Читать книгу Rafael's One Night Bombshell - Tina Beckett - Страница 11
ОглавлениеOne month later...
EVEN AS CASSIE wrapped the measuring tape around Renato Silva’s head, she knew. The newborn would fall below the circumference norms.
Microcephaly wasn’t something she encountered every day. Or even every year. And yet this child made three in the last eight weeks. A shiver went up her spine. With all of the reports coming out of Brazil and elsewhere, she worried that these cases could somehow be related.
Two centimeters below normal. Not terribly off, but still concerning.
One of the nurses glanced at her, brows up. Cassie knew what she was asking. She gave a subtle nod in response, her stomach churning inside her. And it was up to her to give the new mom the news. The obstetrician had already moved on to the next laboring patient.
She cradled the baby in her arms, and switched to Portuguese. “Você fala inglês?”
“Yes. Some. I am learning.” The young woman’s hungry eyes took in the swaddled infant. Her child. A tiny soul carrying a wealth of hopes and dreams.
Two centimeters surely wouldn’t destroy all of those dreams. She’d seen babies with terrible deficits go further than anyone had ever thought possible.
The baby gave a hoarse cry. It was a touch more strident than that of most newborns. Another worrying sign.
“Renato is breathing just fine and his color is good. We’ll want to run a few tests—”
“Something is wrong.” With those soft, knowing words, the whole atmosphere in the room changed.
Cassie couldn’t keep it from her, not and live with herself. “His head is a little bit smaller than we’d like to see, but we won’t know anything for sure until we check him out completely.”
Her patient fell back onto the pillows. “It was the sickness. I left...came here in December to get away from it. Ele me seguiu.”
It followed me.
The words sent a chill through her. “What sickness? You were sick while you were pregnant?”
“Yes. Just after I learned I carried him. I fear it was Zika.”
News and panic about the mosquito-borne virus had been a huge topic among doctors and journalists for the last year. Yes, she knew of it. This was the third incidence of microcephaly at the hospital. Like it or not, it was time to call the CDC again. She knew they were swamped—it was the excuse they’d given her three weeks ago when the second microcephaly case had appeared. They’d told her they’d get to her as soon as possible. But this time they had to listen to her. Her patients’ lives depended on it.
“You know for certain you had Zika?”
“I was sick. The mosquitoes, they were very bad.”
It was just turning summertime in the U.S. but since the seasons were the opposite on the southern side of the globe, December was the hottest part of the year in Brazil.
Her stomach took another turn, whether from the tragedy unfolding in front of her or from something else, she had no idea. She swallowed hard, trying to rid herself of the queasy feeling. It stayed with her no matter how much she tried to banish it.
“I’ll come back and talk to you as soon as we check Renato over.” She squeezed the woman’s shoulder. “I promise.”
Cassie nodded at the nurse to take the baby to the nursery, where they would carefully go over the newborn inch by inch.
But first...
She walked through the door and pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her lab coat. First, she was going to call the CDC in Washington one more time and give whoever answered a piece of her mind.
* * *
The canopy of the paraglider caught the wind and swept Rafael Valentino’s legs out from under him as it lifted him skyward. Still attached to the towline behind the boat, the wind whistled past his face, plastering his hair to his head. A familiar sense of weightlessness took over, allowing his problems to drop to the warm sands of the beach below, where they would stay until he touched down. A few more seconds, and he could relax into his harness. But not yet.
Rafe had flown more in the past month than he had in years. Not since those early terrible days after his father’s death, when the adrenaline rush had been one of the few things that had allowed him to blot out the reality of what had happened.
At a signal from the speedboat driver, he pulled the cord that would release the towline and set him free to glide for as long as the winds would sustain his flight. He sat, his harness cradling his butt and his thighs as he worked on changing his angle, catching the winds much as a sailboat did. Only there was something about being in the air, suspended far above the earth. It was heaven. There was nothing else like it.
Except for maybe those last frantic seconds of being suspended in a different kind of heaven. Like the one a month ago?
His jaw tightened. Thoughts like that were why he was out here today. He had to work in a few hours, but he’d needed something to erase those memories. Bonnie had been different in some indefinable way.
And the last thing he wanted to do was try to define anything about that night.
A sudden gust of air caused the nylon that covered the baffle cells to flutter, and he bobbed a time or two before his flight settled back out. The change in the wind conditions did the trick. Everything was wiped from his brain except for controlling his craft.
It was a perfect day for flying, and there were dots of color all up and down the beach as others had the same idea. Powerboats far below carved out white wakes in the ocean as some of the commercial parasail ventures towed thrill seekers up and down the coastline. He would have to descend with care when the time came, but he already had his landing site mapped out.
For now, he would just immerse himself in the moment and not let anything else clutter his skull. He adjusted the speed bar at his feet and shifted his weight to change direction.
Nothing could bother him here.
A sudden buzzing at his hip stopped that thought in its tracks. Damn.
Really? His phone? He should have turned it off. Glancing down and trying to read the caller ID while it was upside down, he swore softly when he was able to make it out.
