by Terese Ramin
“What about Meg?”
Hank blew out his cheeks on a breath. “I dunno, Kate, but this is something I can do. I can see about somebody else’s kid and after that, since it’s a party not far from the house, chances are it’s got friends of Meg’s at it. Maybe they can help me find her. Hell, maybe she’s there. I’ve got the cell phone in the car, you can call me if anything comes up here.”
“Hank—”
He shushed her with a quick brush of his lips across hers. “I’m sorry, Kate, I can’t just sit, I have to act. I’ll be back.”
Then he was gone.
Eyes narrowed, Kate stared at the seemingly almost vibrating space he’d vacated and wondered if this was the reason history had titled some women as ladies-in-waiting.
Kate called back the Gillespie phone number. The line was busy or the phone was off the hook, so she called the police, explained the phone call she’d received, her concerns, told them Hank was on his way and gave them the address. Then she waited.
She sat. She stood. She finished folding clothes and scrounged together a load of dark clothes for the washer—not difficult in a household their size.
She tried to read, but it was a ridiculous waste of effort because she couldn’t concentrate.
She pinched her chin and tapped ragged fingernails against her teeth, squinted down her nose at them and went to get a file and Li’s creams and gave herself a manicure. It wasn’t a very good one, given she wasn’t used to paying that kind of attention to herself, but the effort was both frustrating and mildly distracting.
She dusted the living room and moved the load of laundry from the washer to the dryer.
She got out the heavy rosary her mother had given her the day she’d taken her vows and entered the convent, and she prayed. She’d gotten as far as the fourth Sorrowful Mystery when the phone rang. Hank.
“I’m at McPherson emergency,” he said hoarsely and without preamble, naming the local hospital. “Come.”
Her jaw tightened, but she kept the fear and the questions out of her voice. “On my way,” she told him.
Then she called the guest cottage and woke Tai, got Li up to come downstairs nearer the phone until Tai could get to the house, crumpled the unfinished rosary in her hand to finish in the car and went.
It didn’t even occur to her to realize that he trusted her enough to call her to him with a single word, without wondering if she would.
He sat in a waiting-room chair looking tense and haggard, older than his years, defeated. He didn’t even look up when Kate approached and perched on the edge of the chair beside him, slid warm fingers into the crook of his near hand.
“Is it Megan?” she asked.
He nodded, eyes blind on some spot in the near distance only he could pinpoint. “She was at a different party a couple streets behind ours with that kid she dates sometimes—Zevo. Call came in right after the police broke up the party at the Gillespies’. Brandon was in the owner’s study fiddling with a gun. He’s okay, wired to beat the band, but alive. They called his parents and took him upstairs to psych for observation. Zevo’s dead. Meg was collapsed next to him. They don’t. know what she took, but they found a bag of pot and a couple vials of crack on her, no used equipment Her heart’s not working right. They’re getting ready to transfer her up to cardiac intensive care. They think she’ll be okay, but it’s still iffy. If she pulls through, she’s looking at charges of possession and drinking under the teen zero-tolerance law.”
His mouth trembled; he stiffened his jaw and canted his head to Kate. “I saw her, Kate. They’ve got her on oxygen and she’s hardly with it, but she opened her eyes and took one look at me and said, ‘You’re not Mom. God, I’m still alive, aren’t I?’” His mouth twisted and stretched tight his eyes filled, shiny with tears he refused to shed; his fingers closed painfully around Kate’s. “I don’t want to lose her, Kate, but I don’t know how to keep her alive if she doesn’t want to be.”
There was nothing she could say to make it better, to make it go away, so she said nothing, simply touched his chest to let him know she was there to hold onto if he needed an anchor in the storm and sat with him and waited through a parent’s worst nightmare.
September 19—4:22 a.m.
CICU waiting room
“Mr. and Mrs. Mathison?”
Hank turned at the sound of the male nurse’s voice without noticing the assumption of Kate’s identity. She opened her mouth to correct the mistake, then closed it again. In the face of other things, who she was or wasn’t hardly seemed important
“How is she?” Hank asked.
“Stable.” The nurse shrugged. “Comfortable. She’s sedated right now, but you can sit with her for a while if you want.” He turned at the squeak of rubber-soled shoes behind him, nodded toward the tiny Malaysian woman in pink scrubs who approached. “Doctor Yanga would like a word with you first Dr. Yanga.” He motioned at Hank and Kate. “These are Megan’s parents.”
The intern on night call acknowledged them with a look, indicated with a question-mark face and a flick of her eyes that she’d like to collect a cup of coffee before joining them. Eyes glued to her, Hank swallowed and shrugged. Couldn’t be too bad if the physician thought there was time for coffee before speaking to him, could it?
Either that or else this was going to take some time and Dr. Yanga was fortifying herself for the ordeal.
Kate touched his shoulder, her voice low, “Do you want me to go?”
He folded a hand tightly around hers, moved his head a fraction of an inch to the negative. “No. Stay, please. I need you here.”
