LITMIR.BIZ

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She inhaled deeply, then blew out the breath, finding she was still inundated with Lucas’s scent. “And, yes, the person you knew, the man you fell in love with—he’s still there. He’s wearing many layers, but he’s still there.” She couldn’t deny that much.

      Unfortunately, she also knew that the woman who had fallen in love with him all those years ago still lived in her somewhere. She, too, was deeply buried, but she had responded to Lucas nevertheless. Something she could not allow. The knowledge left her shaky and dangerously close to tears.

      But Rachel Neuman never cried—she couldn’t afford to waste the energy. In any case, she would never show such weakness where anyone might see her.

      Checking the time, Rachel decided to stop at home and see if she could manage lunch. She’d had merely a bagel and juice this morning, and that only because it had been forced on her by Linda Tafoya, the day supervisor.

      Rachel Neuman, at twenty-seven years of age, was young to hold the position she held: head pediatric nurse at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. When she had accepted her first position at PCH five years ago, night shift had been offered and she had accepted it. After a while she’d found it suited her. These days, even though she was head of the department, she continued to work the night shift.

      Initially her remarkable academic record had caught the attention of the higher-ups at the hospital when they had interviewed her, but she had gone on to demonstrate thorough professional competence and a warm personal touch—a combination much valued in a nurse. She was adept at handling multiple tasks, monitoring health-care issues as well as those that dealt more with comfort and happiness. She fit in with both the staff and the doctors at the hospital, not to mention patients and their parents. She graciously coped with the dreaded administrative duties and paperwork involved in the job, as well. In any case, no one begrudged Rachel her position.

      The upshot of this was that she worked a very long day. Her shift ran officially from midnight to 8:00 a.m. However, she usually met with patients, patients’ parents and hospital administrators after that. Her bedtime was 4:00 p.m., so the intervening daytime hours were hers. To spend with her daughter.

      Today, however, she’d had her meeting with Lucas at ten-thirty. She’d gone to her office promptly at the end of her shift, knowing she could use the personal quarters the hospital staff had set up for her there as a changing place.

      It was a miniature home away from home, except for the absence of a kitchen. This was a factor in her recent weight loss, but not the only factor. Her hospital colleagues were aware of it, understood the reasons, but knew she couldn’t afford to stop taking care of herself. Hence, Linda shoving a bagel in her face.

      As she maneuvered through the traffic, heading out of Scottsdale and into Phoenix, Rachel was disgusted to feel the sting of tears at the back of her eyes. Usually she was so successful at controlling things like tears.

      She hadn’t allowed herself such a release during her final year with Lucas, nor during the breakup or its aftermath. She hadn’t cried as she struggled to become a single mother or as she had learned, in fact, how to be a single mother. She hadn’t even cried when Dr. Paul Graham, director of the Children’s Cancer Unit at the hospital, had told her Michaela’s test results.

      After all, he was really only confirming what she’d already known. She’d seen the symptoms too many times before, as a nurse. She had recognized what she was seeing; she’d known it was more than the flu. That’s why she’d gone to Paul in the first place.

      Dear sweet Paul, who’d been working at the hospital for nearly fifteen years before Rachel’s arrival. He’d become her mentor, a guiding hand when she’d needed one. They had become fast friends, in addition to working together, sharing one of those rare and profound friendships that occasionally bless a person’s life.

      Rachel was utterly unaware of rumors that had their relationship heading in a different kind of intimate direction. Paul was old enough to be her father and Rachel viewed him in that light. He had helped restore her self-confidence when she had arrived, new to her career, newly pregnant and without a husband. He had helped her believe again, and she had secretly hoped he would help her believe this time, too—preferably by telling her that Michaela didn’t have leukemia after all. Of course, he hadn’t told her that. Rachel had known, really, that he wouldn’t.

      That day Rachel had fainted for the first and only time in her life. Paul had taken care of her, never mentioning her moment of weakness to anyone. It was something else to add to the list of reasons she was grateful to him.

      Rachel knew what leukemia would mean. She knew it meant granulocytes, a certain type of white cell, were causing the problem. She also knew that chemotherapy would be the initial form of treatment and that it would likely be a rough experience for her little girl. And for her.

      It had been worse than she’d expected. Michaela had lost her hair almost immediately. Her nausea was intense and frequent. They could help her some with that, but it still left Michaela a very fragile, very weak little girl. Had Rachel not seen the procedure before, she would have found it hard to believe this state of being could in any way be connected to an improvement in Michaela’s health. When the chemotherapy took longer to work than they had expected, Rachel had faced it stoically, refusing to let herself shatter, turning her energies instead toward supporting her daughter in any way she could.

      Rachel had known that a bone marrow transplant would be a likely next step, and that identifying a suitable donor was crucial to performing the procedure. As a matter of course, Rachel had had herself typed, assuming she’d be an acceptable match for her daughter. When that had not occurred, she had assumed someone in the family would be suitable. That failing, she had bravely pursued the next possibility: she had initiated the search to identify other potential donors. She had worked diligently on finding a match for several months, watching her daughter’s lurching progress through chemotherapy, when she had one day acknowledged that she had not succeeded.

      She had also exhausted all of the obvious avenues for locating that donor, with one equally obvious exception. Lucas. Michaela’s father. The one blood relative who, under normal circumstances, would have been one of the first to be tested. But these weren’t normal circumstances.

      By the time testing Lucas had occurred to Rachel, Michaela had been in the hospital for several months, undergoing all manner of treatment, and Rachel was living in her office. She had refused to take a leave of absence, knowing that she needed her work to help maintain a sense of normalcy in her life.

      Once Michaela’s condition had become apparent and the hospital staff had understood that Rachel wouldn’t go home if it meant leaving Michaela at the hospital, they had called upon the administration to provide Rachel with a suitable refuge. No one debated Rachel’s need to be near her daughter; supporting families in this way had long been incorporated as an aspect of care. They would definitely take care of their own. Moving remarkably fast for a bureaucracy, the hospital had reshaped Rachel’s office. What had once been an area reasonably able to accommodate a desk, file cabinets and a few chairs had been converted into an acceptable, if small, living space.

      Support was the thing, and everyone knew that.

      No one had ever seen Rachel hit the breaking point, but they all suspected she was dangerously close. Except, of course, Dr. Paul Graham—who realized she had already hit her breaking point and was now running on empty.

      Rachel had appreciated the renovation of her quarters. She had tried to let everyone know her feelings, but acknowledged that she wasn’t very good at accepting help from others. Her familia, of course, were different from other people. They knew her better, and were able to anticipate some of what she needed from them. They could offer to help before she had to ask for it—and asking for help was foreign to her. That’s why it had been so difficult to go to Lucas for help.

      Part of the reason, anyway.

      With Lucas it was something else again. Needing him was something Rachel had weaned herself away from. It was a survival technique that had developed slowly, but which had become firmly embedded in her way of life.

      Turning

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