Then one morning in early April, he woke with a fever and refused to eat the pabulum Paige tried to spoon into him. She was still nursing him, but after two or three gulps of milk, he turned his head away from her breast.
It was the first time he'd ever been ill, and definitely the first time he'd refused to eat. Alarmed, Paige took his temperature. It was high, alarmingly so. She gave him aspirin, sponged him in tepid water, and called the clinic to say she wouldn't be in.
By late afternoon, Alex's fever had risen alarmingly in spite of medication, sponging, and even ice water packs to the groin. He was flushed and listless, his breath coming in short pants. He wouldn't swallow even water, and Paige was beginning to be concerned about dehydration. She'd checked his throat and ears, and neither seemed inflamed.
Feeling foolish at herself for being a nervous mother, she called the pediatrician Sam had recommended, who confirmed that she was doing exactly what he'd have done himself, adding, "If he doesn't improve, bring him in to the office first thing in the morning and I'll have a look at him. If you're concerned during the night, call me."
Trying to stay calm and rational, but needing reassurance and support, Paige dialed Sam's office number.
"I've got two more patients to see, and then I'll be there," he promised, and she was too grateful to protest.
She'd seen Sam only a few times since Christmas. When she opened the door for him, he gave her a hug before he even said hello. "Kid's probably just teething, and the two best doctors in Vancouver are unable to diagnose the problem," he teased her, bending over Alex's crib.
Sam performed the exact examination Paige had done herself a number of times that day and reached the same conclusion.
"He's spiking a pretty good fever all right, but damned if I know why. I brought along a different medication, we'll maybe give it a try."
The drug was administered rectally, and Sam stayed to see if it would be effective. Paige tried to visit with him, but her every nerve was attuned to the baby dozing in his crib.
"I saw Leo the other day. He said you guys see quite a lot of each other." Sam's voice was nonchalant.
"We do, but it's a friendship and nothing more, Sam." It made her irritable to have to be defensive.
He got up and walked over to the window, staring down at the tiny park and the daffodils that were in bloom. "You decided yet about going back, Paige? Didn't you say it had to be in the spring?"
His question struck a bull's eye, right at the center of everything that had plagued her all winter. "Why are you asking me all these questions?" Her voice was shrill, and she knew she was being unreasonable, but the strain of worrying about Alex combined with the guilty knowledge that she was avoiding making a decision about trying to return to Battleford made her snap at him. "I don't go around prying into your personal affairs."
He turned from the window, but instead of getting angry, he came over and rubbed her shoulders. "Easy, Doc. I'm not very diplomatic, am I? See, I'm trying to tell you something here, and I ought to just blurt it out. The thing is, I've met a woman I kinda like. Besides you, that is. Which is why I haven't been around much this last while. I didn't want you to think I had my nose out of joint over Leo or anything."
Paige was already ashamed of her outburst. "Oh, Sam, that's just great! I'm really happy for you, and I'd love to meet her, as soon as Alex is better. Is she a doctor? A nurse?"
He shook his head. "She's a policeperson. A Mountie, actually."
Paige's mouth dropped. "A Mountie?"
He grinned, enjoying her surprise. "She was visiting her sister, who's one of my patients. She wanted to be in the delivery room when her nephew was born, and we sort of hit it off. Her name's Christine."
"Christine." Paige saw the color deepen in Sam's cheeks, the expression in his eyes change. He was in love, and it made her long for Myles.
"I wanted to say something to you about Leo." He sat down on the couch beside her and took her hand. "Don't take this the wrong way, but the guy's in love with you, and you really ought to think carefully about this whole idea you've got about trying to get back to Battleford."
She started to protest, but he interrupted. "It's dangerous, Paige. I don't have the foggiest notion how the hell it works, but Leo says it could be really dangerous, and I believe him. You've got Alex to think of; it's not just you anymore. And Leo's a good guy. He's an eccentric, but his heart's in the right place. That first wife of his was an absolute bitch, but the guy never once says anything bad about her. He's even rich, not that money matters that much to you. He inherited money from his mother's family, a lot of money. He's bonkers about Alex, and if you gave him the slightest encouragement, I know he'd be there for you."
