The Wife He’s Been Waiting For

by Dianne Drake

  “What if it’s not viral?” she asked Michael a few minutes later as they passed in the hall, practically bumping into each other they were both moving so fast in opposite directions.

  “Then we don’t have enough broad-spectrum antibiotics to treat everybody who’s ill, and we’ll have to evacuate them to a hospital. What makes you think it’s not a virus?”

  “Something Helen Weinstein said.”

  “Who?”

  “The purple-hat lady who’s running the lab now. She said she’s not seeing much of a commonality in the blood samples. Nothing is really popping out at her and she doesn’t have the right equipment to get too specific. But she’s growing some cultures, and I think that’s certainly something to think about. Food-borne and water-borne bacteria occur all the time.”

  “In the form of gastric upset normally.”

  “Except most of our patients have respiratory symptoms to some degree, and practically none of them have gastrointestinal problems. And it’s causing system-wide problems…blood in the urine, abnormal blood sugar. I just saw one patient with an elevated blood sugar who swears she’s not diabetic, yet her blood sugar is extremely high. So I did an A-one-C—” a test averaging out blood sugar levels “—and she’s normal. In fact, she’s perfect. But her blood sugar’s hovering at three hundred and fifty right now, so something caused it to get that high.”

  “And you’re inclined to believe your patient isn’t simply over-indulging, like so many of the others are?”

  “I’m inclined to believe her.”

  “Just like I’m inclined to believe Reese Allen didn’t lie on his physical exam to work on the ship when he said he had no history of heart disease, yet he’s just a tick shy of a heart attack.”

  Sarah frowned for a moment, then her frown line changed into a more thoughtful expression. “A couple of years ago Cameron and I had a patient who complained about lingering flu. She said she’d had it for a month and couldn’t shake it, and she decided it was time to see a doctor. She didn’t have a regular doctor so she called us to schedule herself in, but she missed her appointment, and I got word that she’d been admitted to the hospital in a critical condition. Her symptoms…” Sarah’s eyes widened. “They were all over the place, Michael. But we never saw her and, to be honest, I didn’t give it a thought as she never requested that either of us take her case while she was hospitalized.”

  “Well, most of our patients do have flu-like symptoms,” he said. “Among other things. Do you think anyone might remember that case you mentioned?”

  “My ex-fiancé.” It wouldn’t be an awkward phone call because there was no animosity between them, but talking to Cameron again would bring back memories of things she’d have rather forgotten. Dark days in her life she wasn’t particularly proud of. “I guess it’s time to give him a call, isn’t it?” she said drearily.

  “I can do it, Sarah. I know it’s not always easy, facing people from your past. I’ve got a few of those ghosts myself.”

  “No, it’s not easy facing the people you let down, is it?”

  Michael was quiet for a moment, then he forced himself to speak. “You’re being too hard on yourself,” he said, his voice unusually strained. “I’m sure that whatever happened between the two of you isn’t as bad as you think it is.”

  Spoken like a man who hadn’t come to terms with his ghosts. Her heart did go out to him. It was hard, living with something terrible in your past. Not standing by someone she’d loved while he’d been experiencing the worst tragedy he’d ever faced, and needed that support to help get them through, was her ghost. Along with all the emotional distance she’d built. “What happened between the two of us was worse than you could imagine,” she said, as she walked away.

  It took ten minutes before the call went through to Cameron. He was a small-town doctor now, married to a veterinarian, and from what she’d heard he was thriving in every way possible. Marriage and fatherhood agreed with him, and she heard that the instant his cheery voice burst onto the line with, “Sarah! It’s great to hear from you again. How are you doing? I understand you’ve been on an extended holiday.”

  “And I understand that you’ve got quite the life going for yourself,” she said, avoiding any talk of herself.

  “Everything I’ve always wanted. Health’s good, too. Full remission, and I’m feeling better than I have in years.”

