by J. R. Ward
"It's Cane's lethargy," he said in the Old Language.
Ivie closed her eyes and sagged. That was a death sentence, all right. In vampires, the autoimmune disease, which was similar to lupus and vasculitis in humans, affected everything from the heart and lungs to the stomach, kidneys, and liver, the body's natural defenses in effect declaring an enemy of itself. Females did not get the disease, only males, and for a long time, it could lay dormant, a sleeping threat unknown to the individual.
What triggered onset was unknown as far as Ivie understood. What she did know was that once the disease became active, it could be chronic for quite some time, the inflammation and deterioration held at bay by steroids and other drugs that suppressed the immune system. But if it became acute? There was no going back.
All you could do was ease the patient's symptoms with various surgeries to remove blockages and increasing doses of pain medication.
Eventually, kidney and liver function failed and the heart stopped from lack of circulation.
It was a gruesome death.
"Will you let me look at your medical records?" she asked.
"It won't do any good."
"Maybe. Maybe not. But at least I'll know where I stand."
"Look, Ivie, I owe you an apology. Not just for the lying, but for my coming into your life at all. I had no business entering into any kind of relationship with anybody. I just..." His pale eyes lifted to hers. "You made me feel alive. With you, I felt like I had a future--at least during those moments we were together. And it wasn't because you were some distraction for me, either. There's just something about you, Ivie. I recognized it the moment I saw you."
"I want to see your records."
"I don't want to be your patient." He took another one those big deep breaths. "And I think it's best if we just say goodbye now. The end is going be soon and it's already getting ugly--"
"I'm not leaving you."
Silas went quiet and still. "I can't ask you to do that."
"You didn't," she said in a bored voice. "And do us both a favor, cut the martyr act. I'm not looking to be protected by you, 'kay? I'm an adult and I can pick what I do, and with and for whom."
"Except what if I don't want you to see me like this? Are you saying I don't get a vote?" He threw up his hands. "No offense, but I've had to develop a core competency in being out of control and I fucking hate it. At least you can have the decency of allowing me to keep what dignity I have and remember you--and us--as we were for the two seconds we were together. That may be all I have to get me through what's coming next."
At that moment, a nurse came rushing in from the back entry. When she saw Ivie, she looked surprised, but then she focused on Silas.
"I'm sorry, but I'm late for your four-a.m. injection."
"I'll give it to him." Ivie rose to her feet. "Is that the syringe in your hand?"
The nurse glanced back and forth between the pair of them. "Ah...I'm so sorry, but--"
"I'm taking over his care."
As Ivie stuck out her palm and leveled a stare at the other female, Silas cursed. "You are not. You are going to say goodbye and we're going to remember--"
Ivie wheeled around on him. "No offense, but shut. Up."
Hard to know who was more shocked at that, Silas or the other nurse. But Ivie didn't play, and she sure as hell wasn't trusting him with anyone else.
"Give me the syringe, and I want access to his medical records. Have the nurse manager add me."
"I'm sorry," the nurse hedged, "but you're not authorized--"
"I'm his private nurse. Just hired. I'll let my supervisor know. I'll be staying with him here until it's time for us to go back to his house."
The nurse's brows went so high, they played tag with her hairline. "Ah, sire?"
Ivie shot a glare over her shoulder. "Listen up, Silas. I'm in love with you. I don't care that we've known each other for ten minutes, that you're dying, or that you don't want me to be your nurse. Here is what I know for sure. One, this is my job. This is what I do for a living and I'm really frickin' good at it. Two, if you think I'm going to trust any other person on the face of this planet to take care of you, you're out of your damn mind. And three, if you have a problem with any of this, too fucking bad. I'm taking over, and that is that. You want to fire me, you're going to have to carry me out of here kicking and screaming, and I doubt you have the energy for that."
Silas blinked. And then he cleared his throat and looked at the nurse. "Ah...I think my, ah...she...will be taking over my case now?"
The nurse nodded. "As you wish, sire." The female turned to Ivie. "I'll get you permission immediately and also print you out a schedule of meds. This is the cortisol. He really should be back on the morphine drip, but he was insistent on removing it and checking himself out."
When the other staff member ducked out, Ivie walked over to the bed.
Silas looked up at her. "Did you just tell me you loved me?"
"Yes. I did. And now I'm going to get really romantic. Bend over so I can stick you in the butt."
There was a pause. And then Silas threw his head back and laughed that wonderful laugh of his, the deep, rolling sound bringing tears to her eyes, which she refused to entertain. Cutting them off, she put her hand on his shoulder.
"This is more like it," she said with a smile.
But the levity didn't last.
As Silas recovered from the gallows humor, he got serious. "I love you, Ivie. I really do. And if dying is what I have to do to deserve you, all I can say is, my life for knowing you is a bargain I'd pick every time. I'm just...sorry about how this is going to end."
He put his arms around her waist and lay his head on her heart.
Wrapping her arms about him, she stroked his back and felt such an overwhelming sadness that her legs nearly fell out from under her.
"It's going to be okay," she whispered.
Guess that made them even on the lying front.
