Chapter 14 Wes #2
“Quarantine?” I croak.
“Flu symptoms,” the nurse explains. “There’s a very low likelihood of DSKH-DL finding its way to our hospital—”
“DSK...what?” I burst out.
“The sheep flu,” she clarifies, and Blake’s expression turns to horror. “As I said, it’s unlikely, but we’re taking every precaution. Are you Mr. Canning’s family?”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation. Because I am.
Her eyebrows rise. “You’re his…?”
Shit. I can’t lie and say I’m his brother, because nobody will believe me. And even if I blurt out that I’m his boyfriend in this room full of people, it still won’t help. If Jamie and I aren’t married, they won’t care. “I’m all he’s got in Toronto,” I say instead. “We live together.”
“I see,” she says in a patient voice. “Let me explain how our quarantine works. While the patient waits for his laboratory results, family members or their designated appointees can see him, providing they adhere to our quarantine protocol. That’s all we can do until we decide that other patients and visitors are not at risk. ”
“But…”
“Next!”
Just like that she dismisses me. For a moment I just stand there in front of the desk, unwilling to move. How dare she?
Two big hands grasp my upper arms and steer me out of the way. “Come on, Wesley. We gotta regroup.” Blake turns me around and parks me against a wall. His paws land on my shoulders. “Where is Jamie’s family? You have to call them.”
Fuck, I do. I yank my phone out of my pocket.
But Blake yanks it out of my hand. “Don’t terrify them, okay? Just because you’re freaked doesn’t mean they have to be.”
“Right. Fine.” He gives me the phone back and I pull up the Canning section of my contacts list, and it’s not short. But choosing the number for Jamie’s mom’s pottery studio is an easy decision. Be calm, I order myself while I listen to it ring. No panic.
“Canning Ceramics, this is Cindy.”
In spite of my desire to be calm and collected, the warm strength of her voice flips a switch inside me that I didn’t know was there. “Mom?” I croak. Okay—I’ve never called her that. Not once. Don’t know why I did it now.
“Ryan, sweetie, what’s the matter?”
I close my eyes and try to pull myself together.
“We have a bit of a situation,” I say carefully.
But I can’t possibly fool her, because my voice shakes.
“Jamie’s been admitted to the hospital with flu symptoms. Last night he had a headache, and today he passed out at work. That’s what I know so far.”
“Okay, Ryan, take a breath.” Why do people keep saying that? I do it, though, because Cindy told me to. “And now say, ‘It’s going to be okay.’ Say it three times in a row.”
“But…”
“I have six children, Ryan. This is an important step for keeping your sanity. Say it. Right now. Let me hear you.”
“It’s going to be okay,” I wheeze.
“Two more.”
“It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.”
“Good boy. Now tell me where you are.”
I give her a rundown of what the nurse behind the desk told me.
“So you need my permission to see Jamie. How do I reach the right person to provide that?”
“Uh…” Shit.
Someone sticks a piece of paper in my face. It’s Blake, and he’s offered me a card reading Patient Registrar and Permissions, with a phone number.
“Thank you,” I mouth into his face. Then I give Cindy the number.
“Okay, honey,” she says. “I’ll call them immediately. After you get in to see him, you’ll call me, okay? Use my cell phone because I have to go pick up my grandson. Tammy is having her C-section tomorrow.”
“Oh, wow. Okay. I will. I promise.”
“I know, honey. Hang in there. I love you both so much.”
There’s a giant lump in my throat now. “Love you, too. Bye.”
We end our call, and the hospital waiting room comes into focus. It’s loud and full of people, some of whom are staring at Blake and me. One teenage girl nudges her friend and points at us.
If anyone asks me for an autograph right now I’ll probably explode.
Blake moves his big body, positioning himself to get in between the waiting room and me. “Let’s give it ten minutes,” he says. “J-Bomb’s mom needs to get through to whoever, and then maybe your name will show up on the record. Nurse Nazi over there will have to let you in.”
“Right,” I say. My head is still spinning. Jamie can’t have any kind of weird flu. Where would he have gotten it? On the other hand, then why is he so sick? In my panic, it feels like a problem I ought to be able to solve. I’ve never felt so helpless in my whole life.
