Chapter 22 #3
“No, everything’s not all right.” Suzette paused, sniffled, and Charline’s alarm made her heart beat like she was on speed.
“What is it, Suzette?” She’d forced calm into her voice, over the lump of panic.
“It’s bad, Charline. Mama has fallen.”
The hard punch of her sister’s words hit her, making her dizzy, but she recovered herself, her mind speeding to the thought that it wasn’t the worst news. Her mother was still alive.
“I’ve called the ambulance.” Suzette wept while she spoke and Charline’s chest tightened.
Her hand shook as she held the phone. But this was a medical emergency, the only kind she knew how to handle.
She pushed down the sick well of panic and called on her emergency room training, donned the cool detached mantle of a professional.
“Have them take her to the university hospital and I’ll meet you there.” She spoke in a sure, calm voice, but the shaking in her hand didn’t stop.
Wendy came up beside her and put a hand on her shoulder.
She consoled her sister as best as she could and they ended the call when the EMTs arrived. Charline faced her friend.
“It’s my mother. She’s fallen. I . . . I have to go.”
“Of course you do. Don’t worry about a thing here. I’ll cover the lab.” Wendy smiled and then gave her a shy hug before Charline rushed into her office to grab her bag.
Then she ran to the elevator, not stopping when Dr. Cooper yelled out to her asking what the hell was going on.
Charline rode to the basement and fast-walked through the corridors that would lead her to the hospital attached through underground passageways.
Then she slowed down, realizing the ambulance would take at least another five minutes to get there.
But she needed to be prepared, needed to be waiting to see that her mother got the best, quickest care possible. So she started running and didn’t stop until she arrived breathless in the waiting area of the emergency room.
After quickly briefing the duty nurse and staring through the glass doors to the emergency vehicle bay, she thought of calling Trent. It was an odd thought, wasn’t it? Why should she call him? He wasn’t her real fiancé. He had no real obligations. He wouldn’t care—or would he?
Shoving the prevarication aside, with her emotions running high, she did what her heart wanted.
She punched in Trent’s number on her phone and waited for him to answer.
Of course he didn’t. He’d be in the middle of meetings or with his team mates or coaches preparing for the game, though they didn’t have a physical practice that day. In a shaky voice, she left a message.
“Trent, my mother took a fall. I’m at the emergency room now.
I… I don’t know how bad it is yet. But I’ll keep you posted…
” She wanted to say more, so much more. That she missed him, that she wished he were there with her, that she needed to see him, spend the night in his arms. Instead, quietly she said, “Bye.”
The sound of an ambulance arriving kept her from dwelling on Trent and she shut her phone down. Moments later Suzette and her mother were heading her way. Her mother was on a stretcher.
The adrenaline and flurry of professional activity as an advising physician for her mother kept Charline’s deepest fears at bay, kept her from weeping like Suzette had been. Eventually Suzette had stopped, calmed by Charline’s calm poise.
But after her mother was stabilized and admitted to a room for recovery, the realization settled in that her mother was irretrievably crippled, that she would need daily nursing care, that she would be largely bedridden.
The fractures in her spine, her ribs, her hip were now added to the degeneration of her gnarled joints.
It was late, almost midnight, when she and Suzette stood watching their sleeping mother, small and pale, needles in her arms.
“Let’s go home, Suzette. We have some things to talk about.”
“What is it? Tell me now.”
“The attending physician is talking about rehab and long-term assisted living for her.”
“No. That wouldn’t be right for our mother. She would die in a place like that. We can’t let—”
“I know. I agree. The only alternative is round-the-clock nursing at home.” Charline looked at her sister. They’d known it would come to this sooner or later, known they’d need to mortgage the house to afford it. But they had to do it. Now.
“It’ll be expensive,” Charline said. “But assisted living is expensive too and having her stay at home is far preferable. We’ll fix up the living room to accommodate a bed. Maybe a wheelchair. It’ll be all right.”
“When will she be able to come home?” Suzette swiped a tear from her cheek with a halting movement, bringing home to Charline that her sister was looking at her own future—in the not-too-far-distance if Charline didn’t do something about it.
“Before Christmas. I can guarantee it.”
“How can you do that?”
Charline let the silence hang between them, not wanting to admit that she would be stealing more serum. Booster serum.
It had worked miraculously well for Trent this past week and a half. The least she could do was give her mother the same chance to heal fast.
She watched the dawning realization on Suzette’s face before her sister took her in a surprisingly strong hug.
The plan was set. Because her mother wasn’t part of the study like Trent was, Charline had to steal the booster serum. Without getting caught. No small feat with the new security measures. Cameras were everywhere now.
But she frowned as her sister hugged her, making her feel warm before she deserved to feel that way.
She’d used most of the booster serum already on Trent and it was expensive and labor intensive to make using the newest DNA manipulation technology and instrumentation.
She wasn’t sure she could get away with making more right now, especially since she needed it fast.
There were six doses of serum left. One for each day leading to Trent’s Monday Night Football game. She would have to use some of the booster serum she’d planned to give him for her mother. Half. She could use three doses for her mother and make them smaller since her mother was smaller.
Now all she needed to do was convince Trent that it was a good idea.
As Suzette released her from the hug and they turned to leave, to go home for the night, Charline chewed on her lip, wondering how the hell she was going to ask Trent.
Though she wouldn’t be asking him, not really.