Perfect. It was work. His boss wouldn’t call him on his day off unless it was urgent.
Fun time was over almost before it began. Scouring the beach for a place to land that was relatively free of sun worshippers, he shifted his weight once again and began his descent.
* * *
An hour later, Rafe was striding down the hallway of Seaside Hospital. He’d been hopping from facility to facility in the last several weeks, trying to keep up with the number of worried doctors and patients who were raising the alarm. It was the same in a lot of other cities—especially those in the South. The warmer the temperatures, the more likely a rogue virus was to dig in and spread. His home country of Heliconia was under a red alert, pregnant travelers being warned to stay away, just as they were in Brazil and most parts of Central and South America.
Zika had been around for decades, but for some reason it was now spreading quickly, crossing continents and the placental barrier alike, and wreaking havoc wherever it went. And the growing stack of evidence said that the virus could infiltrate host cells and cause insidious health problems for whoever was infected, long after the illness itself was gone.
Zika was the new Lyme disease.
Worse, new studies were showing it could be sexually transmitted from a man to his partner.
The hope was that a vaccine would be developed quickly, but until then, all Rafe could do was put out fires. Like the one he’d tried to drown a month ago at Mad Ron’s. He’d ended up having to put out a completely different fire that night.
His hand went to his pocket, fingers fiddling with the circle of elastic he’d been carrying around ever since then. He had no idea why he’d picked it up off the dresser, or why he hadn’t thrown it away in the weeks that followed.
A trophy?
No. He’d never brought anything home from his other encounters. But Bonnie had been different somehow. There’d been a frenzied desperation to her lovemaking that had matched his own.
Killing old demons?
It didn’t matter. He removed his hand from his pocket and forced his mind back to his obligations. He was here to meet the head neonatologist at the hospital, along with the head maternity nurse and the hospital administrator. He called up a file on his phone to retrieve their names. He only recognized one of them.
Bonnie Maxwell.
That’s why he’d shoved the tie in his pocket, although it was doubtful it was the same woman. And he’d never learned what her last name was.
And if she was the same Bonnie from the bar? Was he going to hand over the elastic and say, “Here you go. Sorry it went missing.”
He snorted, turning a corner and following the signs on the wall. Not hardly. He was not going to admit to picking it up from the dresser, although the thread of guilt for abandoning her the morning after their encounter was still there as strong as ever. A peculiar longing had fermented in his stomach and sent a sour broth splashing up his throat as he’d stared down at her. He’d taken things too far by not getting drunk enough before taking her back to the hotel. He’d started drinking coffee far too soon.
Cynthia Porter, Administrator. This was the place. He knocked, feet braced wide in preparation for what he might find inside.
“Come in.”
Rafe pushed through the door to find three women seated in the office.
The sight of sun-kissed locks tied into a familiar scrunchy mass made his stomach contract all over again, although she was facing away from him.
It was the same woman. It had to be.
Damn. Mistake number two: not making sure his date for the night was in a profession other than medicine.
The woman behind the desk stood. “Dr. Valentino?”
“Yes, and you must be Ms. Porter.”
He watched the blonde, who still hadn’t turned her head. There was no indication that his last name was familiar. Maybe because they’d never exchanged surnames. Or maybe she was much cooler than she’d seemed four weeks ago. Was the ring still off?
The third woman had already looked over at him with a smile, the tossing of red curls giving her a mischievous air.
“Thank you for coming, although it was Dr. Larrobee who discovered the connection between some of our newborns. Let me introduce you.”
Both women stood. And when Bonnie finally turned around to face him she gasped, every bit of color leaching from her face.
The administrator either ignored the sound or hadn’t heard it, because she continued with the introductions. “This is Bonnie Maxwell and Dr. Cassandra Larrobee. Cassie is the one who notified your office about the cases.”
His gaze remained glued to the blonde’s, his hand diving back into his pocket and finding the hair tie. “Bonnie and I have already made each other’s acquaintance.”
Blue eyes went wide, and she gave a barely perceptible shake of her head.
What the hell?
“I’m sorry? Have we met?” The words didn’t come from her but from the redhead, and his attention shifted to her.
Ah, so that was it.
One side of Rafe’s mouth twitched. He should have known. He had known actually, although he couldn’t prove it until now. His glance tracked back, and he couldn’t resist a murmured, “Liar, liar...”
Pants on fire.
Only her pants hadn’t been the only thing on fire that night. Her touch had scorched like wildfire across his senses.
Crimson washed into her face, gray stormy flecks appearing in those expressive eyes. “I think he got the names mixed up, but Ra...er, Dr. Valentino and I have met on one occasion.”
The redhead gave her a quick nudge with her shoulder. “Cassie, wow. You didn’t tell me!”
The administrator frowned. “You’ve already met to discuss the cases?”
Cassandra... Cassie—now that name fit her.
“No, I...we...” Her voice trailed away.
