Seeking Asylum (26 page)

As soon as she stood, she saw Eric. He was sitting on the OR table, with two people working on him.

His eyes were closed, his head bowed as a nurse closed the cut with a row of Steri-Strip bandages.

The bruise on his left cheekbone was purple, the corner of his mouth was swollen and there were dark circles under his eyes. They’d removed his bloody T-shirt. His belly was red and there were bruises forming. His knuckles looked raw and streaks of blood ran down his jaw and neck. He was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen.

As if he felt her looking at him, he lifted his head and opened his eyes. They were soft and filled with pain, but they lit up when they met her gaze.

Tears welled, blurring her vision.

“Ah, don’t cry,” he said, his voice raspy and strained.

She shook her head.

His gaze moved to the man beside her. “Storm, nice of you to drop by.”

Storm reached over and touched Eric’s knee. “I guess I’m going to have to quit calling you a desk jockey, Baldwyn.”

A ghost of a smile crinkled Eric’s eyes. “I guess so.”

“Well, I’d better—” Storm made a vague gesture and looked at Rachel. “If you’re okay.”

She nodded at him without taking her eyes off Eric.

“Oh, by the way, Baldwyn.” Storm held out a tiny cylinder. “Here’s your com unit. One of the men picked it up in the corridor. I guess it got dislodged while you were chatting with those goons that messed up your face.”

Eric reached out and took the tiny microcommunicator.

Rachel stared at the little cylinder, trying to figure out why it seemed so odd to her that Storm was handing it to Eric. Hadn’t Eric had it the whole time?

Storm said something she didn’t catch and the two people ministering to Eric’s injuries disappeared.

“You have a bruise where that bastard slapped you.” Eric frowned. He reached out toward her face.

“It doesn’t hurt.” She took a step forward and grabbed the edge of the table. “Sorry, I’m still a little groggy.”

“Rachel, I’m so sorry. I should have been stronger. I should have protected you better.”

She put her hand to his mouth. “Please don’t. Look at you.”

“I’m fine.” He smiled carefully, catching her palm in his fingers. “Really fine.”

Rachel stared at him. Had she ever seen him really smile before? He had a beautiful smile, even marred by the cut on his lip. That smile thrilled her and terrified her as she realized a truth that she’d been trying to deny since the first hours they’d spent together.

She loved him. So much. Too much.

Her heart slammed against her chest and her brain went fuzzy again.

She tried to smile back, working to process his words. “You mean—”

He nodded. “Caleb.” He looked down, then up at her, wariness in his expression. “He came out of his coma.”

Terror overrode all her other feelings. Clutching at her throat, Rachel fought the urge to back away. She didn’t know what to think, much less what to say. One thing she did know—she didn’t want to hear any more. Yet she couldn’t help but ask. “You knew?”

He nodded. “I know.”

Rachel gently pulled her hand from his grasp. She felt a tear slip down her cheek. Her head was beginning to spin. Her emotions were so mixed up that she couldn’t think straight.

“It must be the drug,” she said, her voice breaking. “I’m a little…tired.”

Eric’s gaze turned hard and he averted his gaze, but not before she saw the flash of pain in his eyes. “Yeah. Me, too.”

Storm appeared at her side. He put his arm around her. “Sugar, you’re looking pale. Come on. We’re putting you two in an ambulance. Next stop, Walter Reed Hospital in D.C.”

Rachel couldn’t deny that she was glad for the interruption. Her knees were trembling and she felt sick to her stomach. But her physical symptoms were nothing compared to the pain in her heart.

She hadn’t been able to stop herself from recoiling when Eric mentioned Caleb. Caleb was a part of Eric. And Caleb was so very ill. She didn’t know how to deal with that.

By the time she got into the ambulance, she couldn’t see for the tears. She closed her eyes and gave herself up to the drowsiness caused by the midazolam.

THE NEXT MORNING, after spending the night in an observation room at Walter Reed Hospital, Rachel went to the Medical Intensive Care step-down unit to see Caleb.

When she pushed open the door into the room, Eric was there. Her heart did a flip.

He was cleaned up and dressed in teal-blue scrubs, and he looked better—and worse. The swelling in his eye and lip had gone down, but the bruise on his cheekbone had gotten darker, and it looked as though he was going to have a black eye.

