by Amy Faye
But there was more to it than just that, as well. She'd left, and she'd left without a word to him. Without a message, without an explanation. Without anything. The way she kept talking, talking around whatever had made her leave in the first place, that was something that he needed to understand before he could even imagine the possibility of some other future.
The one thing that he knew, deep down in his bones, was that he couldn't keep chasing both rabbits. The thought kept running through his head, in a loop. Any moment now, he was going to have some kind of breakthrough. He was going to remember the fight that he'd had with Lara, the one that made her so mad that she decided she never wanted to see him again.
He'd see some way out of this, or understand that he was really just being sour about politics for no reason. He'd decide that he wanted to be President after all, more than anything else. He'd decide that the entire damn political world hadn't corrupted him as sure as walking neck-deep through sludge.
But nothing moved and nothing budged, and he stood at the beginning again, and his thoughts just went through the same circle again.
He rubbed his eyes. The thoughts were getting him nowhere, but he had his answer, whether he liked it or not. He knew what he wanted, but it wasn't a real choice. He wasn't going to throw everything away on a leap of faith. He couldn't, not now. Not without knowing what the hell it was that had caused her to leave in the first place.
Once he understood why she was so angry at him, he could decide what he was supposed to do. But he wasn't going to put that on her. She'd tell him when she was ready, as long as she understood first that he didn't know what the hell it was he'd done in the first place.
If she didn't understand, then he wasn't going to blame her for that, but he sure as hell couldn't let things keep going the way they were, because something had to change. And as much as it made his chest hurt, if he couldn't have what he wanted, then he at least should know that sooner, rather than later.
Something that wasn't real and wouldn't last was fine, as long as he could pretend. She had come this far; whether or not she was going to let him continue wasn't certain, but he could at least hope.
He took a deep breath as the SUV pulled up in front of Mercy General. There were things that he needed to talk about, and he needed to do it sooner rather than later. He just hoped that he had the guts to do it this time.
32
Tim looked as bad as he'd ever looked. Worse, even, Lara thought. She could hardly bear to look at him like this. She wanted to reach out and touch him, but feeling the heat under his skin, practically burning him up like a match, would only worry her more.
She looked at her phone, hoping that there would be some sort of message from the doctor. Hoping that he'd have some kind of explanation. Hoping that Paul had called and she'd just missed it, and he was promising to come right over.
She didn't know why, but having him there made her less nervous. Her fear hit her in a wave again and she shuddered nervously. There's nothing to worry about, she reminded herself; it wasn't convincing. But she repeated it again, and when it felt unconvincing a second time she repeated it a third until the subconscious part of her mind shrugged and said 'I guess.'
'Fake it 'til you make it' was the order of the day. It was how she'd gotten through law school, it was how she'd gotten through the pregnancy, and after almost ten years of motherhood, it was how she'd gotten through that, too.
It worked as long as she was careful not to let her mind get too far from the original idea. It worked as long as she didn't let herself think that maybe she was wrong without correcting that thought. As long as she was careful to do that, she didn't have anything else to worry about.
She had needed a lot of faking, lately. Faking that she wasn't angry at Paul any more. Faking that she was. Faking that she knew what she was doing here, that she understood why she'd come. She had her reasons; as soon as she understood what they were, she could start acting on them.
She faked that she was going to turn her relationship into something that lasted longer than a few weeks or a few months, until he got bored of her or until she got knocked up again, and she had no answer for who the father was other than the Democratic nominee for President.
She faked that she was going to mean something to him at the end of it, like she'd faked it last time, even though by now she definitely did know better. Her eyes stung and she rubbed at them.
Lara wanted to touch her son, and she told herself that it was a bad idea but she couldn't stop herself this time, in spite of knowing that she'd only get more worried. She took his hand in hers and he reacted by sucking in air. Then he relaxed again, back to looking as if he were asleep. Was he awake? Why was his fever so high?
The cooling pack that was on his forehead slipped off. She turned it over and put it back, and he seemed to relax more still. The doctors still didn't have a clear idea what was wrong, and worse, they didn't have any idea why the treatment wasn't working.
They'd tried antibiotics, and he was still on them. But he hadn't made any noticeable recovery. They'd tried antivirals. But he hadn't made any noticeable recovery. They'd tried just about everything short of hiring a spirit healer to come in and cleanse him with crystals, and if they didn't do something soon then she would get started with the crazy stuff.
The man on the other end of the phone had told her one thing. He'd told her to think hard about how much she loved her son. The thing that he apparently hadn't realized, or hadn't thought about, was that she was already thinking of that.
The whole reason that she was in this mess was that she thought about her son. Every decision she'd made for ten years had been about him, about whether or not she was doing the right thing for him. Apparently, the guy on the other end of the phone didn't realize that, or he just thought that she needed to be reminded.
