Intensive Caring Read online

  “You got me. Where’s it from?” It was a game they played.

  “Romeo and Juliet,” he explained with a win-some grin.

  Cedric could quote poetry and lines from songs endlessly, and normally his rich tenor voice was arresting. He’d never told Portia much about his background, other than insisting he had no living relatives, but if his use of language and his knowledge of the classics were any indication, he’d had a better-than-average education.

  “Okay, Romeo. What can I do for you today?” She was assessing him silently, dismissing the possibility that he might be drunk. There was no odor of liquor.

  He frowned and rubbed his shoulder. “I think I’ve got a pinched nerve or something, Doc Bailey. My right side doesn’t have any strength anymore.”

  “Just your hand?”

  He shook his head. “My leg, too. I fell over my own feet a couple times last week.”

  “How long since you first noticed this weakness?”

  “Maybe a month now. My back’s been hurting more than usual. I kept thinking the pain would go away, but instead it got lots worse this past week.”

  Portia began some basic muscle testing, trying to ignore the foreboding that overtook her as it became obvious Cedric’s right arm, shoulder, leg and hip were discernibly weak.

  He chatted while she assessed him.

  “How’s the real-life Juliet, Doc?”

  “She’s fine. She’s staying with me next weekend.” Juliet was Portia’s younger sister, who’d been born mentally challenged. Portia had told Cedric about her one day, and now he always asked about her.

  “She likes where she’s living?”

  “Very much. And she enjoys her job, as well.” For the past several years, Juliet had been living in a group home and working in a bakery.

  “Good for her. Tell her Cedric says hi.”

  “I’ll do that.” Portia finished her examination and helped him get his shirt on. He couldn’t button it, so she did it for him.

  “Thanks. So what’s the verdict, Doc Portia?”

  “I’m not exactly sure, Cedric. Muscles can become weak for many reasons. We have to figure out whether muscle function is abnormal because there’s a disease of the muscle itself, or whether a disorder has developed in other tissue.”

  He frowned at her and shook his head. “What other tissue?”

  “Nerve tissue.” Neuromuscular disease was often genetic. “Do you know anything at all about your mother or father, Cedric, whether they might have had any physical problems?”

  “My mother abandoned me in the pew of a church when I was about a year old. I have no idea who she was—or my father, either.”

  Cedric’s tone was matter-of-fact. He’d learned to accept the facts of his life, but the information tugged at Portia’s heart.

  “I think we need to admit you so I can run some tests,” she said. Pronounced muscular weakness, pain in the shoulder, falling—Cedric’s symptoms suggested a serious neuromuscular disorder.

  At the mention of admission, his smile faded and he shook his head vehemently. “Can’t do that, Doc. You know I can’t abide hospitals. Can’t stand being closed in.”

  “It won’t be for long, Cedric,” she coaxed. “I need to find out exactly what’s causing this so I know how to help you. It won’t be for one hour longer than you need,” she assured him. She remembered how he’d told her, when she’d once suggested she admit him to treat an infection in his foot, that hospitals felt like prisons to him, and the only reason he came to St. Joe’s was to see her.

  “What sort of tests?”

  “An EMG—electromyogram—to find out whether the nerve controlling the muscle activity in your right side is functioning normally. An MRI—magnetic resonance imaging. And some serum enzyme tests to measure the amount of muscle protein present in your blood.”

  He screwed up his face and shuddered dramatically. “Needles. I hate needles.”

  “Everybody does, and I won’t order any more tests than are absolutely necessary, I promise.”

  He sat in silence for several moments.

  “Do you figure this is something serious, Doc Portia?” He looked straight into her eyes, and she prayed her own anxiety didn’t show.

  “I hope not, but there’s no way of telling until I get the test results.”

  He sighed and, with great reluctance, agreed to be admitted. “For a couple of days. That’s it. After a couple of days I check out of this hotel. Deal, Doc?”

  “You’re not giving me much choice, so I guess it’ll have to be enough.” Arranging for the tests she had in mind would take longer than a couple of days, but she’d do her best to hurry things up.