He obviously hadn’t slept. His eyes were too bright and his face looked drawn and pale.

He sat beside the bed, talking to Caleb, who lay with his eyes closed, an oxygen tube running across his face under his nostrils.

Eric’s head turned slightly, but he didn’t look at her. “So, bud, Metzger’s gone now, and I’m going to take care of you. With the proper medication, you should be able to live in a halfway house, maybe even get your own place.”

Eric paused, knotting one hand into a fist and grazing his knuckles with his teeth. After a couple of seconds, he went on.

“And guess what, bud. Misty is coming to see you.”

Caleb’s eyes opened and he smiled. “Misty wants to see me?” he whispered. “I still can’t believe she’s alive.”

“Yeah. She’ll be here in a few days, when you’re feeling better.”

Eric patted his brother’s shoulder and stood, glancing at Rachel. “You’ve got another visitor now, bud. I’m going to go find some coffee.”

He walked around the bed and over to Rachel. “Be careful what you say,” he warned her.

He left the room.

Rachel closed her eyes for an instant, hurt flowing through her, numbing her as the midazolam had. She knew she had hurt Eric. But how could she ever explain how utterly terrifying it was to consider trusting her heart to him? She hadn’t slept much. She’d spent most of the night dozing fitfully, dreaming about Eric, standing in front of two facing mirrors. His reflection was him and Caleb at the same time, and it bounced back and forth to infinity.

She took a deep breath.

“Hi, Caleb.”

Caleb turned his head. “Hi, pretty doctor. Eric said you were here. I’m sorry…sorry for what I did.”

She sat in the chair Eric had vacated and patted Caleb’s hand. “I know. You couldn’t help it. It was Metzger’s experiments.”

“Eric doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand why I never let him know I was alive.”

Rachel’s heart broke as she thought of Caleb, locked away by his grandmother for twenty years, and Eric, believing his brother was dead, believing he might be going insane.

“He missed you a lot.”

“But you understand, don’t you?”

She glanced sharply at him. “Understand what?”

“Why he was better off without me.”

A shard of guilt embedded itself under Rachel’s diaphragm. Caleb’s words resonated inside her. What would her life have been like if she’d grown up somewhere else? Someplace where she’d never endured the fear and chaos of living with a mother who was bipolar.

She couldn’t imagine it. When it came down to it, no matter what her mother had done to her, the fact remained—she was her mother.

“Oh, Caleb, Eric wasn’t better off without you. He loves you. You two are connected. Without each other, you wouldn’t be the same people.” As she spoke, Rachel realized the truth of what she was saying.

She was here, now, because of her mother. She was the person she was because of how she grew up. It was the way life was.

“Eric needs you, just like you need him. Your grandmother was wrong. She stole your lives from you. No one has the right to do that. Now you and Eric are together. He loves you, and you love him.

“I think you just taught me a valuable lesson, Caleb.” She smiled at him. “Let me tell you about my mother.”

Rachel told Caleb about her beautiful, eccentric mother, who had loved her and cared for her the best way she’d known how.

By the time Rachel finished, tears were streaming down her face and she was astounded at how many wonderful memories had spilled out of her brain.

She leaned back and wiped her face. “You must be sick of listening to me. I’ll go find Eric. He’s probably waiting for me to leave.”

She got up and leaned over to kiss Caleb’s forehead.

“Rachel?”

“Hmm?” She straightened and fixed his sheet.

“Eric loves you.”

The words shattered her heart. With a quiet cry she flopped into the chair and put her hands over her mouth.

“How—” She had to start again. “How do you know that, Caleb?”

“He told me.”

She shook her head. “I think you…must be mistaken.”

“No. I’m not. I’m telling the truth.”

My brother always tells the truth.

“When did he tell you that? Today?”

“No. When you were hiding in the Medical Records room. When you kissed him.” Caleb laughed weakly. “He didn’t exactly tell me. I just knew.” He sighed. “I’m…I’m sleepy now.”

“Okay, Caleb.” She stood and touched his forehead. “Sleep well.”

Outside the step-down unit, Rachel looked toward the coffee machines and didn’t see anyone. She walked around the corner to the waiting room.

