Blue Clouds

by Patricia Rice

  Every so often, she would mention a phone call to Seth that would drag him briefly from his torpor. Usually the questions pertained to one of his books. He even raised himself to the point of cursing at an error on the cover for a paperback, but he told Pippa to call his editor about it rather than doing it himself.

  Pippa knew what he was doing. She’d done the same thing when her mother lay dying. He was telling himself if he never left Chad’s side, everything would be all right, that if he hung in there, feeding Chad his prayers and promises in the same way the IV fed him medication, maybe Chad would recover through sheer willpower alone. For all she knew, it might work. Maybe his willpower was stronger than hers. But Seth was killing himself in the process.

  Had Seth ever learned to roll in the grass and laugh for the sheer joy of hearing himself laugh?

  She didn’t think so. The more she saw of him and this mausoleum he’d incarcerated himself in, the more she understood the bleakness of his life. She doubted if he’d ever been a child. He’d probably been one of those little automatons, stiffly trying to please the conflicting desires of both parents, until one day, he blew apart trying. And no one had bothered putting him back together again.

  She shouldn’t waste her time psychoanalyzing a man who could afford the best shrinks in the country, but she had time aplenty on her hands and had never found a more fascinating subject. She could only check pulse and temperature so often. If she didn’t occupy her mind somehow, she would go insane listening to Chad’s raspy breaths and praying she’d heard improvement.

  Pippa threw open the French doors and let the fresh evergreen scent filter through the room. She rearranged Chad’s books, repaired his stuffed toys. She actually sat down and read through Seth’s entire manuscript, making notes in the margins. The written word couldn’t be as horrifying as the sight of a six- year-old child laboring for each breath.

  She dropped the chapters in Seth’s lap. He threw her one of his murderous looks, though his lined face was too haggard to carry it off well. After a while, his curiosity drove him to glance at her notes. His fury took over from there.

  He didn’t like criticism, but she’d take the furious Grim Reaper over a hollow-eyed zombie any day. She watched him jerk a red pencil over one of her notes and almost smiled for the first time in days. With a little practice, she could get as good at making people angry as she was at uttering pleasantries.

  Chad gasped for breath and Pippa dropped everything. Beside the bed in seconds, she checked the oxygen gauge, raised his pillow, listened for any liquid in his lungs. Unconscious, he grumbled and twisted his head from side: to side. His temperature had shot up again.

  Trying not to panic, and praying hard, Pippa hit the memory button on the cordless she’d programmed with the doctor’s pager number. Fists clenched, Seth stood at her side, watching her every move.

  “The medicine isn’t working,” she replied to his unspoken question. “There is no known effective treatment for viral infections. The body has to get rid of it on its own.”

  “He’s not strong enough,” Seth stated flatly. “If his temperature rises any higher, he’ll go into convulsions. Do something.”

  She could. A cool bath would bring a decline in temperature.

  Instinct screamed against logic, however. And the instinct flowing through her veins now told her bringing down Chad’s temperature would only worsen the problem.

  How could she explain that feeling to Chad’s father? She knew she walked a fine line. He was entirely right. If Chad’s temperature shifted another degree, convulsions were quite likely. Brain damage could occur in that lively mind. Chad didn’t need another strike against him. She played with fire if she went against all accepted rules and practices.

  She bit her lip and choked on the confidence she had lost. Not so long ago she would have said to hell with the doctors, she knew what she was doing. Maybe it was just the maturity that came with age instead of the recklessness of youth, but she didn’t have that confidence any longer.

  Pippa glanced out the window at the setting sun. Already, the breeze through the open doors was cooler. For some reason, the crisis in cases like these often came at dawn or sunset.

  Despairingly, she raised her eyes to Seth’s. “I can give him a cool bath to bring the fever down.”

  “Then do it,” he demanded.

  She expected him to explode at her hesitation. Instead, the demanding glare faded, replaced by cautious curiosity. “What is it? Why are you waiting?”

  He was listening. He wasn’t bullying her around, flaying his arms in futile fury. He’d heard what she hadn’t said and respected her enough to listen.