Chapter Eleven
After Ivie gave the shot, she helped Silas get back into a pair of silk pajamas. Then she was easing him out flat in the bed, and guessed, by how pale he became, what his pain level was.
Yet he refused the morphine.
"It'll help you rest," she pointed out.
"Makes me fuzzy. I don't want that. I'd rather be uncomfortable."
Recognizing that she'd already pushed him far more than she should, she nodded--and then realized they weren't alone. Silas didn't notice that his majordomo was lingering in the archway, however, especially not as he closed his eyes and tried to breathe.
"I'll be right back," Ivie said as she brushed his hair from his forehead.
"I look forward to your return," came the mumbled response.
Walking over to the female, Ivie nodded for them to go out into the sitting room. And then she confronted Pritchard who was still dressing like gray was the sole color on the planet and pantsuits were the only outfits sold in retail stores.
"I'm accepting the job," Ivie announced. "He just hired me. So you and I--"
"You are not the right fit for the position."
"Why? Because he's attracted to me? That will help him fight."
"He does not need the distraction."
"Oh, right, it's better to make sure he can fully concentrate more on how uncomfortable he is." Ivie rolled her eyes. "His major organs are shutting down, he can't eat, he can barely drink--and you disapprove of something he's connected to outside of all that suffering?"
As Pritchard arched a brow, Ivie decided the female had probably come out of the womb with that expression on her sour puss.
"I have taken care of that male for close to four hundred years." The majordomo paused as if that were a rock-the-world kind of announcement. "I do not intend to step aside in favor of a floozy at the end of his life."
Ivie tilted her chin down and stared hard. "Okay, FYI, the word 'floozy' was replaced by 'ho' in, like, the nineties. So you might want to make a not
e of that. And as for who's at his bedside now, this is not some competition between you and me. This is about him. You do not need to respect me or like me, but you are going to learn how to tolerate my presence gracefully in front of him or I will have you banned from his room."
Annnnnnnd now both brows were up.
"I beg your pardon," the female stuttered.
Ivie put out her palm. "This is not about being territorial for me. This is about making sure Silas doesn't waste his energy on things that don't pertain to his health and his well-being. I have no problem if Santa Claus wants to see him or be with him, but what I won't stand for is drama. As long as you and I are clear on this, we'll get along fine. Otherwise, you can pound sand. Which is my polite way of saying 'go fuck yourself.' "
In the back of her mind, she was aware that she was being less than professional. She was also cognizant that her decision to be Silas's caregiver, motivated by love though it was, might not be the best decision for her mentally and emotionally.
But she'd made her choice on that one and to hell with the consequences or toll it took on her.
"I refuse to pay you," Pritchard said. "I am in charge of all the household accounts and I will not cut any checks for the likes of this...abuse."
Ivie jacked forward on her hips. "You think I'm doing this for the money? Are you insane?"
"And I'm going to go to Havers with this. I shall speak with him about your behavior, and if you still have a job by the time dawn arrives in"--the female officiously checked her watch--"an hour and a half, it will be a disgrace that I will make sure everyone in the race knows about."
"Fine, have me fired. It's not going to change the fact that Silas wants me as his nurse, and given that he is competent to make his own decisions, you have no legal basis for trying to override him. And Havers will know that."
As Pritchard huffed off, Ivie hung her head.
Then she pulled herself together and went back to Silas's bedside.
* * *
--
The medical record was so extensive it was heartbreaking.
There were entries going back a century, Havers's previously handwritten files having been scanned into the computer system when the clinic went hi-tech in 2000. But that wasn't where the bulk of entries were. Back then, Silas had been seen for the usual things: a deep cut that required stitching, a bad case of a flu strain that had ravaged the race, malnourishment from not feeding enough.
The tide began to turn about four years ago. Suddenly, he was coming in once a month, then twice...then weekly. The official diagnosis had been given to him about six months into the series of malaises and gastrointestinal problems. And Havers had done what he could to provide support to Silas's organ systems through a combination of anti-inflammatories, immune suppressors and steroids, but then came the surgeries to open up the intestinal tract when blockages happened. And dialysis to address declining kidney function. More and more feedings.
Hospitalizations of two, three, and then four nights had begun. Conversations about end-of-life provisions were recorded, with Silas going the DNR route. Talks of the terminal nature of the disease were noted in short, concise sentences that made her eyes water.
When she got to the last month's entries, her heart started to pound even though she was just sitting in a chair beside him while he slept.
The note about it being time to bring in a private nurse for palliative care had her shaking her head--
"I think it would be considered a melodrama."
She looked up. "You're awake."
"My life story, that is. Well, perhaps an accounting manual followed by an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D."
"Nothing more current? E.R.? Grey's Anatomy?"
"I prefer the classics."
"Understandable."
"So did you find any hope in there? Something the good doctor missed?" He smiled and pushed himself up higher on the pillows. "I'm here for a week, try the veal."
"I'm sorry?"
"Old saying from the Catskill Mountain resort days. Classics, you know. Stick around and I'll do my Henny Youngman imitation for you."
"I look forward to that." She closed the clinician laptop and put it on a mahogany bureau. "You want me to get you some food?"
