Dearest Ivie

by J. R. Ward

  "So stupid," she muttered to the heavens.

  Naturally, they didn't respond.

  Had she even just taken this to the King?

  In a rush, the reality that she was no different than all the other loved ones on the planet hit hard. Why hadn't she thought of those many times people had come to her and asked her if there wasn't something else, some other treatment, a different kind of therapy that might bring relief, healing, a return to normal? She'd been so arrogant in draping her heart's desire in the vestments of her profession that she'd missed the truism that just like the stars didn't care about the destinies of mice and men, neither did disease.

  Silas's body, that proverbial car which took his brain from place to place, was a lemon without a refund/exchange program. Only emotions turned this into a tragedy. According to biology, those white blood cells that were attacking things were just doing their job, albeit with too much enthusiasm and bad aim.

  "Shit."

  Leveling her head, she kept walking and tried to think what she would say to someone in her position if she were once again on the uniform and crepe-soled-shoe side of all this...

  Nothing good.

  Damn it, she would have nothing good to say to anybody sitting at Silas's bedside.

  * * *

  --

  When Ivie got back to the clinic, she went directly to the VIP unit and let herself in with her new passcard. Instead of using the staff corridor, she marched right down the gracious patient and family hallway, passing by tables with fresh flowers on them while listening to the soft classical music that was piped in from overhead. As she came up to Silas's suite, she looked at the ornate gold number on the door. There was no notation of who was inside, or any indication that what laid beyond was anything less than first-rate luxury accommodations.

  She really wanted to believe the false presentation.

  Wished desperately that they were, in fact, going around the world, and that they had flown in the night before to a wonderful, foreign place with interesting food and a fascinating culture.

  Clearing her throat, she put her mask of not-cracking-from-the-strain-no-really-not-at-all in place and--

  Pushing the door wide, she stopped between the jambs as she saw who was sitting on the sofa in the front room.

  "Hello," Ivie said, as she stepped in and let the panels close behind herself.

  Pritchard was arranged like a department-store mannequin on the silk cushions, her stiff limbs set at what were supposed to be "relaxed" angles that nonetheless read wrong. Tonight, the female's Sensible Knit Suit and Sensible Low Heels reminded Ivie of that secretary, Miss Hathaway, from The Beverly Hillbillies.

  "How are you?" Ivie prompted when the female didn't look up.

  Just when Ivie decided to leave the majordomo to her dour mood, Pritchard spoke. "I was his nanny, you know. From the moment he was born, I was with him. They trusted me and I worked my way up to being in charge of so much more than just the young. I never mated. I never had offspring of my own. They were...all I had. All I have, rather."

  Ivie went across and lowered herself in a chair, putting her purse to the side. She didn't take her parka off. She just sat without moving and listened.

  "I am very good at my job," Pritchard said. "I run Master Silas's entire household. He has fifteen doggen who work on his estate, and the mansion is very large, as you recall. One must be attentive to homes that are that old and that big. There is always much to do."

  Pritchard looked to the archway that led into Silas's patient room. "I spoke to him. After you left tonight. For quite a while. We remembered...so many good times. It was lovely. I do not believe, if he weren't...well, I'm not sure under any other circumstances that we would have conversed as such. I am grateful for that."

  The older female stayed quiet for the longest time, her eyes watering, that thin face utterly composed as her throat swallowed compulsively.

  Abruptly, Pritchard clapped her hands on her thighs and got to her feet. "So. I shall require your bank account and routing numbers to set up payment for your services. And I have a room prepared for you next to his when we get him out of here. I shall attend to your needs as I do his own."

  The female bowed without meeting Ivie's eyes. Then she straightened and focused somewhere north of Ivie's left shoulder.

  "You don't have to pay me." As that stare met her own, she shook her head. "I don't...I don't want to get paid for what I do for him."