  She was happy for him. So happy, in fact, that tears began to slide down her cheeks. Cameron had never been bitter, had never held any feelings of anger toward her, and she could hear that in him now. He was such a wonderful man. He deserved a wonderful life. “You deserve all the good things you’ve gotten,” she said, fighting to hold her voice steady as she swiped at the tears with the back of her hand.

  From behind her, Michael gave her a tissue.

  “Look, I’d love to catch up with everything you’re doing, and maybe we can in the future, but I’m in the middle of a medical situation right now, and I need some advice.”

  “You’ve gone back into medicine?” Cameron asked. “Sarah, I’m so glad you finally realized that nothing was your fault. Not my illness, not the way I put off treatment, not the way we turned out. I’ve felt terrible, knowing you’d quit the practice and sold your half of it because of me, but now that you’re back…where are you practicing, by the way?”

  She closed her eyes, picturing Cameron. Just a shade shorter than Michael, he was muscular but not large, and he had dark brown hair, but not as dark as Michael’s, with… Funny, she couldn’t remember the color of Cameron’s eyes any longer. Michael’s were a haunting dark brown, but were Cameron’s brown too, or green perhaps? How could something she’d seen so often have simply slipped from her mind? But the more she thought about Cameron now, the more his image blurred until he was indistinguishable from Michael. Then he was Michael, in her mind. “I’m not exactly back in a practice, but I’m helping out in a cruise ship’s hospital, and we’ve got an outbreak of something I thought you might remember from a couple of years ago.”

  Cameron chuckled. “I always picture you more as staid. You know, someone who wanted an orderly life, personally and professionally. Wouldn’t have ever guessed you’d wind up as a ship’s doctor, but if that’s what you like, I’m happy for you, Sarah. Now, tell me about this outbreak.”

  Sarah went into details for the next several minutes, telling Cameron everything she knew, which wasn’t nearly enough. But when she was finished, she held her breath, hoping he remembered their similar case. “It was odd,” he said, “because it didn’t come to us in an outbreak, and normally legionnella, or legionnaires’ disease, comes in an outbreak where numbers of people are affected. Like what you’ve got going on there. Without the tests I can’t say for sure, but it sure sounds the same to me.”

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered, a new sense of dread coming over her now. Legionnaires’ disease could be fatal, yet it was also highly treatable if caught in time. She’d never treated a case herself, but now all the varying symptoms were making sense to her. Incubation period was right, the ship’s conditions were certainly favorable to it… “That’s not what I wanted to hear.”

  With those words, Michael stepped up behind her, slipping a steadying arm around her waist as Sarah said thanks and goodbye. After she’d hung up the phone, she stayed in his partial embrace. “Legionnaires’disease, if it’s full-blown, and Pontiac fever if it’s not.” One would require strict medical treatment, and the other would run its course in a matter of a few days. Both were the same illness, but they attacked in differing degrees, hence the different names. The only good news in this whole mess was that legionnaires’ was not communicable from person to person.

  “So now we X-ray everybody to see who has pneumonia and who doesn’t, get the ones who do on antibiotics, keep treating the various other problems people are having, and hope no one else comes down with it.”

  “And find the source,” Sarah said, relieved that the medical mystery was
possibly solved but dreading the next phase of what they were going to have to face. Right about now a nice little secluded booth in a dimly lit karaoke bar sounded awfully good, and she wondered if she and Michael would ever meet there again. Probably not, considering the way they’d been last time they’d sat together in a dark booth. “Let me go and see who, among our purple-hat nurses, has experience in taking X-rays.”

  There came a point when the body just gave out, and Michael had reached that point finally. He hated the fact that he didn’t have all his endurance back yet. He’d spent months in rehabilitation, then months after that working alone, retraining himself in all the strenuous physical activities that had once come so easily, but now, when it mattered, he wasn’t up to it. He had to take a break. Even after that two-hour nap sixteen hours ago, he had to take a break. And he was disgusted with himself for that.

