"You're sure? Because I can get a wheelchair out here in just a second."
"I'm sure. It's just my shoulder, Honor. I'm certain of it."
"Let's just get inside so I can be certain of it, too."
As soon as they were through the emergency room doors, Honor grabbed one of the wheelchairs lined up inside and pulled it toward them. "Here, sit down and I'll take you right into one of the examining rooms. Do you happen to have your insurance card?"
Quinn shook her head. "Not the new one from PMC. I didn't get that yet. I can give you my New York insurance information, though"
"Fine. I want to get you squared away first. We can give all that info to the clerk later."
"You're the boss."
As they spoke, Honor guided the chair efficiently through the hallways, maneuvering around equipment and stretchers, and nodded to the charge nurse who looked up in surprise as they passed the nurses' station. In response to the inquisitive glance, Honor said, "Page the x-ray technician for me, will you, Nancy?"
"Okay, Dr. Blake," the nurse called after them. "You need me for anything else?"
"I'll let you know. Thanks."
Honor pulled the curtain aside, slid the chair into the cubicle, set the small hand brake, and walked around to the front to help Quinn stand. She reached down at the same time as Quinn pushed up, and they ended up nearly touching. As if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, Honor threaded her arms around Quinn's waist and moved closer. At the same time, Quinn's right arm went around Honor's shoulders, and Honor felt Quinn's fingers brush through the hair at the base of her neck. Quinn's breasts nestled against hers, and their bodies melted effortlessly together.
They were almost the same height, and Honor's body fit flawlessly against Quinn's. In the brief second before she had time to react, before her rational mind could protest, she had the sensation of perfect rightness, as if being in Quinn Maguire's arms was destined. She felt Quinn's heart beat, then her own, and then the two together, point and counterpoint, in perfect harmony. You feel so good. So right. How can that be?
She stiffened when Quinn's warm breath fluttered against her neck, and a shiver of heat flickered through her belly. She felt Quinn's thighs tighten against hers, heard Quinn moan softly, and heat became flame. She wanted to press closer, hungered to fuse her flesh and bones to Quinn's, and she knew she could not. Must not. Yet even as she sought escape, her body soared.
Mindful of Quinn's injury, Honor placed her palms on Quinn's hips and pushed gently away until their bodies no longer touched. When she spoke, her throat was dry and her voice rough with unexpected longing. "I need you on the exam table. Can you make it?"
Wordlessly, Quinn nodded, struggling to clear her head and find some semblance of control. What she wanted was for Honor to hold her again. Not because her shoulder hurt, but because she ached in her distant reaches, in places far deeper than flesh. And because she knew that in a few minute,s, she would lose any chance of finding solace in Honor's embrace.
But she had already put this confession off far too long.
"Yes, I think I can get up there." On still-trembling legs, Quinn shifted outside the circle of Honor's warmth, braced herself with her good hand on the edge of the vinyl-covered examination table, and levered herself up into a sitting position with her legs dangling over the edge. The movement started a new barrage of pain in her shoulder.
"We're going to need to take your shirt off." Honor met Quinn's gaze steadily, silently acknowledging the intimacy that had just passed between them. "Do you want me to get one of the nurses to help you?"
Slowly, Quinn shook her head. "No. If you help me, I can get it."
"All right." Honor stepped forward as Quinn spread her legs, allowing Honor close enough to assist. "Pull your shirt out of your jeans."
With her right hand, Quinn worked her shirt free of her waistband. "I can't raise my left arm."
"Mmm. I know. We'll take it slow." Honor smiled softly. "Let's get the right one free first, then we'll work on the left."
Nodding, Quinn raised her right arm and shrugged her shoulder down and free of the garment as Honor pulled on the bottom of the sleeve. That left the shirt dangling around Quinn's neck, angling across her chest and over her injured arm. Quinn suggested, "If you just pull up the bottom, I can get my head free."
As the shirt came loose, it became apparent that Quinn wore nothing beneath it. Honor kept her eyes on Quinn's face as they slowly freed her of the restraining garment. Finally, all that remained was to slip it down and off the injured arm.