Paige felt miserable. "I know. I know all that, Sam. The trouble is, I don't love Leo. I'm in love with my husband. I'm in love with Surgeon Myles Baldwin." Repeating his name and tide made him seem closer to her for a second.
"And you're going to try to go back?"
Alex began to cry, and she shot to her feet and hurried in to pick him up.
Sam came too, and they both felt the baby's head. It was clear that Alex was cooler, that the medication Sam brought had worked. The thermometer confirmed it. Alex's temperature was down.
Paige felt weak with relief. She sat in the rocking chair and lifted her sweatshirt and nursed him, and this time Alex drank, not with his usual gusto, but at least not refusing the way he'd done before.
Sam was exuberant. "There now, he's back on the rails again. Like I said, he's probably cutting a molar, and we're too dumb to know." Sam grinned at her, as relieved as she was that the baby was better. He glanced at his watch. "Oops, I've got to go, Christine's waiting for me. Call if you need me."
"Thanks, Sam."
He hesitated. "Think about what I've said, okay? Because I'm so darned happy myself, I'd like to see you settled and content. In this century."
She heard the outside door close behind him, leaving her alone with her baby. She stroked Alex's forehead, nearly sick with relief and gratitude, smoothing the damp, dark curls. He was cooler, and he was eating again.
Her underarms were damp with perspiration, her stomach, empty and knotted all day, rumbled with hunger now that her fear had subsided.
The question that haunted her days and nights was there in her mind, demanding an answer.
What would have happened if Alex had spiked that kind of temperature in Battleford?
He lay heavily against her stomach, warm and damp and fragrant, one small hand resting on her breast, his eyes meeting hers in silent communion as he swallowed her milk. As he did so often, he stopped nursing for a moment and smiled up at her, his wonderful, trusting baby smile.
He was more precious to her than her own life, and she knew in that instant that she couldn't take him back. She couldn't deliberately expose him to danger, to a place where she had no tools to protect him, no resources to fall back on. She felt her heart tearing in two, knowing she was forsaking Myles for their child.
Forgive me, my dearest love. Understand, and forgive.
Slow tears dripped down on the baby's soft skin, and with a fingertip, she wiped them away, along with hopes and dreams and the searing memory of a love that she instinctively knew she'd find only once in this lifetime, a love she'd have to sacrifice for the sake of the child in her arms.
Now and Then: Chapter Twenty-Five
Part of her knew it was only the dream, but the sand caves smelled real, damp, filled with the pungent odor of wood smoke and hot, coppery blood, and in her ears echoed the sound of Marguerite groaning, the muffled screams that were bringing her child, the frightened hammering of her own heart in her chest—
Paige came out of the dream, but the sound continued.
"Alex. My God, Alex."
She wrestled out from the sheet, somehow wrapped in a tight shroud around her body. She leaped up from the bed, fumbling on the bedside light. His crib was only a few feet away, yet it seemed to take an eternity to
reach it.
The sound he was making. God, the sound he was making.
His face was scarlet, his eyes rolled back in his skull. Milky foam bubbled from his mouth. His body was rigid, and even as she stared in horror, his limbs jerked and shook.
He was convulsing. Her baby was convulsing. Paige fought back the primitive, immobilizing terror that gripped her. She forced her finger into Alex's mouth, making certain his tongue wasn't choking him. His temperature had shot up again; his skin was like fire against her hand. With her free hand she loosened the snaps on his blanket sleeper, waiting through the eternity the seizure took to subside and allow his small form to relax.
At last he opened his eyes and recognized her, and his mouth quivered. He pouted and then gave a helpless, wavering cry, and she scooped him up, held him tight against her as she dialed the number for Children's Hospital.