"You didn't answer my question. About my records."
"No, I didn't find anything that was missed."
"I'm not surprised. Havers is quite thorough and very knowledgeable."
As they grew quiet, Ivie thought of the number of times she had walked into a patient's room and stopped short, putting aside whatever she had come to do because a moment was happening at the bedside between two loved ones.
She had never thought she would be a family member.
Or at least not anytime soon.
"You know, getting diagnosed was...surreal," he said absently. "It was just bizarre."
"Tell me about it. And I'm not asking as a nurse."
There was a period of quiet during which she listened to the hum of the machines behind that screen. They were on standby, the electrodes and IVs not currently hooked up to him, and she had to acknowledge a reluctance on her part to get them involved.
Not to his endangerment, of course. But the reticence was there, as if the monitors and medicine dispensers were a padlock that would link the two of them inexorably to the end of his sad, sad destiny.
"I'd been having symptoms for a while," he said roughly. "Exhaustion, aches and pains, a bad stomach. I'm not a paranoid person, though, so I muddled through, telling myself that it was this or that extenuating circumstance. A weekend out with friends. Too much work. Stress. Those kinds of standard excuses." He took a deep breath and stared off into space. "It was like...well, you know when you're driving along a road, and you see something off on the shoulder? Like, a mound, that shouldn't be there? In the back of your mind, you start thinking, God, please don't let it be an animal. Please let that not be something that was living and breathing before it was hit. And you start to tense up, and you try to ignore it, and your eyes bounce around to oncoming traffic, or the dashboard, or the opposite lane ahead. You tell yourself not to look, you know, because whatever it is isn't moving, and you can't bear the idea that it's someone's pet or a deer or even a lowly possum. Hell, it's too late to save whatever it is, there's nothing you can do--so why look? Why put yourself through that?"
Silas turned his head to her, and his eyes latched on to hers. "But then you're right next to it, and you tense up, and your heart is breaking so you just have to know--except there's this sudden rush of relief because it's like a sofa cushion or a wadded-up towel or part of a blanket. It only looked like something that got hurt, it only had the appearance of an innocent animal killed by a cruel intersection of speed and trajectory. So you enjoy this sweet relief afterward, this feeling of...it's okay. Only a trick of the eyes and the mind. It's all right."
He grew silent, his stare shifting away. "I told myself what was happening to my body was...normal. That it wasn't...death. I would stay awake during the day, staring at the ceiling, constructing all manner of it's okay, it's all right...it's not what killed my father."
His voice grew tight and then strangled out.
Blinking hard, Ivie took his hand and squeezed. "I'm so sorry. God, I'm just...so sorry."
"I was too embarrassed to take my clothes off in front of you," he murmured without looking over at her. "When we were making love. I didn't want you to see me for what I really was. I loved the way you looked at me when I touched you, kissed you, was inside you. In those moments, I was who I used to be."
"Stop referring to yourself in the past tense. You're still here."
"No, I'm not." He passed a hand over his abdominal region. "I haven't been myself for quite a while--and I refuse to pretend otherwise anymore. They didn't want to tell me I was terminal, you know. They still haven't used the word to me directly, and I was ambivalent about that for a while. I kind of didn't want that term to be tossed around. B
ut after my last collapse--well, the one before this one...that's when they started talking about the private nurse. And someone, I can't remember whether it was Havers or not, said hospice. That was how I knew it was the end, and it motivated me, you know, to try to be with you. Well, that and it's impossible for me to fight the attraction I feel for you."
Silas's smile was haunting, the kind of thing that stained your brain so you never forgot the image. He was still as handsome as he had been that first night, but she could tell there was a subtle change in his skin color from the liver issues. And the hollows in his cheeks seemed deeper. And his mouth seemed thinner.
It was as if the knowledge of his disease had shaded his features, adding a filter such that that which had not been noticeable before, when his heath had been something she took for granted, was now all too evident.
"I'm going to harp at you to take my vein," she heard herself say. "And I want to get you home as soon as we're able to. That way, we can go out together, and--"
He squeezed her palm. "You sure you want to do this? I liked it better when we were on equal footing."
"I'm in," she said simply. "No matter how bad it gets, I'm not leaving you."
"Why couldn't I have met you earlier?"
"Maybe you met me at just the right time."
As she spoke, she intended to keep the sorrow out of her voice. She failed, though.
Getting to her feet, she put a smile on her face. "You know what we need?"
"That is too long a list, dearest Ivie."
"We need some food. I'll be right back."
As she headed for the staff door, he craned his head around. "Where are you going? If you're hungry, the chef will make you anything you want?"
"I need fifteen minutes. Twenty at the very most."
On impulse, she doubled back and approached the bed. Leaning over him, she stroked his face. Then she dropped down and brushed his lips with her own.
"Don't go anywhere," she whispered.
"Well, hell, and here I thought I was going to head out for a quick jog around the block."
She was a little embarrassed to say I love you again. But she got over that fast. The horrible reality was that patients like him could go into cardiac arrest or multi-organ failure at the drop of a hat, so holding back was not something she could afford to do.