by Beverly Bird
“So far so good. Look, if I feel worse, I’ll tell you, okay?”
He nodded. “Dream last night?”
“During which blink?”
His mouth quirked. “This morning, then.”
“I was too tired to dream.”
Maybe she just didn’t remember, he thought. “Go ahead. Take your shower.”
“Care to join me?”
This time he smiled fully. “Care to get to the clinic?”
She sighed. “I think I’ve already made up for all the time I didn’t take off. I guess I have to.”
“Yeah, I guess you do. Besides, I already took one.”
She raised her brows. “And left me unprotected?”
“Left the door and the shower curtain open.”
She should have known.
He watched as she finally went into the bathroom. He had, to his reckoning, at least fourteen things he had to do today. Very rarely did he disappear for several days at a time. That being the case, he decided another day wouldn’t matter. He wanted to keep an eye on her, stay close by. He would accomplish what he could by way of the clinic telephone.
He went to the door and pulled it open, scowling down at the porch. The flour hadn’t actually been a bad idea, he allowed, but the only marks in it were their boot prints.
Chapter 15
Jericho couldn’t feel Catherine’s trouble any more. His eyes went back to her again and again, but there were just too many distractions in the clinic—the phone ringing as his calls were returned, people dropping in who needed his help for one thing or another. And then there was Ellen.
Each time he caught her looking at him with those stricken eyes, something stabbed through him. He was angry with himself. Had he somehow encouraged this? But more than anything he was sorry. He hated the thought that he had hurt her. She was like a sister to him; he knew her foibles and knew that she had done her share of suffering. He hated the idea that he had somehow been the man to hurt her again.
Finally he looked back at Catherine, where she was typing a letter to the service, trying to explain about Bessie’s sheep which was currently tied to his Rover. Her brow was furrowed and her hair was more disheveled than usual because she kept running her hand through it. But then she would shake her head and laugh. Boggled by the task, but willing to tackle it.
God, he loved her. So what now?
“I’ll pay them for the vaccine,” he told her.
“No need.” Without looking at him, she held up a twenty-dollar bill that had been laying on the desk. “I’ve got it. I just don’t know what to do with that animal.”
“I’ll take it down to some folks living just south of here. It’s a breedable ewe. They’d kill for it. In the meantime, Shadow’s bringing some feed for it.”
“What about Angie Two Sons?”
He raised a brow at her. So she had been a lot more aware of him and his conversations in those early days than she had let on.
Maybe there was hope.
“Angie’s taken care of now,” he answered finally.
Catherine kept typing and Jericho finally picked up the phone again. Ellen muttered something unidentifiable about Albuquerque and left.
Jericho continued to watch Catherine sporadically as he spoke to one of the boarding schools about a boy who had run away. The boy’s parents were beyond distraught and had asked Jericho to try to find him. He got engrossed in the call, then he heard her chair scrape back and he shot another glance her way.
His heart staggered and almost stopped. He hung up fast.
“You feel worse.”
It wasn’t a question. Her skin looked as fine as parchment. It was beginning to take on the bright, almost ethereal flush of fever.
She sighed. “Now that you mention it, yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded. He realized he was less angry than scared...plainly, emasculatingly scared. What was even more frightening was that she apparently felt too ill to fight back.
“It just hit me when I stood,” she explained, seeming almost befuddled. “I was concentrating on the letter.”
Jericho pushed back his own chair so hard it toppled over with a clatter. Catherine jumped, then swayed again. “Come on,” he snarled. “We’re going up the mountain to see Uncle Ernie.” He thought he might be too close to her to do her any good himself.
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” she answered in a small voice, sitting again.
“Why not?”
“Because I think...maybe I ought to stay close to medical help.” She waved a hand around the clinic. “Everything I might need is here.”
“Not everything,” he snapped. He went to kneel in front of her, searching for something in her eyes. His attention was too focused on his own suspicions to consider what she had just said.
“You haven’t had any dreams lately?” he prodded.
“Jericho,” she said with forced patience, “I’ve barely slept. I’m worn down. Vulnerable to bugs.”
Who close to her had died? He searched his memory for anything she might have said, then he remembered. “Your mother.”
“What about her?” Catherine asked blearily.
“Have you seen her lately?”
She looked at him incredulously. “She’s dead.”
“I know.”
Suddenly, her heart constricted. She shook her head. This was incredible. Insane. She knew what was wrong with her and it struck terror of its own into her soul, but it had nothing to do with voodoo and chindis and—
But suddenly she remembered what he had told her about chindis. The dead get up and go about their affairs at night. Sometimes they go to their kin, trying to warn them of sickness, of their own imminent deaths.
“She didn’t warn me about anything!” Catherine wailed.
He tried to pull her up again. “Come on. We’re going.”
“Jericho, for God’s sake, it’s Tah honeesgai!”
That froze him. His hands seemed to go cold where he held her arms. Something happened to his eyes that she could scarcely fathom, could not even begin to believe.
“You’re sure?” he asked hoarsely.
“Listen to me.” Her breath was starting to come in short, scraping wheezes.
“Then we’ll go to Gallup, Albuquerque.”
