She’ll never blame me. She’s too good. Too forgiving. No, it’s up to me to dole out punishment. I’ll never forgive myself. I’ll spend my whole life making it up to her. I’ll cherish her and stay up day and night working until I find a cure.
Because even still, knowing all that I know now, I’m not giving her up. Even knowing she deserves so much better than me. The gods be damned if they think to take Daphne from me now. No. I won’t let her die.
She won’t escape me so easily. She’ll have a long fucking life side-by-side with me until we’re old and gray.
“Sir,” the doctor touches my elbow. I whirl and growl. His hands fly up to show me he’s not a threat. “Sorry,” he squeaks.
“Shhh,” I hush him harshly. “The patient is sleeping.”
“I know, I was just—” The idiot goes to open the door anyway. To wake Daphne from her precious sleep.
I’m gonna kill this guy. He’s gonna be a smear on the beige-tiled floor.
“Back the fuck off,” I grab his name badge and stand to my full intimidating height. “Dr. Lockhart. Hematologist. Where exactly did you go to school?”
He babbles something and I sneer, releasing his badge. “Really? Not the butcher’s shop up the street?” I grab the chart he’s holding and scan it quickly, shoving him off balance when he grabs for it.
At the last second, my free hand fists his collar, keeping him upright. The man teeters before me, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows over and over.
“This is what you call a treatment plan?” I berate him. “You’re barely treating her symptoms and aren’t doing anything to address the disease itself. You don’t know a damn thing about what you’re doing!”
My eyes continue to scan the chart even though what I see makes my chest cinch tight. Her vitals are stable, but her blood cell counts are bad. The disease is ravaging her system. Fuck.
“Sir,” snaps a woman in blue scrubs. She’s Daphne’s new nurse, a replacement for the male fuck they first sent. Her eyes are round but she’s got her hand on the alarm button, ready to call security. “You need to let go of Dr. Lockhart. Now.”
I open my hand and Dr. Lockhart staggers backwards.
“Happy?” I ask the nurse.
“No.” The woman meets my stare head on. “Your…the patient—is she your wife?”
No. Not yet.
“Yes,” I say confidently. Because she will be. As soon as I can get the ring on her finger. “Her father just died, and her mother is gone. I’m her only kin.”
“Well, visiting hours are over. She needs to get some sleep.”
Visiting hours? They think I’m going to go home and leave the love of my life with these idiots? I exhale a growl and hold up Daphne’s chart. “I’d like to go over her course of treatment.” As in, I’d like to actually fucking develop one. “I’m a doctor.”
“I understand, sir,” the nurse says in a syrupy, condescending tone. “But your wife has been battling this disease since she was a girl. This isn’t her first rodeo. We are the best hospital in New Olympus. You need to back off and let us do our jobs—”
Back off? Back off and watch my Daphne wither away and die in a hospital bed in this depressing as hell hospital? This is all bullshit. There are so many shady people on this earth and Daphne is one of the best. It’s not fair that she—
“Fuck this,” I roar, and topple a food cart. Both the nurse and doctor leap back as plates, trash, and trays clatter to the floor at their feet.
Before they can react, I spin and stride into Daphne’s room. “I’m taking her out of here.”
I ignore the frantic shouts behind me, “Sir! You can’t do that. Sir!”
But they don’t know what I’m capable of. I kidnapped her once and I’m doing it again. Right now.
I stand, brace myself, and all but bare my teeth at the doctor and nurse. “I’m her husband, her only living relative,” I bellow. “And she’s coming home with me right now. Don’t dare get in my way.”
I was worried about the slightest noise waking her earlier, but when I storm into her room, Daphne’s all but dead to the world. It takes half a minute to rouse her.
The doctors hover anxiously in the background as I gently cup her face. “Want to go home, kitten?”
She nods, though it looks like it takes all her energy to do so. “Anywhere but here,” she breathes out before her eyes flicker closed again.