A noise near the door pulled her attention away from the near-scalding heat of her son's arms.
"How is he?"
Paul's face looked worried. His hair was a mess. If he didn't get any photos taken, that would be a miracle, because the photos that would have been taken would be plastered over the cover of every tabloid known to man, claiming that he was dying of some form of rare cancer.
Going into a hospital, for that matter. Headlines galore, and not hard to figure out what they'd say, or why. That sort of rumor was an almost guaranteed sale.
"He's not good," she told him.
Paul almost immediately made her feel better. She'd expected that to be the case but she hated that she was right about it. He shouldn't have been the thing that controlled her mood. If Tim was sick then feeling better was just downright wrong. But he made her feel better whether she wanted it or not and she didn't even hate him for it. She hated herself.
"Do they even know what's wrong?" Lara shook her head. No, they didn't, or if they did then they weren't telling her about it. She looked up at him and he frowned, his eyes on Tim's face. "I could call the chief physician. I think he owes me a favor or two."
"What would that even do?"
Paul deflated at the question and Lara immediately regretted having asked it. He was trying his best, she knew, but that wasn't changing her mood. She tried again to convince herself that everything would be fine. Paul was here and he was going to look after her. If not her, then at least Tim.
She looked at him as he stared at her son. He rested one hand on the boy's cheek, gently. There were a thousand ways she could describe Paul, but gentle had never been one of them. He was powerful, he was authoritative, he was dominating and he always seemed to be in control of himself, in control of everyone around him.
But he'd never been gentle. With Tim it seemed as natural to him as breathing. Something in her said she should tell him and damn the consequences. Something else reminded her what had happened last time she tried to tell him. Reminded her that as far as he was concerned there was no room for a child in his life.
He didn't look at her when he spoke next, but h
is voice had taken on a hard quality. "Tell me about this phone call. Tell me everything. What words did he use? What did he sound like? Did he give his name?"
Lara recounted the story of her call. She gave the number, as well, but he dismissed that part immediately. It was likely a temporary phone number, he said; you could apparently get apps on your phone that used fake phone numbers now.
If whoever the caller was hadn't used one of those apps, it was easy and inexpensive to get a pre-paid phone with a hundred minutes or so, and make as many calls as you needed to without having to worry about it ever being traced back to you.
The idea that Paul knew so much about these things sent a shiver rolling up and down her spine. And the way that he was looking at her son, his face set hard as stone even as his fingers traced the line of Tim's jaw…
She'd always known that Paul Green could be dangerous if he wanted to. His wife gave him a wide berth, and Helen had always been a hard woman herself, unafraid of putting things at risk if it might put her in a good position.
To know that he was capable of being dangerous, and to see him with that expression on his face, were two very different things. She didn't like the feeling that wrapped up her gut and started arousal smoldering in it. She was afraid of him, not aroused.
At least, that was what she had to tell herself, because otherwise she had a lot to think about. With an anonymous blackmailer and a sick son, she already had enough on her plate without having to decide what to do about a masochistic streak.
33
Paul looked at the boy because he couldn't look at Lara. If he did then he wasn't sure what he was going to do but he knew right away that it wasn't going to be something he was proud of.
He was proud when he showed some kind of restraint. He was proud when he knew what he was supposed to do instead of having a big stupid grin on his face. He was proud when he made a problem go away without turning to one of the contacts he'd made that made him feel dirty just talking to them.
Paul took a breath. There were times that he wanted nothing more than to walk away from all of it, from all of them, but now, from where he was standing it seemed like maybe his black book full of dirty tricks was the best tool at his disposal.
There were other things to consider first, though. The right tool for the right job, for one thing. And second, when all you've got is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
Well, he wasn't going to let himself fall into that trap. There must have been another way out, but if he looked at the worry and grief on Lara's face for one more instant then he knew exactly how he was going to react. Or rather, he added sourly, how he was going to overreact, because he was damn sure that he wasn't going to under react.
The boy was burning up. He'd been like this every day, and it was only getting worse no matter what he did. He went through the list of options again, as if there would be something new. Then he stood, pressed the back of his hand against the boy's head and turned the cool compress on his head. It wasn't cold any longer, but it wasn't as if he had any way of replacing it, either.
His address book was always dangerously close to being full. As if he was going to suddenly discover that he was too full of people he knew, too full of people who owed him favors. This one, in particular, seemed as if it was going to be favor enough for a lifetime, if it came through. He had to hope and pray it would be enough.
The phone rang once, twice, and then finally someone picked up the other end.
"Dr. Richards," the voice said. He sounded distracted until Paul spoke.
"Doctor? This is Senator Green."
"Senator. How can I help you?"
He stepped out of the room and into the hall. It was louder in the hall, but at least then he wasn't disturbing Lara with the call, and with where it was about to go.