  "But it's your job--"

  "You need to prepare yourself," Ivie heard herself say. "Do you understand? You need to get ready because he's not going home. This is going to be where things end."

  It nearly killed her to say the words, but the truth was more important than sparing feelings whether they were Pritchard's or her own.

  The majordomo opened her mouth. Shut it. Blinked as if she had no idea where she was.

  Ivie stood up. Went over.

  And put her arms around the female.

  At first, Pritchard stiffened even more. Which was like saying that a marble statue got even more stone-ish.

  But then the embrace was returned and the two of them stood like that.

  "We're going to do this together," Ivie said as she stared at the wall. "We're going to get him to the other side of this, together."

  As she spoke, she was very aware that "the other side" was not a return to health. It was the Fade.

  Chapter Fourteen

  "Wait, wait, here's my favorite part."

  As Ivie pointed to the TV across the room, she laughed. "And then..."

  Silas was smiling next to her, the pair of them stretched out together on his hospital bed. With a blanket over the both of them, their heads on the same pillow, and their hands entwined, she could almost imagine they were just like any other couple.

  "The Junior Mint goes into the patient?" Silas asked. "Are you kidding me?"

  "Kramer is a thing." She glanced over. "This is probably my favorite epi, ever."

  "I can't believe I never watched Seinfeld."

  "Don't you love Netflix?"

  "I am learning to, thanks to you."

  There was a knock on the staff door, and Ivie discreetly glanced at her watch. Perfect timing.

  Silas looked across at the sound. "Come in?"

  Ivie was always careful not to answer for him. It was important for him to retain a sense that he was in control of something, anything.

  Rubes emtered with a tray of meds. "How we doing, guys?"

  The redhead was cheerful enough on the surface, but her eyes were focused and alert--and it was interesting for Ivie to see her cousin on the job. They had never had the same patients before because Rubes had been on another unit, and it was great to see that under all that cheerfulness there was a helluva nurse.

  Silas frowned and looked at Ivie. "I thought that you were in charge of me?"

  "I've got a fine cocktail for you this evening, sire," Rubes intoned as she put the tray down on a rolling table. "A light, fruity wine with notes of lavender and cherry, but with a finish that hints at pecan and almond."

  With a flourish, she removed the fine damask napkin that covered the syringe and vials. Ivie did a quick assessment of the drugs, checking them off in her head. Yup, all there. Good.

  "Do you think my cousin will care," she whispered to Silas, "if we make out while she loads up your IV?"

  Silas seemed confused, but then he smiled. "Rubes, what do you say?"

  "I'm think I'm too young, far too young and impressionable for such vulgarity." Rubes was quick with the administering. "Hey, is this the Junior Mint episode?"

  "It is," Silas replied. "My first viewing, as it were, and it has lived up to its hype."

  "The patient lives at the end--"

  Rubes clamped her mouth shut and paled. But Silas just reached out with his shaking hand and patted her forearm. "Not to worry. And maybe you can bring me a box of Junior Mints along with my next batch of meds?"

 
Rubes took a deep breath. "Absolutely. And I'll see if I can snag some Milk Duds and a box of malted milk balls in case they might work."

  As she covered the tray back up with the napkin, she shot Ivie an I'm-sorry, and Ivie blew her a kiss.

  And then she and Silas were alone again.

  "I love Rubes," she said. "She's, like, the anti-me--"

  "Have you--do you not want to be my nurse anymore?"

  Ivie rolled onto her side and stared into his eyes. Running her fingertips across his jaw and down his throat, she tried not to notice that his beard wasn't coming in anymore. Which was not uncommon in vampire males who were dying, that smooth skin on his face one more testament to everything she didn't want to dwell on.

  "I'd rather be your girlfriend." She kissed his mouth. "I'm still monitoring everything. But time spent running around getting meds and entering things in your record and checking supplies is time away from you."

  He nodded and closed his eyes. "Yes. Indeed."

