Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Charlie didn’t know why she’d let Trent talk her into picking him up. She had to clean out her car, something she hadn’t done in a long time. It wasn’t that she was a slob, but she never had time for mundane tasks and their housekeeper’s duties were limited to the house.
When she came inside with a filled trash bag, both her mother and sister eyed her with curiosity.
“Don’t look at me like I’m a stranger. So I cleaned out my car? It had to be done sooner or later.”
“What’s the occasion?” Suzette asked. “No, don’t tell me. It’s Trent isn’t it? You’re taking him somewhere in your car. Where are you going?”
“I thought you were going to the Shriners today, darling,” her mother said. She tried to lift her head but couldn’t. Charlie went and knelt before her so she could look in her mother’s eyes.
“I am, Mom. Trent’s coming with me. He’s going to sign footballs for the kids and . . . play with them.”
“What a wonderful man, you have, Charline. I’d like to meet him. When will you bring him home? Maybe for the holiday?”
“I’m not sure, Mother His family lives in Alabama . . .” She had no idea what else to say about it. She hadn’t thought about the holidays. It was as if they didn’t exist in her world, as if she were blind to everything red and green and flashing.
“I know—you can invite him to Christmas Eve,” Suzette said. “Have him help us decorate the tree and have eggnog and—”
“We’ll see.” It was a reasonable request, but the idea squeezed her chest. To have him in her home, reaching up effortlessly to the top branches to place their special ornaments on the tree, overwhelmed her with excitement-tinged melancholy.
The picture took hold in her imagination of him in a crazy Christmas sweater with little bulbs that lit up, standing in her living room at her tree, with her family.
It made her churn with desire bordering on determination. She wanted it.
“I’ll talk to him,” she said. Suzette smiled.
“I’m having Buck come over. Diggins is taking me shopping later in the week. It’s so festive this time of year. I love going out.”
They both turned to their mother.
“I’m sorry, Mother—”
“Don’t be foolish, Suzette. Of course you should go out.
Go out every day and every night and live your life to the fullest, young lady.
You spend too much time at home—” Coughing forced her mother to stop talking and Charlie rubbed her frail back, wishing she could infuse her mother with some of her own life energy. If only it were that simple.
She needed to give her mother her medication before she left. She slid a look at Suzette and nodded.
“Mother is right, you know,” she said. “You should go out more.” What she didn’t say was that she wished she could afford to have a nurse stay with her mother full time so Suzette could go out anytime she wanted.
Soon, when the serum was approved for use, she would have money.
She wished there was more she could do for her mother now.
“Let me get your medicine, Mother.” She rubbed her mother’s neck and shoulders for a minute, the way she liked it, doing the best she could to ease the stiffness and pain. Knowing there was so little she could do was a daily dripping torture to her soul.
Damn it to hell. She had to do more, had to get through this drug trial successfully.
Had to perfect the EM HGH-1, had to continue with the studies and all the terrible shit she had to put up with until the serum was successful and approved for use.
Biting her lip, she knew it would be too late for her mother.
As if to squeeze the thought from her mind, she squeezed her eyes closed.
There was no room for negative thoughts, no room for defeat in her mind. There was too much fighting against her outside her head to fight against herself too. Too much was at stake. No way would she give up or give in. Ever.
Even if it meant she had to sell her soul to the devil. Because she knew that’s exactly what she’d done. It was about time she got over it. Owned it.
Maybe she would go to hell. She might possibly end up in jail. But she decided she could live with that. The alternative she couldn’t live with. She’d never forgive herself if she gave up, gave in to all the forces working against her: Hogarth, the press, and time.
At least she had Trent on her side. She cautioned herself not to turn the partner-in-crime intimacy into more than it was, not to misread it as a real relationship, a real connection or closeness.
Their goals were very different. He was shallow and self-centered, only wanting to extend his career and win the damn Super Bowl. No, all they shared was a dark secret.
A memory flashed in her mind of her writhing in Trent’s arms, sweaty, electrified with shocking orgasmic bliss. The vision heated her, reminding her to be honest with herself. And forced her to admit they shared one other thing.
