Chasing Adonis

by Gina Ardito

  Yet, he didn’t have the right to satiate it. Regardless of anyone else’s presence. Adara Berros was a witness, a crime victim, off-limits to him. He’d forgotten that fact last night, but he could never allow himself to forget it again.

  While he stared at the closed bedroom door, another dart of jealousy stabbed Shane with such sharpness, he winced. How lucky Tyler was, to fall asleep with Adara by his side. To be able to voice his affection for her aloud with no fear of rejection, no fear of tomorrow…

  What were they doing in there right now? If he closed his eyes, he could picture her holding Tyler close against her soft breasts. Imagining himself in the boy’s place, he inhaled her sweet floral scent, felt the tender touch of her fingertips when she pushed the hair from his eyes. No doubt, her gentle heartbeat would pulse a lullaby in his ears. And the steady rise and fall of her chest as she breathed would soothe better than the most comfortable rocking chair. Lucky, lucky boy to fall asleep with such tranquil warmth surrounding him.

  Shane would give his left nut to be in that room with Adara right now.

  ~~~~

  Adara would pluck herself bald to be anywhere else but in this room right now. Avoiding Tyler’s intense gaze, so like his uncle’s, she toyed with the digital alarm clock on the bedside table. But Tyler would not be denied.

  “Well?” his impatient little voice piped up. “Are you?”

  Quick, Adara, play for time.

  “Am I what?”

  “Going to marry Uncle Shane.”

  “What makes you ask that?”

  “I’m not a baby, Adara,” he told her with all the self-confidence of a typical five-year-old. “I’ll be six in December.”

  “Oh, well, that does make a difference, doesn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh. And Uncle Shane likes you a lot. I can tell.”

  From your mouth to God’s ears. “Yeah? How can you tell?”

  “Because he brought you with us on vacation.”

  “Oh.” The hope she’d dared to encourage popped like an overblown soap bubble. “But I told you, he only brought me along because I like Prufrock so much.”

  “Do you like my Uncle Shane?”

  She sank down on the edge of the bed and pushed a stray hair from the child’s puckered forehead. “Of course. I like him very much. But we’re friends, Tyler, nothing more.”

  “If you don’t marry Uncle Shane, will you marry me when I grow up?”

  Oh, this child had a way of stealing pieces of her heart, splinter by splinter. “I’ll tell you what. When you grow up, look for me. Chances are, I’ll still be available.”

  Wrapping his skinny arms around her neck, he whispered in her ear, “You remind me of my mommy.”

  Shocked, she pulled back to stare at him. “I do?”

  “Uh-huh. She was pretty like you, but with dark hair. Like Uncle Shane’s.” His warm breath skittered across the nape of her neck. “And she smelled nice like you, too. Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Sure, sweetie. What?”

  He tugged at the sheet covering his skinny body. “When I was little, I used to listen to Mommy and Daddy fight. Sometimes, when Daddy got really mad, Mommy would come into my room and lock the door. She’d cry herself to sleep on the floor right by my bed. I used to pretend I was asleep so she wouldn’t worry, but I always stayed awake. I had to protect Mommy until Daddy either fell asleep or went away. Uncle Shane and Dr. Stein say that Daddy couldn’t help it when he hit Mommy. They say he was sick. You know what I don’t understand?”

  Adara’s breathing grew labored around the block of tears clogging her throat, but she managed to rasp out, “What?”

  “If Daddy was sick, how come he didn’t go to the doctor? Whenever I got sick, Mommy always took me to the doctor. And Uncle Shane takes me to the doctor all the time now, even when I feel fine. Sometimes I don’t like to go. You know that stick they push into your throat? I hate that. It always makes me choke. But then the doctor gives me medicine, and I get better. Do you think if Daddy went to the doctor, he could have got medicine to make him better?”

  “I-I don’t know, honey. Maybe.”

  He sighed and snuggled closer to her, resting his towhead on her breast. “I wish Mommy was still alive. I miss her.”

  “I’m sure you do,” she said, running a hand over his shoulder.

  “But when I’m with you, I don’t miss her as much. I love you, Adara. I wish you could stay with us forever.”

  Raw emotion overwhelmed her. Shivers racked her limbs while the enormity of his words stole a huge chunk of her heart. “No one can promise forever,” she said through brimming tears. “But I’ll stay with you for as long as I can. And even when I’m gone, I’ll still love you, Tyler.”