  With a lump in her throat, Pippa tried to explain in a manner that might make sense to him. “People run fevers for a reason. High temperatures kill infection.” She saw the objection in his eyes and nodded reluctantly. “High temperatures also affect the brain, I know. It’s a fine line. But think about it—-he has pneumonia. He has fluid in his lungs. Which treatment sounds more logical: high temperatures or cool bath?”

  The doctor hadn’t responded to her page. The room remained eerily silent as Seth contemplated the problem she posed. Chad lay still again. Pippa could almost feel his temperature soaring. The flu would have worked its way out of his system by now, leaving him weak and drained. Pneumonia thrived on weakness.

  They hadn’t turned on the lights. As the sun slipped behind the hills, shadows spilled across the room, casting corners into darkness, hiding the bright colors of the toys on the shelves behind layers of gray. As shadowed as the room, Seth’s face mirrored uncertainty.

  “I can’t do it,” he finally whispered. “I can’t make that decision. If I killed him, I’ll have killed myself. Why doesn’t the damned doctor call?”

  “It’s Saturday night. He may not be near a phone. I have to decide now, before Chad’s fever climbs higher.” Pippa pressed her hand to Chad’s flushed forehead. “He’s holding steady,” she half whispered. “I can’t do it.”

  “Can’t do what?” Seth asked instantly, sharply.

  “Can’t put him in the bath. Let’s wait.”

  Returning to the bed, Seth watched his only child lying still beneath the plastic tent, his small face even smaller against the stack of pillows. If he could somehow lay his hands on hot, dry skin and pour his own life into the boy, he would, without even thinking about it. He’d never known love until Chad was born.

  Unconditional, irrefutable love was a damned painful condition, but he couldn’t live without it. He’d meant what he’d said to Pippa. Chad’s death would kill him, even if the shell of his body continued to live and breathe. His own lungs ached with the pressure in Chad’s, and tears welled in his eyes.

  Surreptitiously wiping at them, Seth watched as Pippa used the ear thermometer to check Chad’s temperature. For the last three days she’d remained calm, cool, and efficient, always looking crisp and fresh in her tailored dresses and pantsuits, as if she were on the way to an office. The: vomiting and diarrhea of the first day hadn’t fazed her. She could make a bed in the flick of a sheet. She’d monitored phone calls, medicines, his nervous mother, and a worried Doug. And him. She’d been managing him since she arrived.

  But right now, as she literally held Chad’s life in her hands, those hands were shaking. A fat tear rolled down her cheek and splashed against the bright blue sheet.

  That tear terrified Seth more than anything else. He’d never seen Pippa Cochran cry, and he didn’t want to now, not while he was so close to breaking down himself. He wanted her cheery smile and one of her asinine aphorisms. He wanted her to say everything would be just fine, because if Pippa said it, he could believe it.

  That showed his obsession had gone over the edge. In another minute, he’d imagine her in a fairy godmother outfit, waving a wand.

  Chad began to shiver. He whimpered in his sleep, and his teeth chattered as he brushed restlessly at his sheet.

  “Get a light blanket,” Pippa ordered
.

  Orders, he could handle. Just not tears. Orders meant hope. He brought a stack of blankets of different thicknesses.

  Pippa chose a light one to throw over the lush midnight blue coverlet. Chad’s head still tossed and turned against the pillow beneath the plastic tent. Pippa sat on the edge of the bed, offering him Pedialyte from the ridiculous plastic cup. Chad sipped, then settled sleepily against the pillow again, but soon he was shaking all over.

  Nana appeared, followed by Doug and Lillian, their anxious glances saying more than words.

  Pippa offered what hope she could and chased them out again, although she did it far more politely than Seth would have done. He didn’t want anyone interfering, coming between him and Chad at a crucial point like this. He couldn’t handle the distraction.

  She cursed and Seth jerked his head up, frantically searching her face. She wasn’t crying any longer. She looked mad enough to chew nails. She dismantled the oxygen tent and began wrapping Chad in a cocoon of blankets.

