by LAURA GALE
So why the reluctance?
She’d never been hesitant with him before. She’d been open and spontaneous and…wonderful.
It didn’t need to be different now. They could recapture that, surely. Briefly Rick’s words came to him: that something in Rachel had died when she’d left. If Rick couldn’t figure it out, could he?
Whatever it was, they had to get past it. He had to convince her. Because he wanted her. And because then they could act like a family, something Lucas suddenly realized he wanted very badly. He didn’t want them to act like divorced parents dealing with joint custody and visitation arrangements.
Hell, now we could actually become divorced parents. Lucas didn’t like the thought, even though he’d suggested it to Rachel in anger—was it just yesterday?
Yet to be with Rachel and Michaela was the first thing that had felt right to Lucas in many years.
Rachel placed The Cat in the Hat on the seat next to her, gazing down at the child sleeping in her lap. She fingered the dark fuzz on Michaela’s head, knowing that it would disappear again soon.
But that would be a good thing at this point, Rachel. It would mean Lucas is a donor match.
That was the irony of the thing. Michaela’s hair would go if they were lucky enough to find a donor and could proceed with the BMT.
Rachel sought to reassure herself, knowing that watching a child suffer was the worst thing a parent could endure. She bent forward a little, just to where she could rest her head against that of the drowsy child. Rachel felt drowsy, too, but then, it was nearly her bedtime.
Lucas approached the atrium, confidently this time, yet quietly. He already understood that this was a haven for Rachel and Michaela, and that regardless of the role he might be able to play, it wasn’t his right to intrude on this.
Standing in the doorway, he caught his breath. This was their first encounter since he’d decided he was going to be a real father, among other goals.
He was bound to feel…different. He stood watching. Watching Rachel gently stroke the child’s face. Watching as her swirl of chocolate hair fanned out around them, acting like a shield between the child and the outside world. He supposed, in a way, that had been Rachel’s function for Michaela. He scuffed his shoe on the floor then, making enough noise to announce his presence.
Rachel tipped her head slightly, until she had located her visitor. She’d known who it was, of course. Her personal radar didn’t identify anyone but Lucas this particular way. She smiled softly, mouthing “Hello” at him.
Following her lead, he whispered, “Hello,” and entered the room, heading toward them. He bent down to kiss Michaela’s fuzzy head, surprised to find the gesture had occurred by itself, with no planning.
He reached out to caress Rachel’s cheek then, a gesture that also occurred involuntarily. That she flinched away from him before contact was made was not what he would have hoped for.
He sat down, choosing a seat across from Rachel and Michaela.
“She is beautiful,” he said awkwardly, although truthfully.
“Yes, she is,” came Rachel’s response. “La niñita más linda del mundo.”
Lucas leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head, stretching his legs out in front of him. Rachel watched him curiously, privately appreciating the lean length of his body. Whatever he’d been doing these past few years, he hadn’t gone soft.
“What does that mean?”
“What?” Having been absorbed in her perusal of Lucas, Rachel didn’t understand his question.
“What you said then…más linda something.”
“Oh.” She smiled. “I didn’t realize I’d said it. La niñita más linda del mundo. The most beautiful little girl in the world. But not just on the outside. Inside, too. You’ll see that, one day.” She hoped. Fervently.
He nodded, maintaining his relaxed, stretched-out position. Much to Rachel’s discomfiture.
Hesitantly, forcing herself to look away, she asked, “You were able to schedule a blood test?”
“Yes,” he said. “I had it done this morning.”
“Oh.” She was surprised. “We should know soon, then.” She smiled and admitted, “I guess I expected to see you when you came in for it. Then again, it gets hectic some days.”
Abruptly Lucas leaned forward, elbows on his knees, resting his head on his clasped hands. Rachel sensed he wanted to speak, so she waited.
“Rachel, how did you know?” he finally asked.
A bewildered frown puckered her forehead. “What do you mean, Lucas?”