She would be telling him. Because she had control of the booster serum and she would decide how much he got. There was no question that she was going to use some of that serum for her mother.
She supposed she could pretend she was giving him the full six doses, but even though she’d sunk low, forfeited her ethical standards and dismissed her conscience to a shocking degree, Charline couldn’t consider not telling him. He was the one person she’d been honest with during all of this.
For whatever reason, it was important to her that she stay honest with Trent.
The countdown to Monday night’s football game grated on Trent’s patience, setting up a blood-pressure-skyrocketing level of anticipation that was exactly like the lead-up to the Super Bowl. Damn, he didn’t need this excess adrenaline making him jumpy when he needed to stay cool.
He sat in the training room at seven a.m., a full hour before practice, waiting for Charlie to get there with her black bag of magic potion. Ralph sat back in his chair sipping a cup of coffee like he was relaxing in his own living room.
“Don’t you have a life, Nunley? What are you missing right now? Where should you be, what should you be doing?”
Ralph raised his brows at his ridiculous-bordering-on-philosophical question. Then he shrugged.
“You know damn well my life is football. Same as you, I might add.”
Trent grunted. Maybe that was the reason for the unsettled feeling in his gut. Or it could be the excess adrenaline. He was saved from having to contemplate his navel any longer when Charlie walked in the door, closing it behind her and locking it.
She wore one of the new outfits he’d bankrolled and she looked great. The waves of her dark hair shone against the soft red sweater. She wore a black skirt, but it was shorter than her old skirts, and formfitting. He loved her in skirts, loved her shapely legs, her fine ass—
“We need to talk, Trent.”
His appreciative meandering stopped short, and though he was wary, he kept his smile.
“No hello? No cup of coffee?”
“No coffee for you—I told you—”
“Relax, Charlie. I haven’t had any coffee in ten days. It’s okay. What’s going on?”
She looked pointedly at Nunley, who sat and watched the Trent-and-Charlie show like he did every morning before practice.
“You need me to leave?” He sat up in his chair, hesitance in his words.
“Yes.”
Something was seriously wrong. Trent squelched the alarm stuttering his heart.
Or tried to, and held onto his smile as he waved Ralph from the room.
He hoped it wasn’t bad news about her mother.
The sound of her voice in the message she’d left haunted him.
And the fact that she hadn’t returned his calls worried him.
Ralph went out the back door to his office and disappeared, leaving them alone in the quiet, drafty room. He’d been bare-chested waiting for her, waiting for his injection.
“I’ll get right to it,” she said. Her eyes darkly serious and her skin paler than normal, she took a breath, then spoke in a stark, determined voice.
“I need some of the booster serum for my mother.”
“What the hell?” Of all the possibilities rushing through his mind, this was not one he’d considered.
“I’m sorry, Trent. But she needs it. So she can come home, so she can have some chance at—”
He put up his hands.
“I get it. Of course. Why would you be sorry—” Then it dawned on him.
She was going to give her mother his booster serum.
He went cold as she stood in front of him, looking miserable and determined, like a linebacker had just laid her flat and she was determined to get up and keep playing. He knew the feeling well.
He felt like that himself right now.
“There’s only a limited supply of the booster serum, so that means we have to cut down on the doses we’d planned to give you this week.”
“You know I need that serum, Charlie.” Tension made his jaw twitch. He unclenched it as best he could and took a deep breath, staring into her pleading eyes.
“But I understand your predicament.” He swiped a hand through his hair when all he wanted to do was tear it out. He couldn’t argue with her. If it was his mother, he’d do the same thing. Screw him over.
“It’ll be okay—I’ll cut your doses in half. It should be all you need. You’ve come a long way. Hell, it might even be the right protocol. I’m working without a map here. I’ve gone over the data and the numbers and your bloodwork—”
He cut off her frantic explanation with a raise of one hand in a stop sign. Heaving himself from the table, he moved to her, reaching out an arm. She stepped back as if she was afraid.
“Stop it, Charlie. I’m not angry.” He knew his face was a storm, contradicting his words. In truth, he was angry, but not at her. At himself because that’s who he had to blame in all this. All the misguided choices in his life were adding up now, lining up to trample him. It was so easy to see now.
As he opened his arms, she stepped forward into the circle and leaned into him.
It was the softest takedown he’d ever felt, but the devastation was no less than the worst he’d ever experienced.
He felt like she was ripping his heart out and crushing his dreams, tempting him with possibilities and then ripping them away.
“I’m so sorry, Trent. But I need to do this.”
“Shh. It’ll be all right. A brilliant doctor I know said so. Said all I need is half the dose from now until game day.” He almost had himself convinced.
Maybe it was true. His shoulder felt good, didn’t it? Damn good. She pulled away from his arms and rubbed her hands over her face.
“What’s the matter with me? You’re right. You’ll be fine. Let’s do some testing to confirm our optimism.”
Her testing was thorough, right down to the calipers measuring his body fat and muscle mass along with the blood and urine samples. He was surprised when she took a small tissue sample, but he remembered it was part of the protocol and she’d put it off as long as she could.
Tension filled him by the time she was finished. He barely made it onto the practice field on time, barely dragged his head back into the game, to where he needed to be.
Three more days of this light practice shit and he would be back to pads. On Friday, he’d have his real test. He’d be hit again for the first time since his injury and they’d see how well the booster serum worked.
In the meantime, he took his aspirin and prayed to God his blood pressure came down, prayed double time that he had no blood clots.