  “Hold him as close as you can, and talk to him. He’s not convulsing yet, but his body thinks it’s cold. His temperature isn’t rising more, but it’s still like a fire inside him.”

  Seth didn’t have to be told twice to climb on the bed and hold his son in his arms. He’d been wanting to do just that for days.

  Chad was six years old, old enough to go to school on his own, but to Seth, he was still the infant he’d cuddled, the helpless toddler, the little boy with nightmares. He cradled him carefully, wrapping him tighter until the shivering stopped and a weary dark head rested on his shoulder. He could feel Chad’s chest heaving. He still breathed.

  Just that knowledge was enough for Seth to look up to Pippa for reassurance and approval.

  The tears had returned to her eyes. One trailed down her cheek, leaving a wet stain behind. He sensed these weren’t tears of terror though. They didn’t shake him as badly as the earlier ones. The way she looked at him and Chad, he’d say they were just a woman’s tears. Women cried at everything. One had never cried over him before. The thought tore at his already shredded heart.

  “He’s sleeping,” Seth whispered, wanting to console her.

  She nodded. “The fever isn’t down yet,” she warned, testing Chad’s forehead, leaning so close Seth could smell her lemon- scented shampoo.

  “I know.” I know, Seth repeated to himself, leaning back against the headboard, resisting the need for her touch. He’d been in this lonely place before, all those horrible nights in the hospital after the accident, wheeling himself to Chad’s infant bed, watching him sleep, looking so tiny and frail attached to respirators and monitors. He hadn’t been able to hold his son then, had barely been able to hold himself up, but his arms had ached for that tiny burden.

  He’d had so many long hours to think over the years. He’d quit asking why God had punished a tiny child after he started asking why he couldn’t remember what happened. The nightmares had begun when Natalie served him divorce papers. He would wake up sweating in the middle of the night, then go to his lawyer the next day, eager for blood. He couldn’t fight God, but he sure as hell had fought Natalie, and won.

  But here he was, fighting God again.

  “Is there never any end?” he whispered, out of habit forgetting anyone else was in the room. He seldom had anyone to hear his midnight railing.

  Pippa had been so silent, he’d accepted her as a part of him, a third arm that knew what to do without his speaking. But she answered him now.

  “There’s always an end. Sometimes, it comes sooner than others.”

  He sought her face in the dim glow of the night-light. For the first time, he noticed how tired she looked. Black circles shadowed the frail skin beneath her eyes, and her mouth drooped. He’d never seen her without a smile, or at worst, a tight-lipped determination—the red-haired tigress. But now she was just a tired woman, saying things she wouldn’t normally say.

  “I want him to live,” he insisted, trying to explain his earlier sentiments. “I just want the suffering to stop.”

  The look she gave him was so inexpressibly sad that Seth wanted to hold her in his arms, as he held Chad.

  “Sometimes, I think that’s what life is, a kind of purgatory we must suffer until we learn to handle it right.”

  He couldn’t argue with that logic. He hugged Chad tighter. “That’s all right for adults, but what kind of God would make children suffer?”

  “Who said God is responsible for what we do to ourselves? Meg’s brother had muscular dystrophy. She knew the women in her family carried the gene for that particular form of it. She’s Catholic. She thought about becoming a nun so she wouldn’t pass it on. But then she met George.”

  She shrugged, and Seth watched her struggle with the rest of the story. Sometimes, his isolation left him thinking he was the only person in the world who suffered. He needed to be reminded there were others far worse off than he.

  “Their older children didn’t inherit the disease,” he reminded her.

  “And they should have stopped while they were ahead. But they love each other very much, and they love their kids, and they were still young .” She sighed and ran her fingers through the thick bob of her hair. “Meg had three kids by the time she was twenty-four. Meg and George brought their suffering and Mikey’s on themselves. God had nothing to do with it.”

  “Muscular dystrophy isn’t fatal, is it? And Mikey’s strong. He still has a lot of use of his legs, I noticed. He could probably walk with the proper aids and therapy.”

