by S. E. Lund
"I didn’t think he was yours. I thought he was Chris's. It wasn't until we tested Chris as a donor that we found out he wasn't related. It was then I knew." She glanced up at me, her face red. "I must have miscalculated my dates. I probably didn’t want to think he was yours."
I knew that Maureen was unhappy when we split up, but I had no idea that she had already started a relationship with someone else. When she left me, I thought it was truly because we failed, not because she had someone else waiting. She’d mentioned someone named Chris in passing before she left me, but I thought it was just a colleague. I’d been jealous at the mention of his name but too busy and self-absorbed to push her to find out more.
"So you were sleeping with Chris before we split..."
"Drake, I could have been sleeping with an entire college football team for all you'd have known. You were so busy in Africa and with lectures and surgery and your band to even notice that I was having an affair."
"And how do you know he's my son? I should be tested—"
"Drake," she said, her voice sounding frustrated. "It was either you or Chris. I wasn't seeing anyone else. Yes, you should be tested, but given it's the same leukemia as your brother, I assumed he's yours."
"Of course…" I stammered. "They'll find out when they test me for compatibility." I said nothing for a moment, reining myself in once more, holding my cup between my palms. I didn't meet Maureen's eyes, focusing instead on the table and my cup. "So you were fucking us both, obviously."
"I didn’t mean to. You were pretty insistent when you were around. I tried to talk to you but you were always shushing me, trying to get me into bed. I finally gave up."
Kate stood up at that, obviously embarrassed to be listening to our private conversation. I grabbed her hand.
"Stay," I said. She sat back down, her cheeks red. I sighed heavily, feeling bad that she had to hear my dirty laundry, hoping that it didn’t sour her on me – on us. "Tell me about my son."
"Liam," Maureen said. I glanced up at that. Maureen gave a half-smile, somewhat guilty-looking. "I always liked your father and that name, so I called him that when I found out he was a boy."
"Jesus Christ," I said, rubbing my eyes. "You never suspected that he was my son?"
"You and Chris look quite a lot alike. Dark hair, fair skin. He has hazel eyes, and yours are blue, but still. Liam could have been either of yours. I assumed," she said, her voice low. "I wanted to believe he was Chris's son. It wasn't until we needed a donor that I found out the truth."
"How long ago was this?"
"He's had leukemia for a year, but it wasn't until he didn't respond to chemo and had a relapse that we decided on stem cell transplantation. We tested everyone in the family and that's when we discovered Chris wasn't his father. As soon as I found out, I made an appointment with Krishnamurtha here at NYP Children's. I decided to come here, where I knew some of the nurses. NYP has one of the best pediatric oncology centers in the world. And of course, there's you. You're the same blood type. I thought you might be an HLA match."
"What's his diagnosis?"
"AML. M5. He has a rare 10:11 mutation and needs aggressive treatment. I should have known he was yours when I heard it, but I wasn't thinking about you."
"Christ," I said, rubbing my forehead. "How's he doing?"
"He's holding his own, but he needs a transplant. If you're a match, he'll be prepped for consolidation therapy. High dose chemo and radiation, followed by bone marrow or stem cell transplant. We looked for a donor but came up empty. If you're a match, will you agree to donate your marrow?"
I didn’t hesitate. "Of course. Anything."
"I know you're going to Africa, but I need you to do this."
"The semester doesn’t start until March so I have some time. I was going to help with their surgical slate for a while, help with backlogged cases, but that can wait."
Maureen covered her face with her hands and cried in front of us, her sobs silent, her shoulders shaking.
Despite my anger and shock, I had loved her once and she was the mother of my son, so I reached out and squeezed her shoulder. Maureen seemed to snap out of it and reached into her bag. She fished through its contents and removed a tissue, wiping her eyes as she struggled to gain control over herself.
"Thank you," she whispered.
I shrugged. "How could I say no? He's my son."
"I knew you didn't want kids, Drake. That's why I never tried to find out if he was yours or Chris's. I knew you probably wouldn't want him anyway, but Chris did want him. He wanted a family."