"It's okay, my darling, Mommy's here," she crooned, and when the switchboard answered she asked that they alert Alex's pediatrician and have him meet her at the hospital immediately.
She stuffed a bag with the things Alex needed, pulled on a pair of sweats and a jacket, and within half an hour, her son was being admitted.
For the next five days, Alex's temperature fluctuated. The increasing number of specialists eddied in to consult on his case couldn't agree on a diagnosis, and Paige existed in a narrow world that consisted of a small room painted a cheerful yellow, a high-sided crib with a mobile that played a lullaby, and an unnamed atrocity that threatened to consume her child.
She stayed with Alex every possible moment, snatching brief moments of sleep on a cot in his room and eating whatever the kitchen supplied, caring for him herself, supervising each and every useless treatment the specialists prescribed.
She felt nauseated all the time, but she forced herself to eat because she refused to stop nursing Alex. He was drinking enough to avoid dehydration, and she knew the value of breast milk, but she also knew that the moments spent with her listless baby at her breast were the closest she came to sanity during those days. Her milk seemed to be the only thing she could give her child that had any value.
She understood the hospital system, she knew exactly what the barrage of specialists who converged on his crib were searching for—positive signs that her son had some nameable, treatable disease.
She also knew that after five days they had no more idea than she what was wrong with her baby, and she knew too that they'd come to resent her involvement. She was a doctor and she understood their limitations.
They ordered more tests, a barrage of tests.
Paige refused to allow any of them unless the experts explained to her exactly what they thought to gain by each and every one, exactly what effects these tests would have on Alex.
This was her child; each needle in his tiny veins had to have a valid explanation, each exposure to some new machine had to be worth the risk it posed to his system. They were forced to cancel several procedures because Paige knew they were both painful and unproductive.
The tests she agreed to showed that Alex's liver and spleen were enlarged. There was no sign of malignancy, but something was very wrong. The fevers continued in no predictable pattern, and Alex grew weaker and more listless.
Sam came far more often than she suspected he had time for, and from the first day, Leo spent hours with her in Alex's small room. He talked or was quiet, depending on what she needed. He insisted that Paige go outside, walk in the rain for ten minutes, have soup in the cafeteria down the street, shower, do any one of the many things she needed or wanted to do, while he sat beside the crib and held Alex's tiny hand or walked up and down with Alex on his shoulder, singing the baby some Western song about love gone wrong.
Instead of the things he suggested, Paige spent the time away from Alex at the computer, studying every obscure childhood illness she could locate that had similar symptoms.
Not trusting even the computer, she went to the medical library and hauled back armloads of textbooks, reading them while Alex slept. There were countless conditions that had similar symptoms, but none that were identical. Alex tested negative to those few that were even possible.
On the fifth afternoon, after eight hours of near normality that aroused cautious hope inside of her, Alex's temperature shot up higher than ever before, and the familiar routine of drugs, tepid baths, ice-water packs, hypothermia blankets began all over again. This time, a drip was inserted in his tiny foot to allow massive doses of broad-base antibiotics, on the chance that they'd subdue whatever was causing the infection.
When Leo arrived that evening, she slipped out of the room and walked into a storage closet down the hall. She locked the door behind her, buried her face in a stack of fresh towels, and screamed until her throat was sore and her body shook so hard she could barely stand.
The following morning, the doctors admitted that they still had no idea what was wrong, but whatever it was seemed to be progressing at a rapid rate. Alex's blood cells now showed definite signs of some general massive infection.
Paige no longer felt like one of the doctors. She was a mother, she couldn't discuss any part of this dispassionately. She listened as they summed up their conclusions.
"Whatever is wrong with your son has become life threatening. We feel the time has come for more aggressive measures, Dr. Baldwin." The chief pediatrician was an older man, probably a grandfather, Paige mused. In his gentle voice he listed all the possibilities, the drug therapy that he thought might perhaps help.