"Just keep your left hand in your lap so we don't stress the joint, okay?" Honor directed as she worked the polo shirt down Quinn's arm. As she did, she lowered her eyes to the injured shoulder and stopped abruptly when she saw the fresh three-inch surgical scar a few inches below Quinn's left collarbone. A slight swelling distended the tissue from there to the upper edge of her breast.
Honor stared, recognizing but unable to absorb its significance. That can't be right. She raised her eyes to Quinn's, whose expression was oddly penitent. "Quinn?"
"ICD."
Implantable cardiac defibrillator. Honor shook her head. "I don't understand." How can I not know this? What in God's name is wrong? Oh, Quinn. No.
Honor held up a hand and stepped back a pace. "No. I need to do this right."
While Quinn stared, Honor leaned over, opened a drawer in the lower portion of the examination table, and lifted out a faded cotton hospital gown. Efficiently, professionally, she finished removing the polo shirt from Quinn's injured arm and replaced it with the gown. When Quinn was completely covered, Honor regarded her expressionlessly, "I'll get a chart together. I need to take your medical history"
"Honor—'
"Where's your insurance information?" Honor concentrated on the routine that was as ingrained and familiar to her as breathing. That way, she didn't have to think about the device implanted in Quinn's chest. Or what it meant. "I should take that to admissions so they can get you into the system."
"In my wallet." Quinn reached back, removed her wallet, and balanced it on her knee. After a few seconds, she gave up trying to extract the card one-handed. Wordlessly, she held the wallet out to Honor. "It's in there somewhere."
Honor sorted through the cards until she found the proper one. Her hands shook.
"Honor, please. It's not what you think."
"You don't know what I think," Honor snapped. Then she drew a long steadying breath, and when she spoke again, her voice was calm. "I'm sorry. I'll be back in just a minute."
Honor stepped outside the cubicle, pulled the curtain closed, and walked several feet down the hall. Then she stopped, leaned her back against the wall, and closed her eyes. A medical problem was the last thing she had imagined. She had thought of drug addiction, alcoholism, sexual misconduct, a breach in ethics. Even though none of those things fit with her experience of Quinn, she had never thought that Quinn might be ill. She couldn't bear to think of it now, and yet she had to.
"Dr. Blake?"
Honor's eyes snapped open and she straightened. Nancy Hickok, the nurse manager, stared at her curiously, a look of concern on her face. Honor forced a smile.
"Nancy, can you put a chart together for me, please? And be sure not to leave it lying around where anyone else can see it."
"Of course. The x-ray tech said to tell you that she's just finishing a facial series. She'll be ready for you in fifteen minutes, if you can wait that long."
"Fine."
Honor walked out to the admitting area and found the senior admitting officer, a man she had known for many years and whose discretion she trusted implicitly. She handed him Quinn's insurance card. "Jim, Dr. Maguire needs to be signed in. I want you to do it yourself and then give all the paperwork directly to Nancy."
"Sure, Doc." He looked as if he was about to ask more, but something in Honor's expression stopped him. "It'll just take me a second."
Five minutes later, Hono
r stepped back into the examination cubicle with the metal ER chart and all the appropriate paperwork inside. She opened to the history page, uncapped her pen, and looked at Quinn. "You're twenty-eight?"
"Yes."
Honor concentrated on charting. "Drug allergies?"
"None."
"Medications?"
Quinn's voice was steady. "Aspirin. Cordarone. Betapace."
Honor wrote the names of the cardiac medications without pause. "Medical history?"
"I..." Quinn took a breath. This was not the way she had wanted to tell her. At first she hadn't thought she would need to tell her. She wasn't under any legal obligation to reveal her medical history, and she didn't want that to be the first thing people learned about her. But it hadn't taken very long for her to realize that she wanted to tell Honor everything, not just for professional reasons, but for personal ones. She just hadn't known how. Now it was too late, and it was happening all wrong. "Honor, I wanted to tell—"
"Let's get the information down, Quinn," Honor said calmly. "I want to get your shoulder and chest x-rayed."