  “Most children with this form of dystrophy are still walking at his age. His disease has progressed more rapidly than normal.”

  Seth heard the death knell in her voice but wouldn’t believe it. She was just tired and depressed. He knew the feeling. But Mikey looked ten times healthier than Chad. He was a big child, strong, cheerful, outgoing, a delight for anyone to know. He might be wheelchair-bound for life, but that wasn’t a death sentence. Seth could see Mikey and Chad growing old together, attending the same college, joining the same law firm, maybe. He’d been harboring all kinds of secret hopes these last weeks, hopes for the kind of life he’d never had.

  “Therapy will help,” he assured her. “I’ll have the contractor speed up the gym renovation. Mikey can come out to the pool more often. He’ll be fine.”

  “Boys with Mikey’s form of dystrophy seldom live past the age of eighteen.”

  Silence fell between them. Then Chad cried out and began to shake violently.

  Chapter 20

  “The bath,” Pippa said at the same time as Seth swung his legs over the edge of the bed and aimed in that direction, stripping off Chad’s blankets in the process.

  “Daddy!” Chad cried out, flinging his arms frantically as the blankets fell to the floor. “Daddy!”

  “I’m here, son. I’m here. I won’t let you go,” Seth soothed him, his deep voice as calm as his eyes were terrified.

  Pippa’s heart twisted at the expression on his face and the tone of his voice. He was scared out of his wits but doing everything within his power to lend strength to his child. That’s why God gave men strength and courage, she decided. Not for war, but for protecting their children.

  “I’m hot.” Chad pulled irritably at his pajama top. “I want a drink.”

  Incredulous, Seth halted his progress to glance at Pippa. She hurried to test Chad’s temperature. Was it just her wishful thinking, or did he feel slightly cooler? The shaking had almost stopped.

  Big dark eyes opened and blinked at her. “I want Coke,” Chad demanded, “not that nasty stuff.”

  “That nasty stuff is called Pedialyte,” she told him, but she grinned inside and out as she said it. Trembling with hope, she kissed Chad’s dry cheek and made him grimace. “I don’t have Coke. Drink the other now, and I’ll have Doug get you some.”

  She nodded her head toward the bed. Chad coughed with great hacking whoops and Seth hesitated, but finally returned his son to the bed. Chad re
fused to lie down.

  “Coke,” he commanded again.

  “Water,” Pippa replied firmly, offering him an alternative.

  “I’ll get the Coke. You drink what Pippa tells you.” Seth hurried toward the door.

  “Coward,” Pippa called after him.

  Chad grimaced at the taste of the water, but he gulped it thirstily, then pushed the cup away. “Coke.”

  It was going to be a damned long convalescence, but Pippa couldn’t wipe the smile from her face.

  The doctor finally arrived, checked the new statistics showing a falling temperature, tested Chad’s lungs, gave him another shot, and left with a much stronger prognosis. Pippa nearly wept with relief and exhaustion as Chad returned to a healing slumber.

  Lillian, who had appeared at Seth’s frantic yell for Coke, patted her on the back. “You need to get some rest, Phillippa. The doctor said Chad will sleep. Why don’t you let me and Nana sit up with him tonight? You and Seth will need your strength tomorrow when he wakes. Both of you, go on now. Everything will look much brighter in the morning.”

  Pippa almost choked on that cheery sentiment, one she had expressed herself so many times. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and a glance at the wry twist of Seth’s lips said he felt the same. Biting back what could only be hysteria, she nodded. She definitely needed rest.

  Seth looked dubious at the thought of leaving his mother in charge, but rubbing his hand through his tumbled hair, he followed Pippa into the hallway.

  “Maybe I should stay in there a few hours more, just in case,” he muttered as he closed the door to the sickroom so his mother couldn’t hear him.

  Pippa shook her head. “The doctor gave him a sedative. He’ll sleep for hours. Your mother will call me if his temperature goes up again. I’ll come and get you if there’s any problem. You need some sleep. He’ll be a handful in the morning.”