It’s enough for me and apparently it’s enough consent for the doctors, too. They let me wheel her out to a private ambulance I arrange so I can take my beautiful Daphne home where she belongs.
Three
Daphne
The scent of roses is my first clue. And then there’s the fresh air that tickles my nose, filling my lungs with sweetness. Outside birds are singing, the sound so loud, a window must be open.
Fresh air. Birdsong. Roses.
The hospital would never allow a window to open. So that means—
I’m not in a hospital anymore.
I open my eyes. The familiar sight of my castle bedroom greets me. For a moment, a burst of happiness rushes me.
Home. I’m home.
Until I realize that the room is only mostly familiar. There’s no antique four poster bed. Instead, I’m in a hospital bed heaped with white pillows and surrounded by medical equipment, including an IV pole standing by.
It wasn’t all a terrible nightmare. Battleman’s is really back.
But as I blink more, I take in the Persian rug covering the floor that’s always been there. The same bright sunlight, filtered through the same huge windows I’ve always loved. One of the windows is open at the bottom and birds hop on the sill just beyond the screen. No wonder I can hear them so well. I’m at the castle and the birds are singing.
A shadow falls across my bed and I startle.
“Daphne,” Logan looms over me. He looks a thousand times better than when I last saw him kneeling by the hospital bed. He’s clean-shaven and dressed in a crisp white shirt tailored to his wide shoulders. His voice is deep and soothing. “You’re awake.”
“Logan?”
“Shhh,” he rubs salve on my lips. I can’t stop myself from licking them—the salve tastes horrible but my lips are all healed. Logan tsks and reapplies the balm. “Are you cold? It got a little stuffy in here, so I opened a window. Spring’s come early.”
I blink at him, waiting for my thoughts to catch up. “You moved me?”
If I really think hard, I think I remember something about all the doctors gathered around and Logan telling me he was bringing me home. But it seems like a distant dream. I didn’t necessarily think it was real at the time. I hate nothing more than hospitals, though, so I’m glad to be out of there.
And I’m with Logan and I love him and he loves me and we’re home finally. Maybe it’ll be different this time.
Maybe it’s true what they say, and anything is possible as long as you have true love. I look at his beloved face, vulnerable and free of that terrible mask he used to wear.
We’ve come through so much. Can we make it through this, too?
“Mhhmm.” He picks up a blood pressure cuff, fastens it around my arm, and takes my blood pressure like it’s the most normal thing in the world for us to do together. I frown and my blood goes cold in a way that has nothing to do with my illness.
How many times did I witness this exact same scene play out? My father bent over my mother’s hospital bed, set up in their bedroom? Taking her blood pressure, her temperature, or drawing blood. I’ve seen what it looks like when what was once love becomes clinical. How a series of triumphs and failures with every lab test can become an entire marriage.
Still, out of habit, I count the seconds along with him as the blood pressure cuff releases pressure.
When he finishes, he nods, removes the cuff, and leans in to kiss the top of my head—the top of my head mind you, not my lips—before going to the medical stand to enter the results on the computer. Then again, why wou
ld he want to kiss my lips when I’ve got this gross tasting salve on them? I can’t even describe the despair that hits me at that thought. Because I can only imagine how terrible the rest of me looks.
From what I can see of the screen, all my medical records are there.
Logan moved me from the hospital. Permanently. Holy shit.
“Um, Logan...why did you move me?”
“The hospital and I had a difference of opinion on your course of treatment.”
“A difference of opinion,” I repeat.
“Yes. You know what? It’s a little too breezy in here. I’m going to shut the window.”
And he strolls away. Before he shuts the lower section, he picks up a scoop from a big birdseed bag, opens the screen and empties the scoop on the sill. Then he removes the screen and closes the window. The sound of birds is muffled, but I see them fluttering to the sill to eat the seed.
The absurdity of it strikes me. Is this real? Do I really have birds chirping at my window like I’m in a Disney movie?