  As he seemed to retreat from her, she gave him the space to go where he needed to in his brain. He did that a lot, she was noticing...growing quiet and withdrawn, only to come back with a joke or a compliment or a question.

  "May I ask you something?" he said.

  "Anything." She held his hand. "What is it?"

  He took his time, and she was content for him to do so. "You've been with patients in my...situation."

  "Yes. I have."

  "And what do you...what do you tell them?"

  "You mean about what the dying process is like?"

  "Yes."

  God, she hated that this subject was between them. That this horrible thing she knew so much about was not merely just a hypothetical topic of conversation to bring them closer, the kind of thing two people who were starting out covered just like they did how many kids they hoped to have or where they wanted to ultimately live.

  "You can be honest with me." He looked over at her. "I know it's not going to be easy."

  "First of all, I wouldn't disrespect you by not telling you the truth or by shading things. And secondly, I don't tend to focus on the end. What I try to have people get in tune with is the right now. I acknowledge to my patients that their bodies are failing and there is nothing we can do to stop that. But then I ask them, what do you want to most preserve about yourself right now? What characteristics of yours are most important to you? How can we honor them? Bring them forward? Who do you need to see? Who do you want to see? The reality is that the dying are still living just as everyone who is living is in the process of dying. Does this make sense?"

  He nodded and closed his eyes.

  It was heartbreaking to note that he seemed to have aged a hundred years in the last twenty-four hours.

  And it was so hard for her not to break down and weep--except she couldn't do that in front of him. She might not have known Silas long in terms of calendar days, but she was well-familiar with his character, and if he saw her carrying on over him, he would waste energy trying to comfort her.

  Staring at the dark shadow of his lashes on his pale cheekbones, she was convinced that the Scribe Virgin had put the two of them together on purpose: He had needed someone to help him on his journey to the Fade...and she had needed to feel love.

  As much as she hated to admit it, underneath her hard, I'm-not-a-romantic-like-Rubes exterior, there had been a lonely place. A quiet, lonely place that hadn't trusted fate was going to provide her with anything more than a nightly grind.

  Of course, what it had given her was a double-edged sword, wasn't it.

  "I have lived for a long time." Silas's voice was reedy and he took a couple of breaths. "I have seen many things. Much has changed over the last four centuries. I have known good people and bad ones, done things of which I am proud and others that I regret. I guess I am no different than anyone else."

  "What do you most want to be remembered for?" she whispered.

  His lids lifted and his eyes shifted to her own.

  "My love for you." He blinked slowly. "I wish to be best remembered for how much I loved you. Of all the places I've gone and people I've known and things I've done...my love for you is the purest representation of who I am. It's the best of me, of who I am, of my soul. My love for you...is everything of me."

  Ivie teared up even though she did her best not to give in to emotion. "Silas..."

  "Please don't forget me. I know I'm probably supposed to tell you to move on with your life and dwell on this little slice of time we've been given...but just...take me in your heart wherever you go. It will be the life I wished I'd lived, by your side, enjoying the gift of time and health with you."

  "I promise," she breathed. "I will never, ever forget you."

  When he didn't respond, Ivie took his palm and placed it over her heart. "Here. You will be here."

  "I'll try to come back to you," he mumbled. "In your dreams...I'll come find you...in your dreams...love...you...dearest...Ivie..."

  All at once, the monitoring equipment behind the bed started to go off, multiple alarms sounding out and summoning help.

  As Rubes and three other nurses burst through the staff door, Ivie jumped up to her knees and did a quick assessment. Cardiac arrest. His heart wasn't beating.

  "Flatten the bed!" she barked out. "Give me a flat bed!"

  For a split second the other staff members, and her cousin, froze. But then everyone snapped into action, Ivie checking Silas's airway and then leaning over him so she could provide chest compressions.

  "Where's the crash cart?" she yelled as she locked her elbows and began punching into his chest. "We're going to need the paddles! Silas! Stay with me--don't go yet, you gotta stay with..."