Honor's tone of voice was perfectly appropriate. Professional, nonjudgmental, calm and controlled. But there was nothing in her eyes when she looked at Quinn, and that was worse than worry or recrimination or even anger. At least those feelings were personal, and Quinn very much wanted what was between them to be personal. Sighing, she gave Honor the facts. The facts, however, were nowhere near the truth of what she had endured. That she tried not to think about. "Four months ago I developed viral myocarditis. It started out as a respiratory infection, I think, and within a few days the inflammation had spread to my heart."
I almost died before I admitted anything was wrong. I was young and healthy and never sick. I didn 't want Sinclair to think I couldn 't handle the pace. She never slows down; I don't think she ever sleeps. But then, in the middle of the case...
"Quinn?" Honor's tone was gentle. The color had drained from Quinn's face. "You want to lie down?"
Quinn shook her head. Hoarsely, she said, "No, I...undeveloped some scar tissue, apparently, and it created some arrhythniia problems. My heart rhythm was all over the place there for a while."
"How severe?" Honor was pleased that her voice was steady.
"I had an episode of ventricular tachycardia and arrested in the middle of a surgery."
Honor put the pen down and looked into Quinn's eyes. She couldn't even begin to pretend that thinking of what had happened didn't affect her. The very thought of Quinn nearly dying made her physically ill. Her stomach churned, and every breath burned in her chest. She could only imagine how terrifying it must have been for Quinn to live through that. Now she not only lived with the memory of it, but she had to endure the fear of it happening again. "Oh, Quinn. I'm so sorry."
Quinn smiled wryly. "The good news is that the area of scarring in my heart is very small. My cardiac function is excellent." She ran her right hand through her hair and sighed. "The bad news is, they can't seem to control the arrhythmias."
"So you need to have the implantable defibrillator in case it happens again." Honor knew that certain cardiac arrhythmias, or irregular heartbeats, could be treated by radiofrequency ablation, a technique in which the focus of the irregular heartbeat was actually destroyed so that it no longer acted as an irritant. It was the sporadic electrical discharge from abnormal areas of the heart muscle that caused arrhythmias. When the heart didn't beat regularly, it didn't pump blood normally, and there wasn't enough blood flow to sustain consciousness. Thus, some arrhythmias posed a significant risk for sudden cardiac death. SCD...sudden cardiac death. The words sliced through Honor like a knife.
"It's only been a few months," Quinn said. "There's a chance that as time goes on the cardiac irritability will lessen. I might recover enough not to need the defibrillator."
"Of course," Honor said with forced optimism. She picked up the pen again. "When was the defibrillator placed?"
"Two months ago."
"How often has it discharged?"
Quinn was silent long enough that Honor looked up from the chart. Quinn's expression was bleak.
"Four or five times."
Honor's stomach clenched. God, she's not even stabilized. What are they thinking, letting her work?
"My cardiologist knows about it, and he thinks it's probably not significant. Sometimes the defibrillators are hypersensitive, depending on the settings. He fiddles with the sensitivity thresholds, but he doesn't seem too worried."
"Are you having any symptoms?"
Quinn shrugged. "Every once in a while I'll have a few palpitations. Very rarely a few seconds of dizziness. I'm not even sure it's related."
"Are they monitoring your rhythm by remote telemetry?"
"I'm supposed to send them random heart rhythm traces every week."
Honor arched her brow. "Supposed to send? When was the last time your cardiologist looked at one of your rhythm strips?"
"It's been a...few weeks...the move and the new job and all. I just put it off."
"Jesus, Quinn," Honor said sharply, her emotions breaking through the veneer of control for the first time. "Are you at least taking your meds?"
"I'm not crazy, Honor. Yes, I'm taking them."
"Still, I'm admitting you to the telemetry unit for observation."
"Honor, it's not my heart here. My heart is fine. It's my goddamn shoulder," Quinn tightened her right fist in frustration. "That's what's killing me."
Honor's head jerked up, fire flashing in her eyes. Quinn stared back, her blue eyes just as hot.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Honor demanded.