“He’s gonna be okay,” Blake says, reading my mind. “Healthy guy like that? In a couple of days you’ll be laughing about this.”
But I just keep hearing the words collapsed and unresponsive over and over in my head. What if he had an undiagnosed heart condition? My sophomore year in college one of my classmates died playing intramural basketball. He just collapsed on the gym floor. The ref gave him CPR, but he was just gone.
Fuck. Can’t think about that. “It’s going to be okay,” I repeat, just like Cindy told me to.
“Hey.” Blake gives my shoulder a shake. “Of course it is. Did Canning’s mom make that coffee mug?”
“What?” My head is full of doom, and Blake wants to talk coffee cups?
“I washed the dishes in your pad. The bottom of the mug is inscribed.”
Oh. Fuck me. That mug says Jamie loves you and so do we. Welcome to the Canning clan. And when I look up into Blake’s eyes, I see exactly what I’d been worrying about for months.
He knows.
“Blake,” I start. Bullshitting him is off the table, so I go with evasion. “It’s not a good time to have this conversation.”
“Says you.” Blake’s voice goes to a place I’ve never heard before.
He’s actually kind of angry, and I hadn’t even known that was possible.
“We’re about sixty seconds away from fending off a bunch of fans who will decide that it isn’t all that rude to approach the hockey players in the emergency room.
And they’re gonna ask why we’re here. I got no opinion at all on what you should say to them.
But I’m your friend, and you’re supposed to level with your friends. ”
That’s probably true, but I’ve got a whole lot riding on my secrecy. Blake has the biggest big mouth I ever met, and I’m not sure he can really appreciate the situation I’m in.
We’re having a stare down and I win it. Because shutting my trap has become something that I’m really good at.
He sighs and looks away. “Fine. Be that way. But if you’re hell-bent on hiding for the rest of your life, at least take off your jacket, man. That thing is like a beacon.”
Because he’s right, I do it, shrugging off the team jacket and shoving it under my arm.
“Ryan Wesley?” the intercom bleats. “Is there a Ryan Wesley here for Mr. Canning?”
Thank Christ. I spin around and boogie back to the desk. The green-eyed nurse points at a guy waiting there in scrubs. “Go with him.”
“I’m Doctor Rigel, infectious diseases.” He holds out a hand to shake.
Shaking hands with someone who works on infectious diseases seems a little sketchy to me, but I do it anyway.
Blake is right behind me, too. “What can you tell us?” he asks in his booming voice.
He leads us down a hall, talking as we go.
“Mr. Canning is stable,” he says, and I practically melt with relief.
“He arrived dehydrated and with a high fever. He’s getting fluids and an antiviral that fights flu, though we won’t have a lab test back for another twelve hours or so.
We need to rule out what the media is calling the sheep flu. ”
Blake shudders so hard they can probably measure it on the Richter Scale. “Dude. That cannot be what J-Bomb has. I refuse to believe it.”
“Well…” The doctor rings for an elevator, and we all stop to wait for it. “You’re probably right. But it would be irresponsible in the middle of a health scare to treat this lightly. And his coworkers indicated that he travels around Canada for his job, so we need to be sure.”
My fear comes roaring back. “He’s not used to this climate,” I babble. “He’s always lived on the West Coast.”
Blake gives me a pointed look that suggests I might want to stop talking.
We get onto the elevator. “Good game last night,” the doctor says into the silence.
“Uh, thanks,” Blake says. “You’re gonna let my man Wesley here see Canning, right? There’s a couple of box seats in it for you if you do.”
The doctor’s face goes through several different emotions in rapid succession, from elation to despair and then to irritation. “I would never make a medical protocol decision for hockey tickets.”
“Of course not,” Blake says quickly. “I only mean that if you’re the guy who tells us when J-Bomb can have one visitor, we’d be mighty grateful.”
Dr. Rigel nods slowly. “Mr. Wesley can see the patient after he puts on protective gear.”
“All right,” I agree immediately.
The elevator doors part, and we step off.
A sign on the wall reads: Isolation Unit.
The doctor brings us into a room straight out of a psychological thriller.