Sighing heavily, running his hands across his face and up into his hair, he backtracked. “I’ve spent the day reading the packets Dr. Campbell and Dr. Graham gave me. I’m finding out everything for the first time, and it’s not the lightest reading I’ve ever done. You were told some time ago and I guess I’m wanting to understand, you know, how you found out—what made you start asking questions.” He paused.
“I see,” Rachel said, adjusting Michaela in her arms, talking softly so as not to disturb her. “Well, the first signs looked liked the flu. Nothing unusual at first. Then I started to realize that the flu wouldn’t last as long as her symptoms. She was excessively tired, drained. Her joints would ache.” She swallowed. “That was about six months ago. Maybe more. I’ve sort of lost track of the time.” She took a deep breath. “Then I noticed she was bruising at the least little touch. I was…I was pretty sure about it then.”
“Why?” Lucas demanded. “How could you know like that?”
“Lucas,” she began patiently. “I’m a nurse. It’s not the first time I’ve seen those symptoms. Unfortunately—” she grimaced “—it won’t be the last, either. I knew what it looked like. I had the means to find out for certain, quickly. Of course,” she added ruefully, “I hoped I was overreacting.”
Lucas digested this, thinking her profession probably had helped, that the diagnosis would likely have been made early due to Rachel’s watchful, professional eye. “So you brought her to PCH?”
“Yes,” Rachel agreed. “As I said, I had my suspicions about what was wrong. I knew who to talk to, what had to be done for a diagnosis. We started chemotherapy very quickly, but as you know, it didn’t help quite as we had hoped. BMT is the next step, if we can find a donor. But you know that, too.”
Her voice trailed off, and Lucas understood why.
“Rachel,” he began gently, “you know you’ll have to take a leave of absence eventually. You’ll need help. You’ll have to take care of yourself, too.”
She didn’t respond for several minutes. When she did, she kept her eyes trained on the window behind Lucas. “Immediately after the procedure, she’ll be in the hospital, more or less in isolation. It’s called reverse barrier nursing, where the patient is kept isolated in order to protect her, rather than to protect everyone else from what she has. Her immune system will basically be destroyed, so she’ll need the protection. Once it starts to rebuild and her numbers are high enough—that sort of thing—she’ll be able to go home to live quietly as she regains her strength. To recuperate and convalesce. Then, particularly, I will need to be with her. I won’t be able to work. I will need to take leave. I just haven’t worked out how I’ll do that, exactly.” She sighed.
Knowing this was his opportunity, Lucas reached toward her, touching her hand. “I’d like to help you, Rachel. I’d like to share it with you, handle things together. I’d like to act like a father.”
Rachel smiled, feeling a floating sensation in her stomach—a lightness that was foreign to her.
“I can’t make up for all I’ve missed. I know that. But I can do better from now on. I can be there. We can work out the details later, but I’m telling you my intentions. I want to act like a father, Rachel. I want to be a father. I really want you to understand that.” He had grown more confident as he spoke, knowing this discussion was nothing but an introduction to the subject.
Rachel nodded, momentarily unable to spea
k. She stared at Lucas, the only man she had ever loved, the man who had given her Michaela. Not for the first time, she wished things had been different.
“I’d be glad to have someone to share this with, Lucas. Of course I’ve had lots of family and friends helping me, doing whatever they can, but…none of them are her father.” She sighed. “I can’t lie. It’s been difficult. No, that doesn’t even begin to explain it. Being so helpless. To be doing everything I could possibly do and yet see, with my own eyes, that it wasn’t enough. Mostly—” her voice wavered “—mostly, I don’t let myself think about…what’s actually going on. I just…do what has to be done. I just live in the day….” She let her voice trail away, a voice made husky by the tears she swallowed, tears that she wouldn’t allow.
Lucas’s gut lurched. Was that guilt he felt? Yes guilt, but mixed with fear for his daughter—and compassion for Rachel. “I won’t say something stupid like ‘I understand.’ I can’t even begin to imagine.” That was certainly the truth, Lucas knew. “I realize that you’ve dealt with…some devastating realities alone. That is a fact that I wish I could change. But it will be different from now on. I will do better. I will be there. Okay?”