Dr. Yanga finished filling a disposable cup, then crossed to perch on the edge of the coffee table in front of them. “I think your daughter will be okay.” Her voice was thin and heavily accented, difficult to understand. “We’ll keep her for observation two or three days to be sure.” She paused, consulted the chart in her hand. “She has some alcohol in her system, but the main problem is the ma huang. You know it?”
Hank eyed Kate askance, shook his head. It wasn’t a substance on his drug-war lists—at least not by that name.
The doctor nodded as though the answer was to be expected. “We see it sometimes lately, not so much, but more often than before. It is a Chinese herb also called ephedra, used to make the ephedrine that goes into asthma inhalers. It’s not illegal, but very dangerous for many people if it is not carefully used. It made your daughter’s heart go like so—” She fluttered her fingers to illustrate an irregular pattern. “Too fast, then too slow, no rhythm. Also the blood pressure goes too high. That is what happened to your daughter. The other boy died from it, but he took more. She took too much, she almost died, but help came in time. Very fortunate. You have questions?”
“Where did she get the ma huang?” Kate asked.
Dr. Yanga shrugged. “Hard to say. Could be...” She struggled for the word. “New Age head shop, I think it is called. Come in packages like so...” She formed her thumbs and forefingers into a triangle. “...maybe ten to twelve pills in a box. There’s no regulation, so it’s hard to say if all pills are made exactly the same. Shops can claim they’re all natural, give energy, but nobody knows how much ma huang is in each pill.”
“But she’ll be all right?” Hank pressed. In his experience “stable” could mean anything and intensive care units of any sort were not kind to the emotions.
“Maybe so,” the intern agreed. She waved a hand toward the door. “You can see:”
Without letting go of Kate, Hank rose, pulled her up, and followed the doctor to Megan’s bed.
Chapter 17
By the second day, Megan was pretty much her old self once more: surly, uncommunicative, full of At-Ti-Tude...and self-satisfied.
Although initiatly frightened by her experience, she seemed to view both her father’s and Kate’s concern for her with smugness and indifference—a combination of “gee, look how fast I made you jump” and “boy, I can do anything and you’ll pick me u
p and I won’t have to pay for it.” The latter attitude was particularly prevalent when the local law extended Hank the professional courtesy of not arresting Megan on the spot, accepted his guarantee that she would turn herself in as soon as she was released from the hospital.
Her demeanor did not sit well with Hank.
Even when he told her about Zevo, tried to impress on her how lucky she’d been, her only visible emotion was in the muscle that jumped along her jaw and a bored, stony stare.
As a DEA agent, his entire adult life had been spent attempting to correct a balance between the terrible choices people made and controlling the availability of illicit substances that too often turned choice and experimentation into addiction. He’d long believed in imposing certain restrictions and responsibilities on choice, in safeguarding those stipulations with his life if need be. He was having a difficult enough time accepting that for the most part there was likely nothing he could have done to prevent Megan from choosing to be where she was right now. It was devastating that she chose to defy him by flaunting his work and beliefs the way she’d done. That she needed and wanted to escape her life—or enhance it or a hundred other words and justifications he couldn’t badly she’d been willing to risk her life to do it.
That despite the fact she’d been caught “holding” and had any alcohol at all in her underage system, the thing that had almost killed her was a herb he’d never heard of and whose sale to minors or anybody else he couldn’t regulate.
When he’d looked at her attached to heart monitors and tubes, saw Zevo’s body, all he wanted to do was pick Megan up and hold her tight, bring her home, yell at her and lock her in her room until she was thirty. Mostly he wanted her to tell him, to make him understand, what the hell she could possibly have been thinking when she swallowed the ma huang with its liquor wash-me-down?
Kate, too, was disturbed by what she saw in Hank’s daughter, but instead of bewildering her, all Megan’s attitude did was grind—and cause her to narrow her eyes, pull Hank aside and suggest he say thanks, but no thanks to the local law’s offered professional courtesy. She also suggested he talk to the would-be arresting officers, cop parent to cop, about posting a showy guard outside her hospital door-Megan had, in the past, posed some light risk after all-and letting them cuff her and take her into custody on her release.
A night or two in jail or juvenile detention might, she pointed but, stopping Hank before he could protest, prove to be just what the doctor ordered. Because, while this might be the worst time—so far—that Megan had figured Hank would rescue her from the consequences of her irresponsibility, it wasn’t the first. And if he continue to rescue and protect his daughter, it undoubtedly wouldn’t be the last time.
“I mean, for pity’s sake, Hank,” she said, pounding the point home. “think about it. Meg nearly died this time. The guy standing next to her did. Maybe its time you draw the line, toss out a little tough love and find out if she’s really as tough and as far gone as she acts. Worst case, you find out you really got your work cut out for you. Best case...” She offered him a one-shoulder shrug. “Maybe you find she’s really just a scared kid looking for some kind of attention she doesn’t know how to ask for and you don’t know she needs.”
“Butt out, Kate,” he told her tersely, angrily, not for the first time. She might be right, but now was not the moment he could bring himself to step back. take a breath and separate his love for his daughter from his need to hover and protect her by lashing back at Kate. “Back off. You’ve interfered enough. What the hell do you know about tough love? If you hadn’t always let Meg run to you and stay, instead of sending her back to me when she was younger, maybe we could have sorted out what’s ailing us a long time ago and this wouldn’t’ve happened.”
