr are so much alike that you should have the same fingerprints. The only way she could not be Matt’s daughter is if she was really yours.”

  Fierce gladness welled inside Clay. Then the suggestion in the tail end of Roan’s words drew his brows together so tightly that he could feel them mesh above his eyes. “That’s a shitty thing to say. If you think—”

  “I don’t, no. But some might, the way you’re hanging around her.”

  “To hell with them.”

  A ghost of a smile came and went across the stern lines of Roan’s mouth. “Thought you might feel that way. So how are you going to explain it when the clan arrives?”

  “Meaning?”

  “Kane and Regina, Luke and April, maybe even Tory, though you know—”

  “The wedding’s next month and she’s busy. Yeah, I know.”

  “Just a friendly reminder. You don’t show up, she might take out after you with a pistol.”

  “As if you’d let her.”

  “Can’t always stop her. You know Tory.”

  He did. His soon-to-be cousin-by-marriage was as unpredictable as she was gorgeous. Clay liked her a lot, but that didn’t mean he was going to plan his life around what she wanted. He said, “I’ll be there. Unless something more important comes along, like taking Lainey to New Orleans, after all.”