  ~~~~

  Tyler fell asleep a few minutes later, but Adara remained in the darkened room to regain her sensitive equilibrium. After drying her eyes and silencing her shudders, she rose from the bed, kissed his cheek, and left, closing the door behind her. For a long moment, she stood in the hallway, too stunned to move, waiting for some semblance of normalcy to return to her posture.

  “Adara?” Pauline’s concerned voice reached through the darkness. “Are you all right, my dear?”

  Incapable of speech after her emotional roller coaster with Tyler, she nodded. Somehow, Pauline sensed the lie. She approached Adara, wrapping a supportive arm around her overburdened shoulders. “Come, sit down, sweetheart. You look as if you’ve just survived a hurricane. Poor thing, I know how exhausting Tyler can be, especially at bedtime. Shane,” she called out, “get her a glass of water.”

  She wanted to decline, but her body refused to accede to her brain’s demands. To lean against another human being, allowing someone else’s strength to sustain her, even for a moment, proved a temptation too strong to bear. Comfort and understanding flowed from Pauline’s steady embrace, seeping into her tired pores, revitalizing her.

  With this added encouragement, she found the energy to move forward, into the light. As she approached the dining room, Shane pulled out a chair and placed a tall glass on the table. Before sitting, she downed the water in three gulps. The cool liquid sluiced over her ragged throat, easing the sting of her swallowed tears.

  “Is everything all right, Adara?” Pauline asked, pulling up a chair beside her.

  She nodded, wondering how much, if any, of her conversation to share with these two adults. Surely, they would have Tyler’s best interests at heart. Yet, something held her back. Tyler had said it was a secret. Did she have the right to break that confidence? For now, she decided the answer was, “no.”

  Perhaps, in the future, if Tyler gave her permission, she might advise Shane of their discussion in full detail. But not now. Still, the Griffins looked at her strangely, expectantly. She needed some sort of explanation to appease their curiosity. So she settled for half-truth at the moment. “Tyler told me he loved me,” she said, her voice softened by affection and surprise.

  Pauline’s face lit up with excitement. “He did? Oh, Shane, did you hear that?”

  “I heard. What else did you two talk about?”

  Adara shrugged. “Not much.”

  “You were in there an awfully long time for ‘not much,’” he grumbled.

  “You know Tyler,” she said, avoiding his piercing blue gaze. “He can spend hours talking about Prufrock.”

  “He usually does,” Pauline interjected with a grin. “I can’t imagine what he’ll do when he sees his idol in person.”

  Only when the subject changed to tomorrow’s activities did Adara relax. She relaxed so much, in fact, that she never sensed the exact moment Tyler crawled into her bed that night. But in the morning, there he lay, snuggled up beside her, a dreamy smile upon his peaceful face.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  For the next three days, life took on a sameness for Adara. To all outward appearances, they probably looked no different than any other family on vacation in KidLand. Inwardly, however, deep in her scarred heart, o
ld wounds, long painful and bleeding, began to heal. Day by day, minute by minute, the adorable and affectionate Tyler charmed his way into the space left empty by her father’s abandonment. Amazing how such a tiny child could fill such large shoes.

  In KidLand each day, Adara took snapshots of the Griffins hugging Prufrock, Salome, and all the Wasteoids. Lunch routinely consisted of tacos in Prufrock’s Playa, while they ate dinner at the usual tourist style restaurants. By their third evening, the pace had taken its toll.

  Too exhausted to sit in another burger joint, Tyler requested a pizza delivered to their suite, but fell asleep on the couch before it arrived.

  “Should we wake him?” Adara asked, touching the boy’s shoulder tentatively.