“No,” she whispered. “Call for the helicopter. I’m going to lie down.”
She made her way unsteadily to one of the exam rooms. After a moment he came in behind her. For the first time since she had known him he looked lost, helpless, and something screamed in her to protect him because she knew instinctively he could handle anything but that. He needed something to do, she realized, something that would let him feel as though he was fighting back.
“Out on the shelves, there’s a strong antipyretic,” she said. “Pink oval pills with a black M on them. Third shelf up from the bottom, second bottle from the right.”
He went and got them, bringing them to her with a cup of water. “Now what?” he demanded harshly.
“We’d better...get the oxygen rigged up while I can still tell you how to do it.”
She watched his hands as she instructed him. They were so strong, capable. He should have been a doctor, she thought wildly, and then in the next moment she remembered the way those hands had felt on her body the night before. Please, God, let me feel them again. She couldn’t die. They hadn’t even talked yet, she thought irrationally.
“Okay,” she gasped. “Leave it there...so it’s close when I need it.”
“What about the IV you used on Louie?”
“We’ll need...that too.”
It was getting so hard to breathe, and her stomach was cramping enough to take away even the air she had. She didn’t know if it was fear gripping her there, or Tah honeesgai. How far gone was she?
“You’ll have to...put it in. I can’t manage with one hand.”
She braced herself for the pain, telling him how to find a vein, waiting for it. She knew he had nev
er done this before. But the needle slid in like the kiss of an angel, and that made her want to cry.
“Thank you. Set it...set that upper clamp...to the first little black line.”
There was one more thing. Terror filled her soul, but she had to face facts, couldn’t pretend. Jericho himself had said the survival rate of this thing wasn’t high. She had done for herself all the things she had done for Louie. She had used an even stronger antipyretic, had the oxygen ready, but...
“Get...something to write with,” she urged.
He looked at her oddly, but he did as she asked. He started to hand her the scratch paper and the pen, but she waved him away.
“Write down this number.” She gave it to him, reciting carefully. Her brain felt foggy. The antipyretic wasn’t working.
“What’s this?” he growled.
“Paddy’s phone.”
His face went slack, all the beautiful, hard lines of it. Catherine had to look away.
“If...I don’t make it, somebody has to give permission...for an autopsy. The CDC needs—”
She choked off as he grabbed her, coughs spasming through her. He shook her anyway, lifting her half off the table. “No. Don’t talk about it. Don’t even let it into your mind.” Then he realized what he was doing to her and lowered her again with a ragged groan.
“Got to...be prepared...” she insisted. He leaned close over her.
Those shaman’s eyes. If they were the last thing she ever saw, then maybe this lifetime had been enough.
His gaze burned into her as if he would convey his own life into her, his own soul. “Listen to me,” he ordered. “The Navajo believe—I believe—that all life is the spirit. You medics keep trying to heal the body, but there’s a whole hell of a lot more. Listen to me.” His fingers dug painfully into her arms when she closed her eyes.
“If the spirit is strong enough,” he began, “it can resist death, the same way it can give up and die when there’s nothing wrong with a man’s body. That’s why the sings work. Are you hearing me?”
She managed to nod.
“Promise me. Promise me you won’t let yours give up.” Suddenly his hand shot out, sending the oxygen mask and the tank crashing. “You won’t need it. Tell yourself, damn it, make yourself believe you won’t need it!”
“Try,” she agreed. She had to close her eyes. She couldn’t hold them open anymore.
“For once in your stubborn Irish life believe in another way than the one that was taught to you as a child,” he finished hoarsely. “Damn you. I thought you would run, but this is a cowardly way to do it.”
She was angry, so angry at that, but she couldn’t find her voice to argue with him.
“Don’t leave me, Cat Eyes. I’m not through with you yet.”
It was the last thing she consciously heard, and the sweetest.
* * *
They tried to stop him from getting on the helicopter with her. Jericho grabbed the arm of a CDC doctor as that man started to turn away.
“You’ve got two choices,” he said with deadly calm. “You can let me in there, or you can die now and I’ll take your neat little suit and your badge and no one will know I’m not you.”
“Get in,” the doctor said tightly, after some thoughtful hesitation.
The helicopter lurched and lifted. Jericho settled himself beside Catherine’s stretcher.
She didn’t know he was there, at least not on any cognizant level. But maybe she had heard him at the end before she had fallen unconscious. It was all that would save her. He knew that in a cold, rocky spot that had settled in place of his stomach.
The wolfman had finally gotten to her. Even while she had been sprinkling that stupid flour, he had been reaching for her.
It was so simple, and so far out of the realm of anything she could accept. To Jericho, it was as clear as the sun that was even now setting, and the truth strangled him. The land he loved, one of the People he lived for, would steal something precious from him yet again...but this time he truly did not know how he would forgive it.
“Why didn’t you run, Cat Eyes? Damn it, why didn’t you just go home?”
But maybe, maybe that stubborn strength would save her.
He found her hand, twined his fingers into hers, and chanted low beneath his breath so only her spirit could hear him. He would go through every chant he had ever learned and before this night was over he knew he would repeat them.