She nodded, not trusting her voice. She’d have a lot to think about later. Much later. She couldn’t risk the vulnerable feelings that wanted to surface. Not right now. Later.
Silence ensued then, each of them lost in their own thoughts.
Looking at Lucas, Rachel finally asked, “Would you like to hold her?”
“Yes.”
Carefully Rachel maneuvered her sleeping daughter into her father’s arms. “She’s not heavy,” she said.
Rachel sat down again, her regard steady on her daughter and her husband. He flicked a glance at Rachel, just long enough for her to see the darkening of his gray eyes—a sure sign of strong emotion. She saw him swallow and knew he was experiencing the unspeakable awe that comes from holding one’s child for the first time.
Rachel, too, knew that feeling. Only, she had experienced it four years ago.
They sat there together for a while, not speaking, not needing to. Then they took Michaela back to her room and settled her in for the night.
Chapter 6
Her shift finally over, even with the extra bits that always followed it, Rachel decided to take a quick shower before changing clothes. While her life these days always had a slightly surreal edge to it, so much of her time being spent at the hospital, she tried to make a distinction between when she was officially on duty and when it was her own time. Casual clothes sometimes helped that illusion.
“Rachel!” The urgency in Lucas’s voice conveyed itself to her immediately, chilling her, freezing her, sapping the color from her face, activating her on-demand self-control. “Rachel!”
She could hear him clearly, which led her to believe that he must have stepped into her office. Surely he wouldn’t yell like that from the reception area?
She snapped off the water, toweling herself dry quickly, slipping into her jeans and rosebud-print blouse. “Momentito, Lucas!” she called back, unwittingly using Spanish, the language that often came to her when her emotions were frayed.
Taking a cleansing breath, she stepped into the office section of her quarters, still toweling her hair dry. “I’m here, Lucas. What is it?”
“Have you heard?”
Her face was carefully blank, prepared as she was for news she didn’t want to hear. This was a routine she knew only too well—false, outwardly convincing calm.
“Of course you don’t know yet.” The words bubbled out of Lucas. He was clearly thrilled about something. Rachel let go a deep, slow breath, and with it, some of the tension that Lucas’s voice had initially caused her.
This wasn’t the look of a man bearing bad news.
He came toward her, taking the towel out of her hands, grabbing her by the shoulders, crushing her against his chest. “Rach, I’m a match!”
Pushing him away, her heart pounding, desperately needing some space, she looked at him dumbly. “A match?”
“Yes,” he said, pulling her against him again, rocking her, spinning her in a dance she couldn’t feel. “The results came through early this morning. I can donate. Dr. Campbell called me about seven-thirty. Does the man ever sleep? Anyway, I got dressed and came right over. I wanted to tell you, face-to-face, not just over the phone. Do we tell Michaela now? What do you want to do?”
“Gracias a Dios,” she whispered, pushing herself free of him, hugging her arms around herself, shakily touching numb fingers to her cheeks. “Are you sure? Really sure? Evan called you? He said you can donate?”
Puzzled, he responded nevertheless. “Yes. Yes. Isn’t that what I’m saying?”
Rachel tried to pace, but her jelly-filled legs wouldn’t cooperate. She was shaking, couldn’t make it stop. She reached for her cell phone, punching the number that would call Evan, getting through on the second ring. “It’s true, then, Evan? Really?”
He confirmed it for her, and she started trying to punch out other numbers. “Dios,” she muttered, “I can’t push the buttons.”
Lucas took the phone from her, setting it down on the table. “Rachel,” he said, grasping her hands—hands that were ice-cold and still shaking. “Hey, sweetheart, relax.” He knew this was adrenaline, pure and simple, and that Rachel needed soothing. Shock could be that way.