  “Will you come up to the ward with me? I have these etchings I know you’d love to see.” Cedric made the request playful and flirtatious, but Portia understood how apprehensive he was.

  “Of course. Just wait here a minute. I’ll make sure there’s space and be right back for you.”

  Fortunately, a bed was available. When she got back to where Cedric waited, she could see how difficult walking was for him. She realized he would hate being taken up in a wheelchair, so she ambled beside him to the elevators, hoping he wouldn’t fall.

  “I spent years in a place like this. You’d think this would feel like home,” Cedric grumbled as the elevator rose slowly to the fourth floor.

  “You were in a hospital as a child?”

  He shook his head. “It was a boys’ home, but it smelled just like this place—of disinfectant and fear. I ran away when I was ten.”

  “Being on your own at such an early age must have been terribly hard for you.” It was almost impossible to imagine how he’d survived.

  “I managed. Then I did what every kid dreams of—I ran off with the circus.”

  “You never told me that before.”

  “It wasn’t much of a life, although I made a couple good friends. That’s where I met Abner. And one of the clowns, Ricardo. He’d been an actor. He got me started reading.”

  The elevator stopped and Portia led the way to the nursing station. She knew the nurse on duty, and the kind older woman smiled warmly and assured her that Cedric would get her personal attention.

  Portia left him in her care. Her heart was heavy as she made her way back down the long hallway. She couldn’t shake her premonition that Cedric’s tests wouldn’t be positive, although—as with the teenage boy—she’d carefully avoided looking at him with the intention of seeing what was wrong. The race car driver had been the last.

  Nelson Gregory was on the same floor as Cedric, in the surgical wing, she remembered. She decided on the spur of the moment to drop in on him. The ER knew where she was; they’d page her if necessary. She’d stay only a moment, she assured herself, just long enough to find out what he wanted.

  He was in room 482, a private room. The door was ajar, and the sound of male voices told her he had visitors.

  Portia hesitated, then pushed the door open.

  The first thing she noticed was the flowers. They were everywhere…on the bedside stand, the windowsill, beside the sink, even on the floor…huge hothouse bouquets of roses, carnations, lilies. Gregory was obviously popular.

  The second thing she noted was that he was extremely attractive, even with his hair matted from the pillow and his jaw covered with several days’ growth of stubby dark whiskers.

  His eyes, deep set beneath thick dark brows, were an arresting blue. His large, slightly crooked nose had been broken at some point. His mouth was long and sensually narrow, his jawline firm and well defined.

  A young man and an older one sat on either side of the hospital bed, and both got quickly to their feet when she came in.

  “Hello, Mr. Gregory.” She smiled at him and nodded to his visitors.

  “Dr. Bailey. Thank you for coming.” His voice was still weak, but it, too, was pleasing…deep and clear.

  “These are members of my pit crew, Jake Nash and Andy Wallis. Dr. Portia Bailey.”

/>   The men nodded and extended their hands, and Portia shook each in turn. “Please, sit down,” she urged them. “I can only stay a moment.”

  Jake glanced at the man in the bed and obviously some signal passed between them. “We gotta be going. We’ll see you later, Nelson. Nice to meet you, Doctor.”

  They hurried out. The door sighed shut behind them, and suddenly Portia felt awkward. Injured or not, Nelson Gregory exuded a male charisma that made her uneasy. She handled it by being ultraprofessional.

  “You’re looking very well, Mr. Gregory. The nurse said you wanted to see me. How may I be of help to you?”

  “Call me Nelson, for starters. And I wanted to thank you for what you did for me in Emergency.”

  Portia frowned. “I’m afraid you have me confused with Dr. Mathews. I didn’t treat you. She did.”

  “I know that, and I’m also grateful to her. But it was your reassurance that made such a difference to me. I heard you tell her that my back wasn’t injured, and then you leaned over the bed and told me that I’d come through everything just fine. I did, and you were right about my back.”

