The Alpha Men's Secret Club 5(26)
24
It took three days, but Kate gradually improved. Her vital signs held steady and her pallor and skin turgor got better. The doctors were able to wean her off the ventilator and she could breathe on her own – a major coup.
Rust was at her bedside when her eyes fluttered open.
He immediately bounded up. He clutched her hand.
“Kate?”
Her eyelids fluttered. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“Kate, it’s OK. Take your time. I’m right here.”
His eyes blurred with tears. He rarely cried as an adult, but he had cried plenty these past few days. He had lost so much and it had become almost unbearable.
Almost. Until now.
The only reason he was still going on now was because of Kate. Kate needed him, and he would never let her down. That, and the fact he had to take revenge on those who did this to her.
He couldn’t let go of Kate’s hand. He knew that the ventilator tube had left her throat sore and swollen and so she might have difficulty speaking. What if the wolfsbane did something to her mind, the way the Electroshock therapy did something to his? What if it erased her memories of him?
“Rust?” she whispered.
He was squeezing her fingers so hard he was sure it must have hurt her.
“I’m right here.”
“Wh-what happened?” Her voice was very weak.
“You were in a coma . . . but you’re all right now. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“The baby.”
Her other hand moved to her belly.
His heart sank. “No, Kate, don’t.”
He caught her other hand. Her skin was so very cold.
Her eyes arrested his.
“Something’s happened to the baby, hasn’t it?” she said.
“You were very ill.” He debated how much to tell her.
“What happened?” she cried. “You’ve got to tell me.”
She tried to wrest her hands away from his.
“No, Kate, don’t do that. I’ll tell you everything. We had to abort the pregnancy.” He didn’t want to say ‘baby’. “You were too ill. If we didn’t abort, you would have both died.”
He watched her face. Her expression flitted from incomprehension to understanding, and then to shock and horror. He knew she needed to go through this, just as he had. The main difference was that he was right here with her to help her through this.
She began to wail, and the sound of her cry was like that of a wistful spirit in a howling wind. The sound pierced his bones. And he felt her pain every bit as acutely as though it was his.
“Kate,” he murmured. “Kate.”
He didn’t care about her drips and tubes and sensors. He took her in his arms over the guard rail on her hospital bed. Her EKG became erratic, triggering all sorts of alarms.
The nurse came rushing in.
“Professor O’Brien, I must ask you to refrain . . . oh, she’s awake!”
Kate was sobbing hard. Her body shook and shuddered against his. He had no words to say. He wanted that baby as much as she did.
He finally whispered, “Please . . . just leave us alone for a while. She will be all right. I promise.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“OK. But just for a while. I have to tell the doctor she’s awake.”
The nurse quietly left them alone in the room as Kate cried her heartache and soul ache out.
25
Kate looked out into the vista of mountain and stream from her hilltop vantage.
It had been two months. Two months of absolute calm in which they could recover, both physically and emotionally. She was regaining her strength day by day, but it was a slow painful process. The wolfsbane had ravaged her kidneys and she had gone into acute renal failure. She had to be dialysed, but luckily, the doctors said it was reversible.
In addition, the poison had ravaged her heart and her liver. It was a good thing that the antidote Rust concocted from the purple flower saved her in time. Still, her heart function was not what it used to be, and her liver still showed elevated enzymes. It was a brutal poisoning she had to slowly recover from and the doctors warned her it might take a year or two.
Oh, and there was one more thing.
She could never have children again.
She was glad to be alive, and yet, when she thought of this new development, she went into heartsick mode all over again.
“It doesn’t matter,” Rust assured her. “I love you all the same. I don’t care if you can’t have children. I was resigned to the fact I would never father a child anyway.”
But she felt inadequate, like she was missing a chromosome.
“Talk to me,” he encouraged her – the psychologist that he was.
She did, but it was difficult. He was a man. He would never understand what it was like to have his child growing inside her womb. He would never understand how, for the longest time, she longed for him so much that she would have done anything to keep him.