Finally she groaned, and he took it as a good sign. Then his heart stopped, paralyzed.
“Hey,” he snapped at one of the paramedics. “Get over here.”
A young man scrambled to Catherine’s opposite side, working on her with a flurry of hands. “Fever’s spiking,” he said. “Did anyone give her anything for it?”
Jericho told him about the little pink pills. “She’s a doctor. Almost a doctor,” he said, then his mouth thinned. Because he couldn’t take that away from her, because he would let her go so she could finish the dream. He had known it would come to that all along.
Catherine began thrashing. The medic tried to lash her hands down with little strips of fabric attached to the sides of the stretcher. Jericho caught his arm. “Don’t do that.”
“She’s delirious,” the man protested.
“She’s not an animal.”
The medic backed off, not wanting to tangle with him anymore than the CDC doctor had. He had overheard their conversation outside. “Okay, okay. Hold her down yourself then. But if you let go, she’ll hurt herself.”
“No, she won’t.” A heartbeat later, he wasn’t so sure. What was she saying? And who the hell was Victor?
Terror strangled him more tightly than it had since this whole nightmare had started. It was the kind of fear that was helpless, horrified, impotent. Because he couldn’t battle this demon for her. This was an old one, one that lived only in her memory, one that should, by all rights, already be dead. Now, in the throes of her fever, she was living it all over again.
Victor. Jericho struggled to control her as she fought him violently. He was awed at her strength, at her panic, and knew she wasn’t fighting him at all. She thought he was the other man, undoubtedly the one she had gone through the motions with.
Suddenly he understood, made some sense of her garbled words. He used all his strength to hold both her hands with only one of his own. Then he shoved up her T-shirt and found the button and zipper on her jeans.
That scar. He had barely paid attention to it the night before, but some memory of it had lingered... something not quite right about it....
A bullet wound. He had seen them before and this one was unmistakable, now that he knew what he was looking for. Disjointed thoughts banged wildly through his head. She had let him take her robe off anyway, had trusted him with it. His throat closed. God, if it was too late...
He would kill Victor if he ever found him. He would do it with his bare hands, and he would smile.
The helicopter began dropping. The doctor came back, pushing him out of the way. They were in Albuquerque, and she was still alive.
Still alive...believing...
Jericho followed them as they carried her inside. Then, at the swinging doors leading to the treatment rooms, a nurse barred his way.
She was quite possibly the largest woman Jericho had ever seen. “I’m with her,” he said hoarsely, motioning past her to Catherine’s stretcher.
“No, you’re not. Dr. Weatherly told me about you.” Her voice was like the rumble of a she-cat protecting her young.
Jericho scowled. “Who’s Weatherly?”
“The CDC doctor who brought her in. You’re staying right out here. And if you lay a hand on me, security will come running.”
Jericho raked a hand through his hair. What had the CDC doctor told her?
Oh, hell, he had threatened to kill him.
He held up both hands in surrender. He considered that even if she didn’t call for security, she could definitely hurt him. And anyway, Catherine
was safe now. God, let her be safe.
There was nothing more he could do for her, and if anything, he would be in the way now. The doctors would be swarming around her, treating her body, forgetting her spirit and soul. She would hang on anyway. She had to. She had heard him.
He backed up, clamping down on a surge of temper as the nurse’s gaze moved critically over his long black hair, then went to a spot on his chest. He moved one hand to grope there and found his gall bag, the medicine pouch he always wore around his neck beneath his clothing. It had slipped out from under his shirt when he had been struggling with Catherine. The nurse stared at it distastefully.
“We must maintain a sterile environment beyond these doors.”
Oh, lady, you and I will tangle later. “Sterile or not, you might want to go in there and see if those doctors need you.”
Her jaw fell and her fleshy face went red. Jericho left her that way and went back to the lobby.
* * *
It was near dawn when Weatherly found him. He approached him with obvious reluctance, and Jericho pushed to his feet to meet him.
“You aren’t family, are you?”
Jericho’s blood went to ice. “Why? Is she—” Not again. He couldn’t finish.
“I think she’ll be okay,” the doctor said. “But if you’re not kin, I can’t admit you until she asks for you. She’s asleep right now, so you’ll have to wait.”
Something shook through him violently, relief and a fierce pride. She had fought back to him. She had heard him.
The doctor was still talking. He dragged his attention back to him.
“Her fever broke about an hour ago. This thing is fast. It strikes while you blink and vanishes just as quickly. Ms. McDaniel is sleeping restfully. She spent the night in an oxygen tent, but now she’s breathing pretty well on her own.” The man shook his head, twin spots of high color coming to his cheeks. “I wish to God I knew why. Why her? Why Louie Coldwater, and none of the others?”
They’d believed. “She recognized the symptoms fast in both cases.”
“But that was the only similarity. We don’t even know how they’re catching it.”
“Because you’re not listening.”
Jericho left him and went to the pay phone on the far wall, digging for the scrap of paper in his pocket. He had forgotten he had it until Weatherly had mentioned kin. Now he frowned down at it, rubbing a hand over his dry, gritty eyes.