Johnston - Heartbeat (27 page)

Maggie whirled to find Jack Kittrick leaning against the wall, his arms and legs crossed.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said as he straightened up. “Amy Hollander drowned.”

“I know.”

When Jack opened his arms, Maggie walked into them and held him tight around the waist, pressing her nose against his throat. “I know what Lisa’s feeling, Jack. It hurts.”

“I know,” he said. “I feel it, too.”

She leaned back and looked up at him.

“I saw Amy in the ER,” he said. “They had so damned many tubes in her . . . .”

Maggie searched Jack’s face and saw the dark shadows beneath his eyes. “You must be tired.”

“Given the choice of sleeping or spending the night the way I did, I’d rather be tired,” he said with a tender smile. He caressed the bruise on her throat and said, “Did I do that?”

Maggie groaned. “I was going to cover that with a scarf.”

He leaned over and kissed the spot, then pulled up the collar of her blouse and said, “There. All gone. You’re ready to go to work, counselor. Here’s a little something for luck.”

Jack kissed her on the lips so gently that Maggie scarcely felt the touch. Yet the kiss moved her more than all the passionate embraces he had given her the previous night.

“Thank you, Jack,” she said. “I needed that.” As the two of them walked down the hall toward the conference room she said, “Roman wants to disconnect the ventilator.”

“I know. Can he do that?”

“Medically, he can recommend removal. Legally, if Lisa wants it on and he wants it off, it’s a problem. Ethically, he shouldn’t be treating his own family. But he has enough friends on the committee to get them to recommend what he wants. After that, Lisa’s going to have a fight on her hands.”

“Where do you stand?” Jack asked.

Maggie looked him in the eye and said, “I’m on Amy’s side.”

The tension in the conference room was palpable. Instead of sitting in her usual seat, Maggie took the empty seat Lisa had saved for her near the head of the conference table. Jack took the only seat left—Maggie’s place at the foot of the table.

The secretary finished reading the minutes of the previous meeting, and Roman called for additions or corrections. The minutes were approved as read, and the tension went up a notch as Roman began reciting the facts of Amy’s case.

“We don’t know how long she was underwater—” Roman said.

“Not for very long!” Lisa interjected.

Maggie gripped Lisa’s wrist to silence her, and Roman continued without looking in his wife’s direction.

“—before efforts to resuscitate were begun. The child began to breathe on her own, but stopped breathing on the way to the hospital and was put on a respirator when she arrived. The three-year-old victim is in a coma, and only time will tell whether—”

Lisa leapt up and said, “She’s not ‘a victim,’ she’s our daughter!”

“Sit down, Lisa,” Roman said.

“Roman, you can’t do this,” Lisa pleaded. “You have to save Amy. You have to!”

The committee remained silent as the two adversaries confronted each other across the conference table.

“Don’t you see, Lisa?” Roman said in a voice racked with grief. “I can’t save her. That’s what this meeting is all about.”

Maggie stood up beside Lisa, put an arm around her shoulder, and murmured, “Sit down, Lisa. Let me ask the questions that need to be asked.”

“But—”

“Trust me, please.”

Maggie watched Lisa sink into her chair, then turned to Roman and said, “What about Amy’s brain wave activity?”

Roman rearranged a folder of papers in front of him as though looking for the results of the brain scan, then said, “There are some irregularities.”

“But she’s not brain dead, is that correct?” Maggie asked.

“Yes, that’s correct. But—”

“Then I don’t understand why you’re recommending removal of life-support systems,” Maggie said. “There’s no legal basis for it.”

The conference table suddenly buzzed like bees around a particularly succulent flower.

“I don’t believe life support will do any good,” Roman said, rising, as though being seated while she was standing gave her too much power in the argument.

“Is that your medical opinion, or your opinion as the father of a child who’s been the victim of a tragedy?” Maggie challenged.

“I’ve seen cases like this before,” Roman said ominously.

“And?” Maggie prodded.

“Sometimes the victim’s condition deteriorates so slowly, it takes months for the child to die.”

“And other times?”

Roman made a face as though to dismiss those statistics.

“What happens in the cases where the victim’s condition doesn’t deteriorate?” Maggie insisted.