I nodded. "I never wanted to have kids because of the chance of passing on the gene. I never imagined being a father."
"You are, but Chris is his real father, Drake. A father isn't just a sperm donor. A father is the man who reads you stories at night, who plays soccer with you in the summer and who takes you fishing. A father is the one who sits by your bed when you're sick."
I shook my head, filled with a sense of bitterness. "I guess I never had a father, then."
She glared at me, an exasperated expression on her face. "Look, Drake. If you do this, I don’t want you trying to become involved in Liam's life. Leave things as they are," she said, her voice edged with warning. "It was hard enough telling Chris that Liam wasn't his. Liam doesn't have to know. It would break his heart to find out that Chris wasn’t his biological father. Maybe some day when he's grown and able to handle it, but now? I don't want him to know."
I didn’t say anything, biting back a nasty response about her morals but who was I to condemn her for being unhappy with me? I had been a self-absorbed bastard.
"Will you come up and see him now?" she said. "He's probably asleep, but you could look in on him." She turned to Kate. "You won't be able to go into the room. Only family is allowed inside."
Kate shook her head. "That's fine. I wouldn’t presume to intrude on your private family business."
"Kate can come along if she wants, and wait outside his room." I turned to her and took her hand, squeezing it. I needed her with me for she was the light in my life, and I would need a lot of light now.
Kate nodded. Maureen didn’t argue.
Maureen led the way to the elevator and down the hallways to the children’s ward. I asked Maureen about Liam's diagnosis and treatment and she ran down the sessions of chemo he’d already gone through and how he responded initially, but went out of remission. When they exhausted all the meds open to them, Liam’s oncologists decided on stem cell transplantation. I realized that Kate wasn’t up on all the terminology so I turned to her.
"He has acute myelogenous leukemia. It's a cancer of the white blood cell at a certain stage of development. He has a rare mutation that makes it very aggressive and so they have to treat it equally aggressively."
"Like your brother's?" she asked.
I nodded. "Liam was diagnosed when he was four and died when he was five." We pushed through double doors and into the pediatric oncology ward. "I never knew Liam," I said, thinking of my mother’s tiny shrine to him. "I was supposed to be the consolation baby, but apparently, I wasn't enough."
Kate took my hand and squeezed. I turned to her, and saw that her eyes were brimming. When I saw that, my heart warmed.
"Sweet sweet Kate," I whispered, leaning down to kiss her cheek.
We arrived at the pediatric oncology ward, walking past the playroom with brightly painted floors and walls in blues and yellows. I hadn’t spent a lot of time on the ward, for I dealt with neurosurgery patients, but every now and then I had a pediatric patient with a brain tumor and so I had been there before to visit.
Kate sat in a small waiting room while Maureen and I spoke to the nurses at the nursing station.
“He’s been stable, sleeping most of the time.”
The nurses at the station didn’t know the whole story and assumed I was just a consulting physician.
“Dr. Morgan is a friend and is going to check in on Liam.”
The nurs
e nodded and we went back to Liam’s isolation room. We entered the anteroom and suited up in gowns and masks. When we entered Liam’s room, I got my first look at him. He lay on the bed, his tiny head bald from chemo, his face pale, his lips pallid. On oxygen, the nasal cannula circled his face, and an I.V. threaded into his arm.
I stood beside the bed and watched Liam as he slept, my emotions almost overwhelming me. I didn’t know how to feel – incredibly shocked that I had a son, incredibly saddened that he was so sick and frail. A deep protective sense filled me, and I knew at that moment that I would do anything and everything in my power to save his life.
I reached out and took his tiny hand in mine, stroking my thumb over his skin, which was thin and pale. I had to bite back tears, and inhaled deeply in an attempt to gain control over my emotions. I glanced up at Maureen, whose own eyes were wet. Liam stirred briefly, and so I gently placed his hand back down on the covers.
“Let’s go,” I said, too close to tears to stay any longer.