  Portia smiled at him and said lightly, “It must have been a lucky guess.”

  “It didn’t sound like a guess to me. How did you know?”

  His intelligent eyes searched her face, and it was all she could do not to look away.

  His arms were bare beneath the short-sleeved hospital gown, muscular and covered with dark hair. For an instant she remembered how his body had appeared in the ER …sinewy, strong, dusted with the same dark pelt. Another wave of awareness of him as a man brought color to her face, and the resulting embarrassment made her feel uncomfortably warm.

  What’s wrong with you, Bailey? He’s a patient. You’re a doctor. Get a grip.

  Some treacherous little voice insisted, Not his doctor, though.

  She needed to be very firm with herself. “I’m a doctor,” she stated, more for her own benefit than his. “It’s part of my job to make patients feel optimistic about the outcome of their treatment.”

  “But you were so confident, so certain,” he insisted. “You knew somehow that my spine wasn’t injured. How did you know?”

  This was a slippery slope, and she didn’t want to traverse it. She turned the question back on him. “As I said, it must have been a lucky guess. Why not leave it at that.”

  He studied her for a long moment, and then he nodded. “Luck. You’re right. That’s what it was. Guess I’m just not accustomed to getting lucky.” He gave her a mischievous grin. “The whole thing stuck in my head because you were like a guardian angel or something, coming in and telling me I would be okay just when I needed most to hear it. And afterward I wondered if maybe I’d just imagined you.”

  Portia laughed. “Me, a guardian angel? Not a chance. I’m plain old flesh and blood, same as everyone else.”

  “Not the same at all. Much more beautiful.”

  The compliment came easily to him. He’s sweet-talked a lot of women, this guy. Her tone when she replied was deliberately flippant. “Thank you, kind sir. And now I really have to be getting back to the ER.”

  She was moving toward the door, but his voice stopped her.

  “How long before they’ll let me up?”

  “I suspect you’ll be in a wheelchair fairly soon, probably in another day or two.” She knew he was stalling to keep her there. He must have already asked his own doctor that question.

  He blew out his breath in an exasperated whoosh. “Lying in this damn bed is making me nuts. I’m bad-tempered, and I don’t mean to be. It’s just being so bloody helpless that does it.”

  The harsh honesty of his words roused her sympathy. “I believe it. I’d hate that, too. My worst thing is forced inactivity.”

  “Mine, too. Besides, I need to be mobile because I want to take you out to dinner. You are single, aren’t you?”

  His directness took her totally by surprise, even though she was accustomed to having males come on to her.

  She smiled at him and shook her head. “Thank you, Mr. Gregory, but that’s not possible. There are strict rules about doctors dating patients.”

  “Please, call me Nelson,” he told her again. “And that rule only applies if a doctor is actively engaged in a patient’s treatment. All you did was talk to me. You weren’t involved in treating me. You said so yourself. So there’s no patient-doctor complication, is there?”

  She had to laugh. He was clever. “You sound as if you checked it out with our legal department.”

  “I did.”

  “You’re not serious.” His admission stunned her. She’d been joking, but obviously he was in earnest.

  “Of course I am. I believe in being thorough. You are single, aren’t you? Otherwise you’d have used that excuse instead of the doctor-patient thing. Do you mind if I call you Portia?”

  He was outrageous, and a small part of her did mind. Using her given name implied an intimacy that she wasn’t ready for. But refusing would make her sound like a total prude.

  “Not at all.” She wouldn’t be seeing him again, anyway, she told herself. The guy was probably a human steamroller when he wasn’t confined to a hospital bed.

  “Portia.”

  The way he said it was seductive, which was ridiculous. His legs were in casts. His hip was in a brace. He was flat on his back. And certainly she’d never found injured patients seductive in the least.

  “It’s an unusual name. Shakespearean?”

  The question reminded her of Cedric, and her duties as a doctor. “Yeah. My mother’s a big fan of the Bard. And now I really do have to go. Bye, Mr. Gregory.”