“Yeah.” He answers, and I realize I said all that out loud. Logan straightens, a shy grin tugging the corner of his mouth. “I thought it might be nice for you to watch them. I ordered a few different feeders, but haven’t had a chance to install them. Apparently different birds eat different kinds of seeds and—”
I squint at him. “Who are you and what did you do with Logan Wulfe?” Maybe it’s not so surprising that Logan has a huge nurturing streak. He is a doctor. And he’s just… Logan. The man who held me all night long when I grieved for my mother. The man who never pushed me before I was ready and when I was, guided me so carefully every step of the way.
“It’s me, baby.” His white teeth flash and heat streaks through me. It’s weird to feel turned on in a hospital bed, but my body always reacts to Logan this way. I’m sick, not dead. “Are you feeling comfortable?”
I’ve been so busy processing my shock at my new surroundings, I forgot to assess the state of my body. I move my limbs tentatively. Less weakness than before.
“Um, yeah.”
“Good.” He settles into a chair at my side. One of the huge armchairs that’s more of a throne. It’s twin is gone from the usual place by the fireplace. That’s not the only change—there’s no fire lit in the grate, and there’s a new flat screen TV that adorns the wall above the mantle.
Logan follows my gaze to the new flat screen. “I want to make sure you don’t get bored.”
“I can’t believe you did all this. You moved me from the hospital.”
I stare at the screen, still feeling too many emotions. I can’t seem to settle on one before another is swooping in. Gratitude that he moved me. Anxiety. Fear. Love. So much love. Which makes the fear scarier than any I’ve ever felt before.
“No harm done. You slept through it, and through the night. I may have given you an extra dose of painkillers to make sure you didn’t feel the transition.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Yes,” he agrees with no hesitation. “I’m going to get you well, Daphne.”
My eyes start stinging. I blink them rapidly, turning my face away from Logan to hide my expression.
I know what’s ahead of me. Endless tests, needles, charts. Days and nights in this bed where every second feels like a millennium. “I didn’t want you to see me like this. Weak and pathetic.”
I wanted to pretend…that there was a chance it wouldn’t come back. That I’d actually beat this when I was a kid and wouldn’t ever have to fight it again—
“Daphne—” I hear a rustle and then Logan’s there standing by my side, his big hand sliding into my hair, coaxing me to face him. “Look at me.”
My chest is filled with boulders. I want to turn away but he won’t let me.
“Look at me,” he commands, his voice deep and compelling. The timbre of The Master. His heavy brows oversee his stern expression, but his huge hands on my face are gentle. “You are not weak. I won’t allow you to say or think that. Just look at your charts. What you went through, what you survived...and still you’re full of love. Full of life.”
I wet my lips. “I didn’t want the disease to define me.”
“It hasn’t. And it won’t.” He looks so grim and determined, his huge form standing between me and death, I almost believe him.
But I’m done with fairy tales. I have to be. For my sanity. It’s time for cold, hard facts.
“How is this going to work? Am I going to go through treatment—here?”
Logan tucks the blanket around me. “I’m starting you on a new treatment. An immunosuppressant. I think the traditional treatment is the wrong course of action. It assumes the deformed blood cells are the drivers of the disease. I think they’re just a symptom.”
Every blood film I’ve viewed dances in my head. Knowing the shape of diseased cells doesn’t lessen the painful sensation in my body. It makes it worse. “But that’s not the accepted model. My father—”
“Is gone. Maybe it’s time to try a new way.”
I’m blank-faced and blinking, thinking through the implications of what Logan just said. This would change the direction of my father’s research—my research.
Logan leans down and touches his lips to mine, breaking the spell. “Trust me, Daphne.”
But all I can think is—he kissed me. Where he was supposed to, on the lips.
His scent surrounds me, a crisp cocktail of his cologne and the clean delicious smell that’s all him. “I’m going to heal you from this current relapse. And then I’m going to cure you.”