  “Let him sleep,” Shane advised. “The poor kid’s beat. If he wakes up, we can always reheat a slice for him. But something tells me he’s down for the night.”

  Collapsing beside the sleeping boy, Pauline released an exhausted sigh. “How about tomorrow we take a break from the park?”

  “Good idea,” Adara replied. “We can hit the swimming pool here on the grounds in the morning then maybe rent bikes after lunch.”

  Shane shrugged. “You’ll get no argument from me. I’ve pretty much OD’d on Prufrock at this stage of the game.”

  “I think we all have.” Pauline brushed the hair from Tyler’s closed eyes. “Even his number one fan has had enough.” She frowned then and leaned closer to touch her lips to the child’s forehead. “Shane? Tyler’s got a fever.”

  Shane was across the room like a bullet shot from a gun. “How high is it?” He knelt by the couch, staring at Tyler’s flushed cheeks with concern.

  “A guestimate? He’s pretty hot. Without a thermometer, I’d say about 103 or so.”

  Unfamiliar with childhood illnesses and their symptoms, Adara squelched the panicky shiver running across her shoulder blades. “Should we be worried?”

  “Not yet,” Shane replied, rising. “Kids sometimes run fevers as a way of heading off something more serious. And Tyler has a tendency to get ear and throat infections. He just got over strep last week. At least, we thought he was over it. This might be a recurrence. I’ll take a walk to that grocery store on the grounds and pick up some ibuprofen. With any luck at all, he’ll sleep through the night and be fine by tomorrow morning.”

  “And if not?”

  “Let’s just think positively for now.”

  “See if the store carries thermometers, too,” Pauline suggested. “Let’s be certain about his temperature if we can.”

  “I’ll be right back.” With a quick nod in their direction, Shane scooped up the room key and left the suite.

  “Poor little one,” Pauline said, lifting Tyler’s head into her lap.

  Helpless to do much at all, Adara paced the room, quickly wearing a deep groove into the carpet with her worry. “Should I get him something to make him more comfortable? A drink of water? A pillow?”

  Pauline smiled, but the expression was solemn, not at all the joyful grin Adara had grown accustomed to. “No, dear. We’ll have a tough enough time waking him to get the ibuprofen into him. Trust me. The best thing for him right now is sleep.”

  “Does he get sick often?”

  “It’s like Shane says. He has a tendency toward ear infections. Seems like every time the boy gets a cold, some fluid settles in his ear and won’t drain properly. That’s probably all it is now, too. It’s inconvenient and a little uncomfortable for Tyler, but nothing we haven’t seen before.”

  Tyler groaned then, drawing both ladies’ attention.

  “Easy, sweetie,” Pauline crooned. “Uncle Shane went to the store to get you some medicine. What hurts you, baby? Your ear again?”

  “My head,” he mumbled. “And my neck.”

  “You mean your throat?”

  “Un-unh. Not inside my mouth. It hurts outside.”

  “Where outside? In the front or in the back?”

  “In the back.”

  “Tilt your chin, and let me see.”

  “I can’t,” the child whined in a puny voice. “It hurts too much to move my neck.”

  Unbidden, words from a report Adara had read recently at work popped into her head. “…The patient presents with a high fever, a general feeling of malaise, and a stiff neck…”

  The report’s image was foggy, but some strong sense of urgency prodded her to recall the document and its final diagnosis. Why? What did some stupid paperwork from the office have to do with Tyler?

  Sirens screamed in her head. She needed to rouse her brain, to bring that sleepy memory to the forefront of her consciousness. It was vitally important that she do so. She didn’t know why, but she knew Tyler’s life might depend on it.

  In her frantic mind, she relived that last Wednesday at Alliance Healthcorp. What cases had she worked on? Aside from the usual diagnoses of pharyngitis, aka the dreaded sore throat, and upper respiratory infections, she’d paid the anesthesia bill for Mrs. Jablonski’s C-section, and approved testing for Mr. Fabiola’s possible sleep apnea.

  But no, the record she tried to recall with such accuracy differed from the normal humdrum claims-paying routine. At the time she’d paid little attention to it. Now she wished she’d studied it like the Rosetta Stone.