Eric was pacing back and forth, talking on his cell phone, a cup of coffee sitting forgotten on a side table. He looked up and saw her, and cut short his conversation.

“Waiting for me to leave?” she asked.

He glowered at her. “I figured you’d be more comfortable dealing with only one crazy person at a time.”

She pressed her lips together as the hurt swelled inside her. She knew she deserved that. That and more. She wanted to run, but she stood her ground, her heart pounding in her throat. Her hands shook so much she had to fold her arms.

She nodded at the cell phone and spoke stiffly. “Information about the case?”

“That was Mitch,” Eric said. “Metzger was dead at the scene. No surprise. Thomas is trying to cop a deal, spilling his guts. He has a lot of information about Metzger’s experiments. There are three patients who will have to be weaned off the injections, but they appear to be in good health. None of them had been on it more than a few weeks, maybe a couple of months. Apparently Caleb was Metzger’s only long-term experiment. There were plane tickets to Germany for Metzger, Thomas and Caleb.”

“What about Dr. Green?”

“There are some discrepancies in the narcotics register at the Meadows. Missing morphine. Dr. Patel is answering questions from the Drug Enforcement Agency about that now.”

Eric frowned. “What do you think about Caleb? How’s he doing?”

Rachel smiled shakily. “Caleb is going to be fine. He’s responding to the new drug the doctors have him on.” She looked down at her hands, which were clasped at her waist. Her knuckles were white.

Eric studied her, his gaze hooded. “You’re spooked by me, aren’t you?”

She almost laughed. Spooked was only one of the things she was feeling right now. Confused, sad, curious about Caleb’s statement.

“This isn’t easy for me…”

Eric’s eyes softened. “I know that, Rachel. More than anyone. I don’t mean to make it harder on you. When I told you I didn’t have a lot of experience with relationships, I was telling the truth.” He turned his back, looking out the windows.

She stepped toward him. “Eric, I heard Storm tell you he found your com unit.”

“Yeah?”

“When did you lose it?”

“In the struggle in the hallway, when the guy hit me with the block of wood.”

“But I heard you—” Rachel chewed on her lower lip.

“Heard me? When?”

“When I was on the table. You told me not to tell them anything. You told me—” She paused, looking at him oddly.

Eric stared at her. He felt flayed wide open.

Of course he’d been sending her thoughts, sending her strength, as much as he could. It had helped him stand the pain, to concentrate on trying to reach her.

But he’d been a dozen feet away from her, held by two orderlies, and his com unit had been lying on the floor two corridors away. She couldn’t possibly have heard him. He shook his head.

“I guess it was the drug Metzger gave me. I guess I was dreaming.”

Taking a long breath, he watched her carefully. “What did you hear—in your dream?”

“You said to hold on a little longer. You said—” She stopped, her eyes wide and scared.

“I said what?” he muttered. “Tell me.”

She lifted her chin. “You said you loved me.” Her lips trembled. “But I couldn’t have heard you, could I? It’s impossible.”

His face grew hot with embarrassment. His flayed heart ached. How could she know? Was he that transparent? “I suppose you could have been dreaming.”

“I suppose.”

Was that pain in her voice, anguish shining from her blue eyes?

He turned his back. The things he was about to say he could not say to her face. He sighed deeply and bowed his head. “I’ve never been in love. Never thought I would ever be. It’s always been difficult for me to connect with people. I guess I am too closed off emotionally, because of the way I have to work.”

“Closed off?” Rachel sounded stunned. “Didn’t I tell you how you made me feel?”

He turned and saw the confusion in her eyes. “When I met you, when I felt the connection between us, I thought…”

Rachel stared at him.

Eric would have given the world if he could have read her thoughts then, but of course he couldn’t. She’d been crying, about Caleb probably. She had too soft a heart to be a psychiatrist. She took everything too personally, which was why she could never become emotionally involved with anyone who had a mental problem.

And Eric knew that she believed he had a problem.

“You felt a connection?”

He nodded, his throat clogging up. He couldn’t say anything else. She had told him how she felt, at the very beginning. He’d gotten too involved, and now he’d lost her.

Rachel knew that Eric would never take that last step. And she knew why. He thought she could never love him.

She knew if she wanted him, she would have to cross the chasm that divided them.