  OK. So he was weak. He admitted it. The prosthesis had to come off for a while. No getting around it, unless he wanted to cause himself even more trouble. But, damn it, why now? They had just over a hundred patients, the preliminary diagnosis stage was still in progress, the tests and X-rays were under way, and he needed to be there to make sure his hospital ran as efficiently as it could, given the fact that he was the only staff physician left healthy. But he had to walk out. Had to turn his hospital over to Sarah and Dr Emma Needham, one of the purple-hat ladies, and limp away.

  Had to go off and take a nap, just like that day when he’d done the same thing to his medics and got them killed.

  Even now, thinking about it made his pulse quicken. Made him break out in a cold sweat. “No distractions,” he warned himself, forcing himself to think about the technicians who would shortly come aboard to find the source of the bacterium and establish its nature once and for all. He mentally tracked the next hours to come. He would take a short nap, then make a transport manifest for his sickest patients. After that he would assess those with the milder form of the illness and give them the option of leaving or staying. Yes, that was the course of action he’d be taking, and as for the rest of the cruise…Actually, at this point he didn’t give a damn about what happened. As far as he was concerned, they could turn the ship around and head back to Florida, to their port of origin, and end this cruise. Most likely, that would be his recommendation at a meeting called for the ship’s senior personnel in a couple of hours since, as of yet, they had no idea where the bacteria were multiplying. It could be anywhere…ventilation shafts, showers, hot tubs. Anywhere with a water source, which meant it was still a danger for all the guests.

  Too tired to remove his clothes, or anything else, Michael slumped down into his bed and simply stared up at the ceiling. Sleep wasn’t eluding him as much as he was fighting it off. He wanted to feel the ache for a while. It reminded him of all the things that had turned his life over, and he did need to be reminded from time to time. Some of that beating up he did to himself. Brent Mullavey, Greg Warren…his friends. Men he’d counted on. Men who’d counted on him. Their images were always on the edge of his mind, where they needed to be. He should have let go of them months ago. The military doctors who’d taken care of him had told him it was time to do that. But he couldn’t…

  “Four hours now, and I’m worried,” Sarah said, as the ship’s maintenance man pulled out his master key and inserted it into the lock on Michael’s door. Michael had gone to take a break four hours ago and hadn’t come back. To be honest, she’d been so busy she hadn’t really noticed how long he’d been was gone until Ina had pointed it out. After that, she’d been in quite a panic, trying to find someone to come open his cabin door.

  “He’s going to hate this.” Ina’s voice was more worried than wary as she huddled behind Sarah, gripping her medical bag so tightly her knuckles were turning white. “Mike is a great guy, but he hates intrusion into his personal space. He’s private that way. Doesn’t want people interfering.” Worry changed to panic on Ina’s face as the maintenance man fumbled with his keys, trying to get the lock to open. “Can’t you hurry?” she snapped.

  Sarah’s own worry was evident in the way she balled her fist and struck the doorframe each time Bruno, the maintenance man, failed to open the door. Then finally it gave and they were in. Sarah first, followed by Ina, then by Bruno.

  “Michael!” Sarah called out in her mad rush across the cabin. Ina ran forward too, but Bruno, who might not have recognized a critically ill patient, did recognize the fact that an unresponsive patient wasn’t good.

  “Can I go get something for you?” he asked.

  Sarah dropped down onto the bed next to Michael and immediately felt for his pulse. Fast, weak. And he was burning up with fever. “Go to the hospital and have someone bring a gurney down here,” she said. “Tell them stat. They’ll know what that means.”

  Ina, who was in the process of strapping a blood-pressure cuff to Michael’s arm, cast Bruno an impatient glance as he hesitated for a moment to watch what they were doing. “Stat means immediately,” she said, her voice razor-sharp.

  “Legionnaires’,” Sarah said on her way to the bathroom to fetch a basin of cool water. “I need him set up with an IV so we can get an antibiotic into him immediately. Acetaminophen, too, to bring down his fever. Can you go get that? I’d rather get it started here before we move him.”