“The child can recover completely, or recover with various levels of damage to her physical or mental capabilities . . . everything from a slight speech impediment or a limp to paraparesis,” Roman said.

Maggie felt Victoria’s eyes on her at the mention of “paraparesis,” but refused to look at her mother-in-law. They both knew the physical and mental devastation that could occur. Maggie believed a life like Brian’s was worth living—that any life was worth living—to the very fullest of the individual’s abilities. Brian’s unfettered joy in life had helped Maggie to find the joy in her own.

To Maggie’s astonishment, Victoria said, “Tell us about paraparesis, doctor.”

Victoria knew full well what paraparesis was—her own grandson was paraparetic. She could only be asking the question to sway the committee to vote against keeping Amy Hollander on a respirator.

“If a drowning victim suffers global brain damage, paraparesis may result. It can include speech and memory problems, poor muscular control, tremors—”

“The quality of life Amy will enjoy—if she survives—is not the issue we are here to discuss, Dr. Hollander,” Maggie interjected.

“Why not?” Victoria said. “It’s the duty of this committee to be the moral voice of this community. Why can’t Dr. Hollander make an ethical decision to remove his daughter from a respirator based on the kind of life she’ll lead in the future?”

Maggie met Victoria’s pale blue eyes across the conference table and said, “Because the ethical issue is moot so long as the child has a medical chance of survival.” Maggie turned to Roman and said, “Will the respirator help keep Amy alive, doctor?”

“I don’t think—”

“Yes or no, Dr. Hollander. Will a respirator extend your daughter’s life?”

“Yes.”

“Then legally, she’s entitled to that support.” Maggie met Roman’s obsidian eyes for long enough to see the concession there before she sat down.

The committee decided, by a vote of 11 to 9, that it was inappropriate to disconnect Amy Hollander from the respirator at this time.

As soon as the vote was announced, Lisa rose and left without excusing herself. Maggie wanted to go after her, but the meeting wasn’t over, and she wasn’t sure what other shenanigans Victoria might instigate if she wasn’t there to keep an eye on her.

Roman appeared distracted for the remainder of the meeting, and Maggie suspected he was at the end of his rope by the time the meeting was adjourned. As the committee, including Victoria, filed out of the room, Maggie took the few steps to reach the frazzled doctor, wanting to offer what comfort she could.

“Roman, I’m so sorry about what’s happened to Amy. I know what you must be feeling right now.”

“How the hell would you know that, Maggie? You’ve never even had a child of your own. How would you know what it feels like to lose one to drowning?”

Maggie’s jaw dropped at the virulence of Roman’s attack and the unfairness of it. This was the price she paid for all the secrets she had kept. If Roman had known the truth, he might have been able to accept what comfort she had to offer. Instead, Maggie found herself facing a man whose impotence—when he was used to exercising almost godlike powers of healing—must have been particularly galling.

“Excuse me for butting in, Dr. Hollander, but Maggie knows what it feels like because she has a son who’s paraparetic as a result of drowning.”

Maggie’s heart skipped a beat. She turned to stare at Jack, whose steel-gray eyes were focused on Hollander.

“Her sympathy was well-intentioned,” Jack said. “She knows exactly what you’re going through, and she knows what it might be like for you if Amy doesn’t fully recover. I think you owe her an apology, doctor.”

“Maggie, I . . . I don’t know what to say.”

Maggie tore her gaze from Jack’s face and turned to Roman. “It’s my fault, Roman. I should have told you about my son Brian a long time ago.”

“Does Lisa know?”

“No. No one knows except my family.”

Roman shot Jack a quizzical look, as though to ask how he had become privy to the information, then asked, “Why keep such a secret, Maggie?”

“Because, as I suspect you’re doing right now, I blamed myself for what happened.”

The small sound Roman made was evidence that Maggie had guessed right. “From what you’ve said, it wasn’t anybody’s fault Amy drowned. It was just a tragic accident. It’ll help if you can keep that in mind.”

“I’ll try,” Roman said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to check on my daughter.”

Maggie watched Roman till he was gone, then turned to face Jack and asked, “Why did you tell him about Brian?”

“Why not?” Jack said.

“It wasn’t your decision to make, Jack.”

“You’ve carried the burden by yourself long enough, don’t you think, Maggie? Why not let some of us who care about you share it?”