"Because I w as embarrassed."
Honor blinked. For a second, she was at a loss as to what to say. All of sudden, she wanted to touch Quinn so badly. Not just for Quinn. For her. "It's not your fault."
"Can you honestly say you still think of me the same as you did an hour ago?"
"That has nothing to do with anything."
A muscle in Quinn's jaw jumped and her whole body tensed. That has everything to do with everything.
Honor looked away, because she couldn't lie to her, and she knew that Quinn would see the truth in her eyes. Knowing this changed everything. But she would have to deal with that later.
"Is there anything else I need to know about your medical history?"
Quinn grimaced, her heart aching. "How much more could there be?"
"I'll take that as a no. How's your stomach?"
"Better. My shoulder feels like someone is hitting it with a sledgehammer, though."
"Can you do without the Compazine?"
"Yeah. But I wouldn't mind a pain pill."
"I'll ask Nancy to bring you something right away, and then we 'll get you x-rayed." Honor reached for the curtain, but before she opened it, she asked the one critical question that would determine if even friendship would be possible between them. "Does anyone here at PMC know about your medical'condition?"
Quinn stared at her, confused. "Of course,"
"Who?"
"The chief of surgery. I presume the chief of medicine, because he talked to her when he got me the interview."
But they didn't tell me. And neither did you, Quinn. How am I ever going to trust you?
Chapter Eleven
H onor was alone in the small viewing room that was part of the ER's auxiliary x-ray department when Linda opened the door and walked in.
"Hey," Linda greeted her, "how's Quinn?"
Startled, Honor pulled down the film she had been inspecting and turned to face her friend. "What are you doing here?"
"I was worried about Quinn, and I wanted to find out what was going on." Linda joined Honor in front of the light box and regarded Honor quizzically. Her friend looked troubled—more than troubled, distraught. "Honor? What's going on? Is it worse than you thought?"
"I don't think so," Honor said dully, still not able to comprehend just how bad it really was, "but I'm just getting her squared away."
"Whose chest x-ray was that?"
"Uh..." Honor fished around for some excuse and came up short. Her expression must have answered for her.
"Oh my God, was that Quinn's?"
Sighing, Honor put the film back up. "Since you've already seen it, there isn't much point in pretending otherwise." She returned her gaze to the x-ray, seeing what she knew she would see, but continuing to stare at it until she believed it. .
A miniature battery-powered computer was housed in the small plastic case that rested just above the major muscle of Quinn's chest. From it, electrical leads coated in silicone were threaded into the subclavian vein beneath her collarbone and directed into her heart. Sensors at the end of those leads sent information to the programmable computer inside the defibrillator, allowing an electrical discharge to regulate Quinn's heart rhythm if it became unstable. That's assuming that the defibrillator is functioning properly and sensing her heart rate appropriately. If it isn 't, she could develop a fatal arrhythmia, and die within minutes.
"Is that a pacemaker?" Linda's voice was tight with concern.
Honor shook her head. "Implantable defibrillator."
"Oh, poor Quinn. God, Honor, is she all right?" Linda moved closer, resting a comforting hand on Honor's back. Are you?
"Her clavicle and humerus look fine. She's got a tremendous amount of soft tissue swelling around the shoulder area, which is to be expected, but—"
"What about her heart?"
Honor extended a finger, pointing to the cardiac shadow on the chest x-ray. "Heart size is normal. Rate's good. Blood pressure's fine. I'm waiting for an EKG trace right now. So far, there's no evidence of any instability."
Linda tilted her head and stared at Honor as she recited the litany of facts in a monotone. "Honor? Are you okay?"
"Fine." Honor continued to stare at the x-ray. Quinn's heart looked normal. But it wasn't. She wanted to tear the x-ray down and shred it, as if destroying the evidence would mitigate the truth. She wanted that x-ray to be someone else's, anyone else's, as long as it wasn't Quinn's. Her voice was flat, the helpless fury so pervasive it blocked every other emotion. "No one told me, Linda."
Radclyffe - Fated Love Page 10