  * * *

  --

  By three a.m., Silas appeared to have stabilized--which was the good news. The bad news? He had not regained consciousness and had had to be ventilated so that he would keep breathing.

  His poor heart had been so ravaged by his out-of-control immune system that the muscle was just not up to its work load anymore. At the moment, the only thing that was keeping it going was a complex, layer-upon-layer combination of medications--and the blood that she'd managed to get down the back of his throat about two hours ago.

  But this was not a long-term solution and everybody knew it.

  Havers had been in surgery and then attending a complicated birth, so at this point, they were just waiting for his final assessment of what every one of the nurses, including Ivie herself, knew to be true.

  Silas was, for all intents and purposes, already gone.

  Only the shell remained, the failing husk.

  Ivie sat down on the edge of the bed and took his flaccid hand. "I love you, Silas. I'm so glad I met you."

  She didn't fight the tears this time, even though she did believe that patients in comas were more aware of their surroundings than their level of consciousness suggested.

  How were they saying goodbye so soon--

  "Ivie?"

  At the soft prompting, she looked up. Rubes was standing on the other side of the bed, the female's hands tangled in front of her chest, her body tilted forward, as if she were trying to interrupt as quietly as she could.

  Ivie mopped up her face with her palms and tried to smile. "Hi there. How's it going, cuz?"

  Or something to that effect. She wasn't sure exactly what she was saying.

  "There's someone here who'd like to see you?"

  "Okay. Sure. All right."

  It didn't dawn on her to ask who. Then again, she didn't really care about anything except what was happening on the hospital bed.

  "Where?"

  "Out in the hall."

  As Rubes nodded toward the front of the suite, Ivie stood up and brushed the loose tears off her uniform. Then she put one foot in front of another through the archway and the sitting room, and out into the hall--

  She stopped dead.

  "I thought you needed an oak of your own right now," Rub
es said gently from behind.

  Ivie's father was standing in the middle of the corridor, those biker boots planted on the fancy runner, his hands on his leather-clad hips, his tattoos gleaming in the low lighting because, of course, he had come without a jacket on.

  Ivie squeezed her cousin's hand in thanks and then she ran for her sire.

  She hit Hirah like a car going out of control at full speed. And like a concrete pylon, her father didn't budge. He just put his heavy arms around her and held her tight.

  "He's dying, Daddy. He's dying..."

  Her father didn't say a thing. He let his strength do the talking as he kept her from collapsing in a heap in the hall.

  "I love him so much," she turned her face to the side and squeezed her eyes tight. "And he's dying..."

  They stayed like that for the longest time, and she was dimly aware of people shuffling by quietly, but she didn't pay any attention to that.

  And later, much later, she would reflect that it was then that she became an adult. Standing in that corridor, in her father's embrace, she fully came into her maturity.

  The thing was, when you were young, and you went to your parents for support, nine times out of ten, they could fix whatever was wrong. They could glue the broken rudder back on your sailboat. Throw a Band-Aid on a cut. Feed you when you were hungry, put you to bed when you were exhausted, hang out with you when you were alone. They could help you find what was lost, make the storms go away, buy you an ice cream when someone was mean to you for no good reason.

  Parents, when you were a child, were the source of it's-gonna-be-all-right.

  But as Ivie leaned on her dad, it was as an adult.

  He couldn't fix this, and she knew better than to even ask.

  "I'm so sorry, little girl," he said in a voice that cracked. "I'm so sorry..."

  When they broke apart, Rubes was kind enough to take them to the unit's staff meeting room so that they could have a little privacy. And once they'd settled in at a circular table, Rubes had left them to go back to watch over Silas--something Ivie was grateful for. It wasn't that she didn't trust the other nurses to come find her...it was that she didn't trust anyone as much as she did her own blood.

  "How much longer he got?" Hirah asked.