Jack cupped Maggie’s nape with one large hand and drew her toward him. Maggie waited for some urge to resist to rise up and rescue her from Jack’s comforting hug. But in the cold, cold place deep down inside of her, within the thick block of ice that was her heart, a warm spring thaw was going on.

“I’d be happy standing right here for the rest of my life,” Maggie murmured.

Abruptly, Jack shoved her away from him, fumbled to get a beeper out of his jeans pocket, and looked at the number. “Gotta go.”

“I didn’t hear a beep,” Maggie said. He didn’t answer, because he was already gone from the room.

Maggie stared after him, her brow furrowed. Then it dawned on her what she’d said:
I could stand right here the rest of my life.
She knew why Jack had beat such a hasty retreat. He didn’t want to get involved. He wasn’t interested in commitment. “The rest of my life” was pretty serious stuff.

Maggie had to remember the rules. After all, she had set them herself. She could get close, but not too close. She could like Jack, she just couldn’t love him.

“Oh, hell,” Maggie said. It was already too late for that.

Chapter 17

When the beeper vibrated in Jack’s pocket, his first thought was,
Another victim!
A glance at the phone number on the beeper revealed he was needed by whoever was monitoring the ICU, but there was no emergency.

His second thought was,
I wish I didn’t have to let go of Maggie.
He had a lot better idea now why she’d posted all those No Trespassing signs to keep men-him-away. But her attitude had obviously undergone a recent change.

His third thought was,
Just about every murder suspect I have just left the conference room headed for the ICU. Maybe the situation on the fifth floor is more dangerous than the cop on duty realizes.

All three thoughts together took less than a second, so Jack’s “Gotta go” came in tandem with his examination of the beeper. He realized on his way out the door that Maggie had no idea what had sent him flying, but he obeyed the instincts that told him, Go
now, explain later.

He bolted out the door of the conference room and raced up three flights of stairs, unwilling to take a chance on the elevator. The heart that was already pounding in his chest from holding Maggie began tripping double-time, and Jack’s gut squeezed tight with fear.

He headed straight for the linen room, where Detective Fuentes had been replaced by another detective whose name Jack couldn’t recall. “Why’d you beep me?” he said the instant he came through the door.

“There are too many people in the room for me to watch all of them at once. I figured better safe than sorry.”

Jack saw the problem immediately. Lisa was sitting on one side of Amy’s bed—bed eight, in the farthest corner of the room—while Dr. Hollander talked with Isabel on the other side. The replacement for Nurse Cole was attending to the little girl in bed three—Patty, Jack remembered—while Victoria sat in a chair next to Patty, wearing a peach-colored hospital volunteer’s jacket and reading the unconscious child a book.

It was hard for Jack to do nothing but watch, because the way people were moving around, it was difficult to see their hands at all times. He wanted to stand unobtrusively in a corner of the ICU. But in that case, the murderer would hardly be likely to show himself. Or herself. Jack sat down beside the detective—Joe Harkness, he remembered—and began to watch. And wait. And think about Maggie.

So far, Jack hadn’t let himself fall in love with Maggie Wainwright. At least not the sappy “She can do no wrong/Isn’t she perfect?” kind of love. He saw Maggie with eyes that were all too clear. And she was far from perfect.

She was outspoken and opinionated. She was consistently late for meetings. She had a caesarian scar on her abdomen. And of course, she was an alcoholic. Jack could easily have fallen in love with her despite her flaws . . . . despite all her flaws but one.

He would have to be a fool to let himself fall in love with an alcoholic. Especially when he knew the downside and the dangers of the disease.

Jack Kittrick was no fool.

So as much as he wanted to love Maggie, Jack wasn’t going to let it happen. He knew he ought to tell Maggie how he felt. Especially after what he could see was happening. It wasn’t fair to let her fall in love with him, when he had no intention of loving her back.

Roman was speaking with Isabel, rearranging his surgical schedule, but his eyes were on his wife on the other side of Amy’s bed. She was holding Amy’s tiny hand, the back of which contained an IV held in place with an X of surgical tape. He could see Lisa’s lips moving, so he knew she was talking to their daughter, but from where he stood, he couldn’t make out what she was saying. What was she telling Amy?