His voiced faded in and out. In Paige's head, like a videotape automatically turned on, she saw herself, frantic because of her helpless, hopeless feeling about little Ellie. She heard herself ask Myles a question.
"If she was your child, Myles, what would you do?"
"I'd take her to a shaman," he'd replied.
The pediatrician was still talking, speculating about an obscure form of leukemia, about chemotherapy, about bone marrow transplants, about environmental diseases so new they had no name. "This would seem to be a phenomenon," he concluded. "We must begin treatment as soon as possible."
"No." Paige looked at him, looked at the other doctors, and said again, in a stronger voice, "No. I'll be discharging Alex within the hour. Thank you for all your efforts on our behalf."
A babble of protest rose like static, but she didn't bother explaining.
A clarity had come to her mind through the weariness, and terror, and pain. It was as if Myles stood at her elbow, shaking his head and telling her where she'd gone wrong.
She'd made such a grave mistake, thinking she could protect Alex. Keeping him in this century hadn't kept him safe. Instead, it had deprived both him and Myles of knowing and loving one another. She'd been incredibly selfish, incredibly weak and stupid and self-serving.
She'd forgotten that Alex was a special child, a child conceived of love in another time. Perhaps keeping him here was like attempting to transplant a delicate seed that needed different air in order to grow.
The tape flicked on again, and Paige saw Clara, desperate about her child, and then she saw Tahnancoa, performing a mystical ritual over the fragile baby that somehow healed her.
Could it work for Alex the way it had for Ellie?
She was unaware of walking down the hallway, of opening the door to Alex's room.
Leo, his kind face marked with weariness and strain just as her own was, sat beside the crib, his hand through the bars, one finger stretched out to stroke Alex's cheek. He got up, alarmed when he saw the expression on her face. "What is it, Paige? Is there anything I can do?"
"Yes. Please call all the airlines for me and make a reservation for Alex and me on the first flight available to Saskatchewan. And somehow, I have to find out where there's a crop circle."
"You're going back." There was resignation in his voice, and acceptance. He hesitated and then blurted, "Do you mind if I fly to Saskatchewan with you and Alex? I don't want to intrude, but if I could help in any way….."
/> She'd been trying not to worry about the mechanics of it all, the physical problems involved with taking a sick baby on a trip, of finding a crop circle and getting herself and Alex there at the right time. Having Leo with her would be a huge relief. She put her arms around him and gave him an impulsive hug. "There's nothing I'd appreciate more. Thanks, friend."
Without another word, he hurried off to the phones down the hall. She stuffed Alex's belongings into a bag and then made a detailed list of the medical supplies she'd need for him.
She bent over the crib. He was lying on his back, his small foot attached to the drip at his bedside, his eyes flickering behind his closed eyelids in some baby dream. Paige touched the silky hair that curled around his ears.
"Hold on, my darling," she whispered. "Be strong, and I'll take you home."
She glanced toward the window. The trees were in bloom, the spring season well advanced. Had she waited too long? Had Lame Owl performed the ceremony many times already and finally given up? She'd been very explicit about performing the ceremony only in the spring and the fall.
Spring was almost over, and fall would be too late—too late for Alex.
Apprehension grew, and Paige fought it down.
She had to have faith, she had to trust. There was nothing else.
Leo stuck his head in the door. "I have two seats on a Canadian Airlines flight at three this afternoon. I told the agent to hold the line until I checked with you."
Paige took a deep breath and then unhooked the IV from Alex's foot. It was terrifying, this turning away from the medical services she'd always depended upon, but there was also a knowledge inside of her, fragile still but insistent, that this was the right thing to do.
"Confirm the reservations, Leo."
She dressed Alex and then scooped him into her arms.
"C'mon, little boy." She forced confidence and strength into her voice, even though she felt neither. "You and I are going to see your daddy."
Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle Page 37