We left the room and removed our gowns and masks before returning to the waiting room. I was surprised to see Chris there with Kate. She wasn’t looking at him and her face was pale so I wondered if he’d said something to her.
Maureen turned to them. "I see you two have met," she said, her voice clipped.
"We did." Chris leaned over and kissed Maureen on the cheek.
I took Kate’s hand and pulled her into my arms, needing at that moment to feel her warmth and her sympathy and love. I pressed my face into her neck and squeezed her. She ran her hands up my back, rubbing my shoulders to comfort me. I fought to regain control over myself.
"I'm so sorry," Kate whispered, and that made me even more emotional. I breathed in deeply, swallowing back my emotions. I pulled back and kissed her briefly.
"Thank you for being here." I ended the embrace and slid my hand down her arm, clasping her hand in mine, our fingers entwining. I wiped my eyes briefly and turned to Maureen.
"Call me when the arrangements are made," I said to her. "I'll come whenever his doctors need me."
Maureen nodded and I was so glad to leave the two of them, not wanting to break down in front of anyone. We went to the elevator and I pushed the button, waiting in silence because I was afraid my voice would falter if I spoke.
Once the elevator doors closed, I leaned against the wall and pulled Kate into my arms for the short ride down to the lobby.
"Christ, what a day…" I said and ran my hand over her hair as she leaned against me. "I'm so glad you were here with me. I don't know what I'd do if I were alone through this."
"What a shock for you," Kate said, squeezing me back. "To find out you have a son and that he's sick."
"At least he has a good father."
She glanced up at me. "I hope so. He was rather rude to me."
I frowned, anger welling up in me. "What do you mean?"
"He made comments that were suggestive. About you and about me."
I shook my head in disgust, wanting to go back up to the ward and give Chris a piece of my mind, but I knew that would be a waste of time. "I can't imagine what Maureen told him about me. Probably thinks I'm Hannibal Lecter."
"He only knows Maureen's side of the story, Drake."
I sighed and released Kate when the elevator reached the lobby and the doors opened. "I was a dick, Kate," I said, taking her hand as we left the elevator and walked through the lobby to the street. "I freely admit that. She had every right to divorce me. I was an absent husband."
"You did as well as you knew how at the time," she said softly, always sensitive and forgiving.
"I promise I won't be absent with you," I said and squeezed her hand. "I've learned about myself and about relationships since then. I don't want to be that man anymore."
"You aren't."
I smiled at her, touched by her generosity. "Sweet sweet Ms. Bennet," I said and brushed my fingers over her lips. "How lucky I am to have found you."
We embraced once more and went out into a cold Manhattan winter's night.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
We drove down the snowy streets in silence. Kate took my hand and said nothing, as if she was waiting until I felt like talking. At that moment, I decided I didn’t want to go back to my apartment in Chelsea. Instead, I wanted to go to 8th Avenue. My apartment in Chelsea was pre-Kate. It was sterile. It was nothing like the man I wanted to be.
"You want to go to 8th Avenue?" Kate said beside me when she noticed our route.
I nodded but didn't say anything for a moment, trying to sort through my emotions.
"I think of 8th Avenue as our place," I said finally. "My apartment is me as I was before you. I'm different now. Frankly, I'd like to sell it and for us to move into 8th Avenue or get our own place when we come back from Africa."
"Will you still be able to go? I mean, with the transplant…"
I shook my head. "I'll contact the head of the Neurosurgery program and let him know what's up. I may not be a match, but if I am, the procedures will take about four weeks. I'll have to cancel my slate, have someone else do my surgeries, but we can still go once I know Liam's OK, if I am a match. I wouldn’t start teaching until March anyway." I pulled into a park and lock parking garage and found a spot. When I got out, I opened the door for Kate and took her arm and we walked down the stairs to the ground level.
"I hope to hell that I'm a match. He's so young and frail and this cancer is very aggressive."
"You'll have to stay for a while, see how he does."