“So arrogant,” I whisper, but tingles run down my limbs at his proclamation.
Logan looks like a knight ready to slay a dragon. He cups my face, his shadow falling over me, his presence a comforting cage. I feel small and safe, tucked away in this room, hidden from the world, with Logan at my side to defend me from Death.
I want to close my eyes and give in to his strength. It would be so comforting to let someone else charge into the fight for me. To let Logan lead the front lines. To lay down the standard and rest for once in my life.
But as I look up at Logan, so confident and determined, I can’t help wondering: is this what my father looked like when he made promises to my mother decades ago? When he swore he’d go to the ends of the earth, do anything, to make her better?
That lifelong battle destroyed my father. It eventually turned him into a monster and my mother and I had a front row seat.
How can I let the same tragedy play on repeat, this time starring Logan and myself?
I swore never to turn out like my parents, even before I knew the extent of my father’s…betrayals. What he did to Logan.
“I just got you back,” Logan murmurs, holding me even tighter. “I can’t… I won’t lose you.”
They’re words that are meant to soothe. Instead the uneasiness inside me grows, even as my eyes grow too heavy to stay open and I spiral back into sleep.
Four
Logan
I hurry out the door before the delivery man can ring or bang the knocker.
They’re delivering medical supplies, so you’d think they’d have a clue there might be sick people inside and they should be quiet. But the guy delivering equipment yesterday drove a truck so old, it backfired and woke Daphne up from a nap after it had taken her forever to fall asleep.
I about took the guy’s head off.
I jog down the steps of the front porch to head off any calamities, but the van that pulls in is a sleek, new model that’s so quiet, it has to be electric.
A man in a gray uniform pushes open the front door and I greet him. “Did everything go smoothly with the shipment? When you got it off the truck, was anything broken?”
“No, sir,” says the man. Paul, by his name tag. “I double-checked everything myself.”
I nod and follow him around to the back of the van and, after signing paperwork on the digital clipboard he hands to me, he opens the doors.
I pop open the t
op of the boxes and run my hands over the brand new, state-of-the-art hematology analyzer and cytology equipment. I’ve been waiting all week to get my hands on these. There are plenty of universities and labs that don’t have such quality machines. But I don’t care about cost. I’ll spare no expense when it comes to Daphne’s life.
I nod again. “They look like they’re in good shape.”
I’ll be able to get much more accurate readings with this equipment and really be able to know if any changes we’re making in Daphne’s treatments are having even the most incremental effect.
“I’ll use the dolly to get them safely inside,” Paul says but I just wave him away. I don’t want anyone else inside the house disturbing Daphne. She’s the lightest sleeper these days.
“No need.” I pick up the large hematology analyzer and heft it in my arms, then head for the door. Paul stands by, his mouth slightly open. He doesn’t offer to carry the other box. A good idea since it probably weighs half as much as he does.
I’m quickly back for the second box anyway. It’s heavier than the first but after a quick trip, I’ve deposited it inside as well and am sending Paul on his way.
It’s another ordeal to get them downstairs and set up in the lab. I’m breaking a sweat by the time I’m done but it feels good. At least this is something tangible that I can do.
Better than sitting around all week watching Daphne suffer and not being able to do a damn thing to fix it.
I meant what I promised her. I’m going to cure her. I’ll be strong enough for both of us.
She just has to trust me…
Like you trusted her?
My hands clench but then my cell phone starts blasting “Down with the Sickness” by Disturbed. I laugh out loud and immediately answer. “When did you change my ringtone?”
Daphne’s wan voice answers, “You must be getting slow in your old age if you didn’t notice me do it.”
I’ve already started out of the lab and am halfway up the stairs. I treasure any time she’s awake and hate to think of her ever lying there in bed all alone. At the same time, I feel the pressure beating at me from all sides. Have to find a cure. Have to find a cure. There’s no time. Daphne’s mother died young.
Beauty and the Rose: a Beauty and the Rose Novel Page 2