"You've got a lovely hospital, Doctor."
"Thank you, it's very nice of you to say so. May I ask why you're calling?"
"I need a favor, and I'm willing to scratch your back if you can scratch mine," he said. He kept his voice amiable. "Of course, I'm sure that I could find someplace else if I had to, but I wasn't lying: I do quite like it here, and I would hate to have to find another place that needed my money more."
There wasn't much, it seemed, that money couldn't buy. Paul's family had never been short on it. He'd never been short on it. His grandfather had, maybe, once. But that was so long ago that anyone who mentioned it was talking about ancient history.
The fact that it made it easier to grease the wheels a little, that it made it easier to get ahold of the chief physician of a major metropolitan hospital, was as despicable as it had been before he'd just done it two hours ago, but Paul couldn't make himself regret having done it.
He took the hallways slow, on the way back to Tim's room. There were always options, always choices. Sometimes it was easier to pretend the choice didn't exist, if the right answer was hard enough. If it was dangerous enough. Nobody wants to make a hard decision, nobody wants to make a bad decision.
But when there's no choice? People will do all kinds of hard things. They'll make all kinds of bad decisions, because they have to. There's no other choice.
This was one of those times that he needed to think of how there was no other choice, because if Dr. Richards was telling the truth then he had a choice to make and either option was going to be hard.
They weren't being entirely honest with Lara, and he understood why. Tim was sick. He was desperately sick, in fact, and the only answers were… well, surgery was the only acceptable answer. The other answer, because there was always a choice, was to let him fight it himself, and a boy that young never wins those fights. Most people older than him, stronger than him, would never win.
The answer was obvious because the alternatives were unacceptable, but that didn't mean that the boy had no choice. He could choose to continue on a failing kidney, for example. He could choose to walk out of the hospital right then and there, and stay in a coma until one day he wasn't even in a coma any more. They could choose all sorts of things.
The hard part was that the more that Paul got involved, the more that he put Lara and her son in an uncomfortable position of having to explain why a sitting US Senator and the current Democratic nominee for President had taken such an interest in them.
Those were questions that he didn't care to answer himself. Questions that Lara would almost certainly have cared to answer even less than he did, which was impressive because his preference was to ignore the issue entirely until it was impossible to continue doing so any longer.
He rubbed at his chin, hints of stubble just long enough to give it a little scratchiness rubbing back at the tips of his fingers. And then there was the question of what he was going to do about his wife. She was already furious about the entire thing, and now… the kind of donation it would take to get Tim high enough on the donor list to make a difference was the sort of splash that Helen wouldn't be able to stomach.
Which meant that whatever she was planning on threatening Lara with, it was about to come down on his lover's head. And if it came down on Lara, it was almost certain to come down on Tim's head, as well.
Then there was the other thing. The man on the phone. Whatever he wanted, it wasn't something good. He wasn't trying to help Paul out. He wasn't trying to make sure that everything went fine on their end. Whatever he wanted, he was stooping very near to blackmail to get it. More than close enough for the FBI to get involved, since it seemed to involve a Presidential election on top of all the other crimes that the man was intending to commit.
The list of who he could be working for was small enough that the names came readily to mind. The list was long enough that Paul didn't have an easy answer, at least not right away, and that was just as upsetting as well.
He took a breath and closed his eyes as he approached Tim's room in the pediatric ward. There was always a choice. The choice was usually obvious when you really considered all your options, and it was o
nly the rare occasion that anything was seriously difficult to choose.
This time, though, the choice was difficult, and it was difficult because every option seemed to preclude itself, in a roundabout way.
If he helped Tim, then he was alienating Helen. Helen, who tied him to the seedy underbelly of politics. Helen, who was essentially his trump card when things got bad. Helen, who would do everything she could to make his life a living hell if he tried to push on without her.
Whoever it was that was threatening Lara, threatening to expose her and essentially ruin her life and her career, would be as safe as can be from any retaliation with Helen gone or angry. She was the one who could hit. Paul didn't hit. He barely knew how to.
If he didn't… well, the drawbacks of failing to help Tim were so obvious that they went without considering. Which meant that in the end, somehow, he had to help. He had a choice. He had a great deal of choices. He could make Lara disappear in an instant, without ever once exposing himself to any sort of blow back.
He could make the problems all go away without much trouble, by pretending that there weren't any problems at all until it was too late. It would have been easy. Easier than trying to find a way to make everything work, anyways.
All he'd have to do would be to go back to his hotel, get a good night's sleep, and the next morning, climb on board his plane. That would be as easy as it could get. Hell, he'd done it more than once. Cheryl's face flashed through his mind. An inconvenience, cut out without a second thought.
But when one of the choices is unacceptable, then you might as well have no other choice. Whenever the unacceptable options are crossed off, it's easier to pretend.