I nodded. "I hope you don't mind. We just may have time to get your malaria meds all up to date before we go."
"Of course I don't mind." We entered the street, arm in arm, and we walked the block and a half to the building. "What's involved in the transplant?"
I opened the front entry door, holding it as Kate went through. "Testing to see if my HLA is a match for Liam's, and if I'm a match, they'll have two options. They can give me a drug called Filgrastim to increase my blood stem cells and harvest them from my blood using a machine that separates white from red blood cells, or they can go into my marrow surgically and take it out."
"Is it painful?"
"Filgrastim makes you really achy and tired for a few days before the donation because your marrow is producing more stem cells than normal. There's a recovery time after they harvest your cells. A week or so. Taking marrow directly out of the bone causes discomfort, but it's bearable with painkillers."
"How do they decide?" she asked as we climbed the stairs to the apartment.
"That's up to the oncologist but it's easier to do the peripheral collection."
Kate nodded, but said nothing more. I unlocked the door and we entered.
"How do they do the procedure?"
I took her coat and hung it in the closet while she shucked off her boots. "They'll have me lie on a bed, cover me with warm blankets. They take blood out of one arm, run it through a machine that separates out the stem cells, and reinfuse it in the other arm."
"Is there any risk?"
I shook my head. "Not really. They're very skilled at this and have been doing it now for years successfully. It's amazing and has saved so many lives." I went to the kitchen, where I kept a bottle of Anisovaya. Yelena Kuznetsova's shot glasses were at Ethan’s apartment, so instead, I sorted through the glasses in the kitchen cupboard and brought out two mismatched juice glasses.
"These will have to do," I said and poured two shots of vodka for us. I passed one to Kate and held up my own. "Za vas," I said, unable to muster much enthusiasm.
"Za vas," Kate replied, and I could tell she was forcing a smile, trying to get me out of my bad mood. The only thing that could do that was to lose myself in her body and so I took her glass put them both on the side table.
I pulled her into my arms. "What a night," I said, thinking back at how I felt when I first learned I had a son and that he was very sick, perhaps dying. "I feel like I've been hit by a truck."
Kate squeez
ed me tightly. "You've had a shock. Shock after shock. To learn you have a son, and that he has leukemia, and that you might be a match for a bone marrow transplant… It's a lot to take in at once."
I nodded, my hand stroking her hair. I knew what I needed. I needed to wash away the pain and shock and sadness. I kissed the top of her head. "I need you," I said softly. "I need to get lost in you."
She looked up in my eyes, her expression so warm and accepting.
"I'm yours," she said, her voice choking up a bit. "Whatever you want. Whatever you need."
I kissed her, amazed that I found her, that she was actually mine. I kissed her softly at first, but soon, I felt as if I couldn’t get enough of her, that I wanted to devour her, my hands stroking down her back to her ass, squeezing it with both hands.
"I need you naked, now," I said and began stripping away her clothes, impatient to see her naked before me.
"So beautiful…" I said, admiring her clear skin and heavy breasts, her tiny waist and curvy hips.
I pulled her to the bedroom, and without any preliminaries, pressed her face down over the edge of the bed, one hand on her shoulder.
"Clasp your hands together," I said. "Spread your legs farther apart."
She complied without a word or hesitation, her hands sliding up so they were above her on the bed. I unfastened my belt, unzipped my pants and shoved my cock deep inside of her. She gasped as I filled her up.
I fucked her. Hard.
Fast.
I gripped her hip with one hand and with the other, I twisted her hair into my fist, holding her down.
Like a rutting stag, I said nothing, just thrust hard and fast, my body ramming into her, my pace increasing, my heart racing.
Kate did and said nothing. She let me do as I wanted, what I needed. I thrust blindly and without concern for Kate’s needs. I leaned over her and bit down on her shoulder, kissing the spot afterwards, my mouth next to her ear.
"I'm just going to fuck you," I said, my voice harsh. "I'm just going to fuck you. Do you understand?"
"Yes," she whispered.