There was that inexplicable carnal connection.
“I have to go, Mother,” she said, standing.
Suzette put the pills and water on the table.
“Take these pills now and again at four p.m. I set the alarm by your couch in the living room, to remind you and Suzette—or Diggins.” She knew she shouldn’t force Suzette to always be there, especially since Charline was away so much now since she started her relationship with Trent.
Helping her mother with the water, she watched her slowly take the pills up and swallow them, watched her mother’s brave smile and wished she could give her more, do more.
The antidepressants were needed, but she worried about combining them with the pain meds.
She would need to give her a cortisone shot in the morning.
And maybe a dose of the EM-HGH-1 Booster serum.
Reminding herself that there’d been extra security precautions put in place since the investigation started, she knew she’d need to be careful.
But she could do it. She would say she needed the booster for subject number 052, Babcock.
Mr. Babcock had a very slight injury and she could use a small dose of serum on him, splitting it with a dose for her mother.
Knowing very well it would corrupt her data, she didn’t care. Not really. She had enough data. She could substitute the data from John Doe on the booster serum’s effectiveness. It was an extra protocol in the research, not crucial to the final drug trial results. She could do it.
“You didn’t tell me I’d need a truck,” Charline said. All the footballs barely fit into her trunk and back seat.
“Why else did you think I wanted you to drive? We’d have barely fit a handful of balls in my Audi R8. Plus it isn’t well suited to driving in snow and I hear we might get some tonight.” He grinned like a kid.
“True.” He took up all the space in her front seat, seemed to take up all the air too.
His presence in her car felt big on so many levels.
It was a place only her mother or sister had ever occupied, she realized.
She’d had no close girlfriends since high school, only a few in college and med school whom she’d all but lost touch with.
Now she’d narrowed her social life to work and her very few acquaintances there.
If she didn’t see people in the course of pursuing her goals, she would have no one but her family. How pathetic was that?
“Why the frown?” He didn’t sound concerned. His good humor, his default mood, made him seem like an overgrown boy. That and his refusal to think about his future after football made him seem almost childish. Not to mention his refusal to have a grown-up relationship with a woman.
But then, she had no room to talk on that score. She hadn’t had any true romantic relationships since undergrad. Life had gotten too serious since then with her father’s passing, which passed the burden of caring for the family to her.
“Don’t mind me. I’m ruminating on the sorry state of my social life. Or the sorry state it was up until now. Did you know I hadn’t been out to dinner with another couple in more than ten years?”
“Damn.” He reached out a hand, putting it on her thigh. “Glad I could come to the rescue of Snow White. You can call me Prince Charming.”
She smiled, cursing the blip in her heart rate at his flirty words and that simple touch.
And there was the overwhelming maleness of him pervading the air inside her car.
Lucky for her the hospital wasn’t very far and there was no traffic on Sunday morning.
Or she might go weak with the headiness of it all. She nearly laughed at herself.
They met Jamie and Violet in the lobby with their two children and Charline trooped them all to the children’s playroom, where she would assemble all the patients who could leave their beds.
She’d called ahead to let the floor nurse know about the visitors and they had decided to turn it into an impromptu party.
Dozens of signed footballs and hundreds of giggles later, Charline sat bedside with one of her most seriously injured patients, a young man who’d been there for three months. She was surprised to see Trent standing in the doorway, rapping on the doorjamb.
“Can I join the private party?” He walked inside and went straight for the boy’s good hand and shook it, looking unwaveringly into his still-deformed face.
“Trent!” The boy sat forward, excitement in his strangely deep voice.
“Hello, Dylan, my man.” Trent shook the boy’s hand and then gave him a high-five. “Looking good. I can see the smile.”
“Wait a minute—you know Dylan?”
“Sure. We go way back. This isn’t my first rodeo at Shriners. Is it, Dylan?”
The kid shook his head and bounced up when Trent gave him the football.
“Sorry it’s another football. You can add it to your collection—or maybe you can share it with your sisters. What do you think?”
“I’ll share.”
“That’s what I thought. But don’t worry. I’ll have something extra special for you all at Christmas.”