  How much could she recall? She knew the patient was a boy, younger than Tyler, maybe two years old, tops. Too young to verbalize all his symptoms, so a lot of it was guesswork on the parents’ part. The document was some kind of physician’s report, but from what type of facility and for what type of condition?

  “…The patient presents…” Presents where? An emergency room, most likely. Okay, so the report had to be a hospital admission summary.

  As if confirming her suspicions, her brain focused on a familiar green and white striped form with the usual chicken scratch handwriting of a doctor bogged down in endless paperwork.

  “…with a high fever, a general feeling of malaise, and a stiff neck…”

  It was the malaise that caught the admitting physician’s attention. Reading the report that Wednesday afternoon, she’d marveled that such a general symptom should have raised the ER doctor’s suspicions so quickly.

  Dammit, what illness had he suspected? Could she recall the ICD-9 code the staff had written on the admitting diagnosis? If she could remember those four or five digits, she just might recognize the corresponding condition. Her brain flexed and bent into pretzel shapes. To no use.

  Think, Adara, think. How about recalling more of the document? Squinting her eyes as if reading along, she concentrated all her effort on the Tests Performed section. “…A spinal tap was ordered…”

  A spinal tap, a spinal tap, a spinal tap. Why? What was the doctor looking for? What had he found?

  Dry ice crystallized her blood, and her mouth filled with imaginary sand. Oh, God, she remembered now.

  “We have to get him to a hospital,” she whispered, her eyes never leaving the child’s pale complexion. “Immediately.”

  Pauline blanched. “Adara? What is it?”

  “I think he has meningitis.”

  ~~~~

  Shane returned to their suite, a bottle of children’s ibuprofen and a packet of fever strips safely tucked inside a small paper bag. Two hysterical females met him at the door.

  “We called an ambulance,” his mother blurted.

  “He’s sick, Shane,” Adara added practically on top of his mother’s words. “Really sick. I think he might have bacterial meningitis.”

  The bag fell from his suddenly numb fingers and clacked onto the floor. No. It couldn’t be. Tyler just had an ear infection, that’s all. Yet the grim faces around him didn’t coincide with such a simple diagnosis.

  “Wh-what makes you think that, Adara?”

  “His symptoms. I read a similar case at work last week. The symptoms were exactly the same. A child with a recent case of strep suddenly complained of a stiff neck and high fever. Tyler also said he has a headache, which is anothe
r symptom. I may be way off here, Shane, but I don’t think so. And there’s only one way to know for sure. He’ll need a spinal tap.”

  An icy cloak wrapped around Shane’s limbs, freezing him to the floor. “You realize what you’re saying, don’t you? If we take Tyler to a hospital, I’ll have to give his real name.”

  She nodded and chewed on her fingernail. Yes. She knew what it meant. If her nervous action didn’t convey her fear, certainly her whitened face spoke volumes. The room filled with anticipatory dread, heavy as a sodden blanket.

  “The EMT’s are on their way,” she murmured, her voice shaky. “You and your mother should go to the hospital with Tyler. Just lend me some of the money Ted gave you, and I’ll be gone before you get back.”

  “Like hell! You’ll stay right here until I get back.”

  Disbelief replaced the fear in her eyes. “Are you crazy? I can’t stay here. Once Tyler’s name is known, Cherry’s goons will track us down in no time. For everyone’s sake, we should separate. Now.”

  Folding his arms over his chest, he stood firm. Did she really expect him to just let her go off on her own, to certain death? She certainly didn’t know him very well. “Forget it, Adara. We started this together, we’ll end it that way.”

  “And what about Tyler? Do you think he can survive another loss in his life? I’m a big girl, Shane. A big girl who has no family ties. If something happens to me, it happens to only me. You don’t have that same luxury.”

  The piercing wail of sirens cut through his argument to the contrary, and Pauline touched his arm. “Open the door, Shane. Let them in.”

  “This isn’t finished,” he told Adara as he reached for the knob. “Please. Don’t do anything yet. Wait for me. Please.”