Rachel could not allow the contact, wrenching herself away from him. “I’ve told you not to touch me!” she gasped, then turned, nearly running from her office.
Ostensibly she wanted to confirm the other arrangements. After all, it was important that things were handled properly. The donation procedure did have to be arranged. Michaela’s pre-BMT chemo had to be arranged. There was a countdown of sorts involved before the new marrow could be administered; it was a highly sequenced process.
Still, that didn’t explain her panic, her sense that she simply had to escape. Escape Lucas?
And Lucas knew it. She couldn’t fool him. Moments later, when she returned to her office, she didn’t know what to say to him. How could she possibly explain? And he’d cornered her. Or at least she’d felt cornered.
“Why, Rachel? Why do you act like my touch is something you simply cannot tolerate?”
“Because I can’t tolerate it, Lucas.”
“But you can. You more than tolerate it. You respond. That’s just it. You do respond. Why shouldn’t you? We’re normal, healthy adults. We have a history together. You admitted that the chemistry is still there. What’s the problem?”
“I don’t know how to explain, Lucas,” she offered a little desperately. “I’m not playing games. That’s not my way. But…physical things…don’t happen for me. I can’t do it.” She ran a trembling hand through her hair. “We’ll be seeing each other, yes. If you’re going to be in Michaela’s life, we will see each other. But I can’t pretend that everything between us is okay and normal, like nothing…happened…before.”
“We wouldn’t be where we are, Rachel, if something hadn’t happened between us before.”
“Yes, I know. But I can’t take up where we left off, Lucas. For me, there’s a lot that’s unresolved between us. Sex won’t fix that. And I can’t be…a convenient diversion for you, either. Just because we’re going to be together, at times, doesn’t mean I can…be with you that way, too. You’ve gained a daughter, you can be a father now, but—” she stopped, shaking her head “—I haven’t actually regained a husband. Not really. And I’m not the type who can separate sex from emotion. Sex isn’t casual or recreational for me.”
Lucas began to feel angry. “When I came to you this morning to tell you about Michaela, I wasn’t thinking about sex. That was a different kind of emotion entirely.”
“Yes, yes it was. I’ll accept that. But I can’t turn to you for my emotional support, either, Lucas. I don’t know how. I’ve been alone a long time, dealing with things. My self-reliance was hard-won, and it won’t disappear overnig
ht.”
“Okay, I accept that,” he said, echoing her words.
He left it at that, which she was thankful for. They had a lot to work out, but she wasn’t ready to try yet. Everything was still too raw. And she had Michaela to deal with, as always.
“Bueno,” Rachel told the darkness, “I can’t sleep. Fine. I admit it.” Glancing at her bedside clock, she noted that it was just after six-thirty in the evening, so the darkness was still somewhat artificial.
She sat up in bed, pulling herself to sit cross-legged. She’d been trying to fall asleep for several hours, tossing and turning. Insomnia was no stranger to her. In fact, it had become her constant companion lately, so this wasn’t exactly unusual.
But it wasn’t just insomnia this time. She was simply too keyed-up to sleep. Too many jumbled emotions.
Replaying the day surely for the millionth time, Rachel found herself stuck on the moment Lucas had stepped into her office. How her fear had turned to joy so immediately. She still couldn’t quite believe what was happening, including the intense presence of her husband in her life again.
Her thoughts kept going around and around.
The best news was that Michaela would get the treatment she needed.
The next best news was that Michaela would have a father in her life now.
And, if Rachel was honest, learning to share parenthood with Lucas wouldn’t be the worst thing she’d ever done. Not easy, but worth it. She’d told him she couldn’t give up her self-reliance lightly, and she knew that was true. Even in this case, when the other party was Michaela’s father, Rachel knew it would be difficult to share. No matter how welcome it might be.
That was one of the conflicts she faced. She missed being part of a couple—she’d told Tanisha that. She did miss it. She was alone too much, she was too isolated. As a woman, not just as a mother. But letting someone else in—or more precisely, letting someone back in—was no simple thing.