  “Nelson.” His eyes twinkled, but his voice was insistent. “See you soon, Portia. I’ll be in touch.”

  She had to laugh. Nelson Gregory was sure of himself; she’d give him that. As she hurried down the hall to the elevator and rode back down to Emerg, she wondered how many of the floral bouquets in his room were from women he’d used and discarded.

  Probably all of them.

  THE DOOR SIGHED SHUT behind her, and Nelson exhaled and consciously relaxed the tight muscles in his arms and back. She made him feel like a sweaty-palmed teenager. Years had passed since he’d felt nervous around a woman, but he felt that way around Portia. It had something to do with those eyes of hers, gray laser beams that could bore a hole right through a man’s soul.

  He also felt horny as hell, which was surprising, considering his injuries, but also reassuring to his male ego. She was a huge challenge, and if ever he needed a challenge, it was now.

  Given the sorry state his body was in, having a physical relationship with her would be difficult, but he’d figure out a way. He was powerfully attracted to her, although he knew any relationship they had would be short-lived and superficial; he never allowed himself to care too much for any woman.

  Planning the seduction would give his mind a focus, though, during the endless nights trapped in this bed. Since the accident, he’d had to use every morsel of self-control to keep from going mad. For many years, he’d relied on physical activity, extreme danger, casual sex, to keep himself from thinking, to exhaust himself so totally that sleep would come easily, getting him through the worst of the dark night hours. The crash had changed all that.

  Even now, in broad daylight, he broke into a sweat at the prospect of the coming night. His medications wore off long before dawn, and he’d lie trapped in the semidarkness, unable to move, listening to sirens wailing on Burrard Street, hearing ambulances pulling in and out of the hospital bays far below. And every minute, every second, he’d struggle—and fail—to keep his mind from the monstrous thing that obsessed it.

  Huntington’s chorea, his traitorous brain related, as if he was reading the definition from a medical encyclopedia, a hereditary, incurable disease of the central nervous system, which involves the degeneration of nerve cells in the largest portion of the brain, known as the cerebrum.

  Nelson had firsthand experience with
the disease. He’d watched his father slowly succumb to it. An only child, he’d idolized his strong, loving father. To watch the person he knew and adored slowly disappear had been a living nightmare.

  The irony was that until Nelson was twenty-four, he had never heard of Huntington’s. The fact that it had ravaged his father’s family for generations had been a closely guarded secret. But when his father developed the unmistakable symptoms, of course Nelson had to be told.

  He remembered as if it were yesterday, sitting in the doctor’s comfortable office, hearing facts that had irrevocably changed his life.

  “The first symptoms of Huntington’s usually begin between thirty-five and forty years of age,” the weary-looking doctor had explained with a regretful sigh. “As you see with your father, Nelson, the disease affects bodily movements, intellectual functioning and emotional control. The child of a person with HC has a fifty-percent chance of inheriting it. More males contract it than do females. At the moment, there is no test that can determine whether or not you have inherited the gene, although researchers are working to that end.”

  And then in 1993, scientists announced the discovery of a gene test to predict Huntington’s chorea before symptoms developed. Nelson couldn’t bring himself to have it then, and he had no desire to have it now.

  There was no cure for the disease. Taking the test would only verify what he knew deep in his soul. He carried the gene. He was doomed; it was only a matter of time. Why bother having it confirmed?

  The flowers his friends had sent suddenly reminded Nelson of his father’s funeral, when instead of sorrow all he’d felt was overwhelming relief that the horror was over. He jabbed the call button.

  A nurse came hurrying in, and he waved at the floral tributes. “Take these out of here. Give ’em to whoever wants them. The smell is making me nauseous.”

  He closed his eyes as the nurse removed the flowers, and concentrated hard on exactly how he would go about seducing Dr. Portia Bailey.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  PORTIA BURIED HER NOSE in the bouquet of wild roses beside Cedric’s bed. She’d thought before she came in to see him that she had her emotions under control, but the fear and dread in his eyes were so evident it broke her heart.