  “Blood pressure’s low,” Ina reported. “But not abnormally. And I’m on my way to get the IV set-up. Does he need oxygen?”

  “Probably not,” she called from the bathroom. “His breathing seems fine for now. Wouldn’t hurt to support him once we get him to the hospital, though.” Sarah returned to Michael’s bedside, carrying a basin of water after Ina left the cabin, immediately stripped off his shirt and applied a washcloth to his head, then one to his chest. Nice mat of soft, dark hair, she thought as started to removing the rest of his clothing to help him cool off. “Somehow I’d thought that the first time I saw you naked would be something other than this.” Unzipping his white uniform pants, she slid them down over his legs. “Actually, that night at Evangeline’s, I would have been very happy to see you naked, maybe in the broom closet or even under the table.”

  She paused for a moment, looking at his prosthesis. It was the first time she’d seen it, and she was amazed by the technology. She’d witnessed the working of a trans-tibial prosthesis on several occasions in her medical practice, but seeing it now on someone she knew, someone she cared about…Blinking hard, Sarah shook all that out of her mind as she removed his shoes, then his prosthetic leg. “I’ll bet you’re thinking I’m going to remove your underwear,” she said, draping a sheet over his body for modesty’s sake. “But I won’t. At least, not while you’re unconscious like this.”

  Would she have been so bold as to say these things to him if he’d been conscious? Probably not. That wasn’t in her nature. Of course, what she’d done with him at Evangeline’s wasn’t in her nature either. But she’d been thinking these things, and more, for a while, and talking to Michael did make her less nervous as she examined him.

  Another check of his pulse revealed nothing different from the first time. It was a little off but not dangerously so. And listening to his chest really didn’t reveal any congestion, which was good, even though pneumonia was always a worry where legionella bacteria was concerned. Yet here he was right now, another case of non-specific symptoms, which meant the bacteria could be attacking just about any of his systems in ways she couldn’t detect under these circumstances. That scared her, not just for Michael, but for everyone on board. “Look, Michael, I know this probably isn’t the best time to iron out our differences but, to be honest, I probably wouldn’t even say this if you could hear me. Or maybe you can. Who knows?” She laughed nervously as she sat down on the bed next to him. “But that night at Evangeline’s…I’m not usually like that. Normally I’m pretty reserved, but you’re so right about the chemistry. It’s there. We’ve got it. To me, though, it goes beyond chemistry, which is why I would have… Well, what I’m trying
to say is that, for me, it takes more than chemistry. At least, under normal circumstances. And I’m trying to figure it out…figure out what made me act that way. But I don’t want you to think that I’m loose, or anything like that, because I’m not. It’s just that I think I might be…” No, she couldn’t say the words to him, not even when he was unconscious. Couldn’t tell him she might be falling in love. That was too complicated, even for a man in his condition. And especially for herself.

  Sarah pushed a stray lock of damp hair from his forehead, dipped the washcloth in the basin of water she’d set at the side of the bed, then reapplied it to his forehead. “Not that anything between us could ever happen,” she continued. “But I want you to know that just because I shut people out of my life, it doesn’t mean that I’m not normal in those ways. Because I am. You proved that.” More than she’d thought anybody could.

  She laid her fingers to his pulse again, not because there was anything she could do so much as she simply wanted to make contact with him. Physical contact to reassure him, on some level, that she was there with him. “You’re going to be fine, Michael. I don’t know what you went though that got you injured so badly, but I promise that I’ll see you though this.” She had no other choice. Whether or not she wanted to admit it, she loved him, and if there was one thing she was good at, it was standing by the men she loved. In the physical sense, anyway.

  So maybe he had to hear that. Maybe she had to go against everything she’d held back from herself and tell him. Because, God forbid, if he died… No! She wouldn’t think like that. Wouldn’t make the same terrible mistakes she’d made before either.