It has multiple sides, each side a glass wall into a patient’s room.
A couple of these rooms have the shades drawn.
But a few of them are open, and the people inside look sicker than a person should look.
And then I spot him.
Jamie is lying on his back in a bed, half his gorgeous face covered by a hospital mask, but I know him at a glance anyway. His brown eyes are closed, and he’s way too still.
My throat closes up at the sight, and all I can do is stare.
I don’t know how long I stand there staring. A few seconds? A minute? Blake grabs my shoulders from behind and squeezes. Hard. That’s when I remember to breathe, sucking in a great blast of air.
He gives me a gentle shake. “Stay loose, Wesley. Come on.”
“Sorry,” I mumble.
Blake shakes his head. “It’s all right. This is as far as I go, but I’m going to call you in a couple of hours, okay? Or text me if you need me. Either way, I’ll pick you up later. We left your car at the rink.”
Shit, we did. I’m not even sure where I am right now. “Thank you,” I say, meeting his gaze. “Really, I…”
He waves it off. “No need. We’ll talk later.”
Blake turns around and disappears toward the elevators.
“Right this way, Mr. Wesley,” the doctor says. “The nurses will help you into the gear.”
Ten minutes later I’m wearing a long disposable gown, gloves, a head covering, goggles, disposable slippers and a face mask. It’s fucking ridiculous.
“These rooms have two doors,” a petite Asian woman—her name tag says Janet Li, R.N.
—explains. “You enter this way…” She points at a door off the room with the glass.
“And you leave through that far door. All the gear stays in the room just outside the patient’s room.
There’s a lot of signage to help you know what to do. Okay?”
“Got it,” I say. I just need to get in there. Screw the signage.
“You’ll go in alone right now, but if you need anything or the patient needs anything, use the intercom button on the wall and someone will assist you immediately.”
“Thank you.”
When she unlocks the door to Jamie’s room for me, I dive through it. There’s a second door behind that one, unlocked.
Then it’s just him and me. Finally. I grab his hand and give it a squeeze. I’m stunned that it’s so hot to the touch. They weren’t kidding about that fever. “Baby,” I choke out. “I’m here.”
He is still.
So I start babbling, because I want him to know it’s me. I tell him everything that happened to me today. Everything. How Blake got injured and I went to find him. How I got the awful phone call. “I was so freaked,” I tell him, though Jamie’s brow remains perfectly smoothed by slumber.
The masks between us are loathsome. I just want to rip the thing off.
Eventually my story winds down. I park my ass on the edge of the bed, hoping that’s okay, and pull his hand into my lap, where I stroke it with my stupid gloved hand.
His eyelashes flicker.
“Canning,” I whisper, squeezing his hand. “Hey. Come on, babe.”
His pale eyelids part, and when I can see his eyes, I finally believe that everything is going to be okay. His eyes widen, but then his brow furrows.
Fuck, he’s scared. I must look like a freak, or at least a stranger. “It’s me,” I say loudly. “Hey, look.” With my free hand I rip off the goggles and then—screw it—the face mask.
His face relaxes, and I smile for the first time in hours. Maybe ever.
“Mr. Wesley! What are you doing?” I turn my head to see the nurse just on the other side of the glass, one hand on her hip, an angry frown on her face. She’s holding a phone to her ear, and her voice booms from a speaker on the wall. “You can’t take off the protective gear!”
I can, though. She’s not going to overpower me. I can take her in a fight. So I shuck off the hair covering, too. Then I get off the bed and stand over Jamie’s head. He’s watching me with wide, trusting eyes.
“Mr. Wesley!” she barks. “Stop it.”
“You don’t understand,” I say, looking at Jamie, not her. He’s the only one who matters. “If he has the sheep flu, I’m already exposed. We share a bed.”
Then, leaning over him, I kiss his forehead.
Even if we’re in this chamber of horrors, he still smells like him.
And this calms me down. “I love you, baby,” I whisper in his ear.
“Don’t worry about a thing.” Jamie’s eyes fall closed.
But I kiss him once more, this time on the lips. Just so he knows I’m still here.
When I look up at the window again, the nurse is gone. For now.