He stooped, nose to nose with her, fighting himself and her, waning with his heart. “You’re so damned certain you know it all where kids are concerned, but, lady, maybe all you’ve been is lucky. And whatever you know, it sure as hell didn’t do you any good with Risto and it hasn’t made much difference with Megan lately.”
Kate stepped back, stung by the verbal slap. He’d asked for her help, all she’d done was try to give it to him. Saint Kate, at your service. Right?
Oh, yeah, sure. She blew herself a mental raspberry. Get off your high horse, martyr.
On the other hand, he was also right. She never had done much to discourage Megan from running away to Stone House, the same way she’d never done much to discourage the other teens who straggled into and out of her life over the years. She was, as her mother had often tried to tell her. a big-time buttinsky. Maybe, as that woman had frequently attempted to suggest, the better part of valor in some situations was to back off, not bulldoze forward, to step aside so someone else could pass.
To not assume she was the only one who could right a problem simply because she was good at it.
There was no real way to do it gracefully, to say it without appearing piqued, but she had to say it, “I’m sorry, Hank. You’re right. I do overstep. She’s your daughter. You have to deal with this from the inside, and all I have to do is peek in your window and think I know it all, tell you this is what I see. I don’t have to live with the decision like you will.”
He eyed her incredulously. For reasons he knew exactly how to define, her apology incensed him more than any self-righteous preaching she’d ever done. “Stuff it, Kate,” he told her flatly and stalked out.
The hospital hallway seemed too bright and artificial, too confined for the collection of emotions spreading roots and trailing vines through his chest. He pushed his hands through his hair, tried to suck air too deeply into constricting lungs. Had to pinch the bridge of his nose, shut his eyes and concentrate before the sentient overflow got away from him. It was too much all at once, that was it. Megan, a baby, a family, a woman he wanted, needed, almost more than he needed his soul...and Megan wanted to do without him, and the baby and the family had Kate who’d proven over and over through the years that she was capable of doing whatever she set her mind to, whether it was raising children or maintaining her flourishing farm and businesses, without a man to help her.
Without him.
And he needed them all, loved them all—the children equally with each other and Kate...Oh, God, and Kate! He loved Kate more than anything. More than anyone.
More, period.
Everyday, all the parts of her, the impossible and the saintly, the opinionated and the imperfect. Her luscious body and lavish mind and generous heart. Kate. Damn her, she would have to live with whatever he decided to do about Megan. The child they shared between them was part of Megan, too, a Hesh-and-blood sibling. No way they could change that, no way he wanted to. And that meant Kate would share Megan’s life, share his, damn it, whether she put her name beside his on a marriage license or not.
His name on the baby’s birth certificate wasn’t what would make him its father, only his presence in its life would do that. Same way only Kate’s presence could make her its mother.
Rationally he knew that her not being around for Megan after Gen died probably wouldn’t have made things better but worse. He knew her kids weren’t perfect, that she’d made her mistakes with them, but their...learning experiences...had simply, thankfully, taken place on the right side of the law, and had been less dangerous than Megan’s blunders and explorations. But rationalization had nothing to do with how he felt at the moment. Passion, fierce and undeniable, was the word most aptly suited to the here and now, encompassed all the other emotions: anger, futility, desire, love. But passion like this was not the way to approach either Megan or Kate.
Or was it?
He stopped short in the hall, staring blindly ahead, causing an EKG tech to swerve abruptly to avoid running her cart into his heel. Losing his head to passion could mean death both literally and figuratively on the DEA playing fields. but he was not working either undercover or behind a desk for the DEA here. Could attaining the future he sought truly be as
simple as a word he could illustrate with toughness or a lifetime of care after he said it?
Maybe not always, but in this one instance...he’d tried everything else, entrusting Kate and Megan with not only his silent heart but the word love as well...
If it backfired on him, he was pretty certain he was the only one who could be hurt.
With Kate beside him, Hank called the police from the pay phone in the waiting room. When they arrived he did the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life: walked into Megan’s room and told her he loved her, that she owned his heart, but that he had no idea how to impress upon her the things she needed to know to survive the course she’d set for herself. Then he stepped back out of the way and stood by while the police read Megan her rights and officially took her into custody.
He could have requested privilege, to stay with her, but when the officers told him to go since Megan was now out of danger, he went.
Megan’s eyes shot daggers in his direction, and were looks deadly, he’d have been on the floor, no question. He felt as if he was down there, dying anyway, but though comfort was elusive, he hoped one day to be able to find it in today’s act. She had to find her own way through this experience; he couldn’t shield her from the repercussions of every choice she made for the rest of her life, had to let her go—a thing much easier to do in theory than in practice. Had to let her separate herself from him if she must, but expect her to take adult responsibility for her adult mistakes.
Had to let her go through the system unless and until, he’d decided, she agreed to go into a halfway house for runaways and make a real effort to help herself by accepting and participating in counseling and therapy both on her own and with him.