“We have a mutual acquaintance here in town.” He might not be able to count good old Jack D. since Cassie had obviously never shaken hands with a glass of whiskey in her life. But Mad Ron had definitely recognized her. And since he and Ron went way back, it wasn’t a lie. At least, not the whopper of a lie that “Bonnie” had been.
Cassie’s shoulders slumped, probably in relief. “Yes, we do.”
The woman who had to be Bonnie muttered something that sounded like, “Girlfriend, you and I need to have a long discussion.”
So that’s why she’d used the name. These two were friends. His smile widened. “Now that the introductions are out of the way, why don’t we sit down and discuss the cases, and you can share your concerns. In return, I’ll tell you what I know.”
Well, maybe not everything he knew, like that cute little dimple she had on her left shoulder blade. Or the way her soft murmurs had caused a chain reaction in him that wouldn’t be denied.
“I’ve got the files ready in the meeting room down the hall,” said Ms. Porter. “Shall we? There’s coffee in there as well.”
He would need bucketfuls of caffeine to knock him back to reality. Because right now he felt like he was floating in some otherworldly place where not a thing made sense. And it had nothing to do with the paraglider he’d just come off.
There was nothing he could do but to keep moving and get this meeting over with. Before he did something stupid. Like touch her to make sure she was really here.
Over coffee and some rather bad hospital sandwiches they went over the three cases and the ways in which each was similar and different. Two of the patients were from Brazil, including the last one. And one was from Honduras. They definitely met the parameters of exposure. All three of the babies had been born with microcephaly, one whose head was a third smaller than it should have been with some accompanying reflex problems. Another newborn was just under the norms. The third baby had clubbing of the hands and a cleft palate in addition to the microcephaly. There were pictures to accompany the reports.
Rafe’s gut twinged a warning as he studied the images of the damage this virus could cause. One fateful encounter and someone’s world changed forever. This time he wasn’t thinking about Cassie, or even about Zika, but about his own childhood. One life gone, another life saved. It seemed like an even exchange when you laid it all out on paper. Only it wasn’t. And yet that’s exactly what had happened, due to a senseless act.
Hadn’t he just celebrated that anniversary?
Celebrated wasn’t the word he was looking for, but when one went out drinking and picking up women to help blot the pain of loss, it was the only term he could think of.
Only he’d never had to face any of those women again.
Until now.
And he could honestly say the experience was not one he cared to repeat. The hair tie in his pocket seemed to mock all his efforts. So much for forgetting.
“Any nearby hospitals reporting anything?”
Cassie glanced at Bonnie and Ms. Porter. “I have a colleague who works at Buena Vista who had a baby born with a cleft palate a week ago. No microcephaly in that case, though.”
Alejandro spent most of his time over there, maybe he should give him a call. Although since his brother had found true love a few weeks ago and had adopted a special needs baby, he might be a little preoccupied with other things. No, Alejandro was nothing if not good at his job. But his specialty was pediatric transplants, not neonatal care, so it was a totally different field from what they were looking at here.
He tried not to think about the exact reasons his brother went into that field, because it brought up his own yearly vigil all over again.
It was his job to check every angle, though. “One of my brothers practices at Buena Vista, I’ll give him a call. What’s the name of your colleague?”
“Rebecca Stanton.”
Her eyes had lost the defensive gleam they’d held moments earlier. The ring wasn’t on her finger, so she and whoever she’d broken up with hadn’t gotten back together.
No involvement. Remember?
The hospital administrator gave him a few phone numbers and names of people he could contact over at Buena Vista. “Is there anything else?” she asked.
“Not that I can think of at the moment. Are any of the patients still at the hospital?”
Cassie nodded. “Renato Silva. He developed some breathing issues, which we need to stabilize before releasing him.”
“I’d like to examine him, if I could.”
Ms. Porter went to the door. “I’ll leave Dr. Larrobee to help you with that, then. Let me know if you have any further questions.”
He shook hands with her and the infamous Bonnie, and waited until they left the room before saying anything else. “Bonnie, huh?”
“I know. I’m sorry for giving you a fake name. I just never dreamed...”
“You never dreamed you’d see me again.”
“Actually, I didn’t, or I wouldn’t have...”
She wouldn’t have what? Sat next to him at the bar? Spent the night with him?
“Isn’t there a certain book that warns your sins shall find you out?”
A smile teased the corners of her mouth as color washed back into her face. “I think falsifying names were the least of our sins in that case.”
Yes, they were. Thoughts that caused certain synapses in his brain to begin firing.
“I see you found another hair band.”
Cassie’s fingers went to the bun at the back of her head. “I did. You wouldn’t happen to know where my other one went, would you?”
Any twinge of conscience he’d had over taking it vanished at the way her voice lowered, the sultry edge he’d heard the night at the bar coming back.
“Not a clue.”
Ha! If she knew the thing was about to burn a hole in his pocket, she’d probably kill him and leave his body in one of the supply closets.
It was one night, Rafe. Hardly worth mentioning.
Besides, he wasn’t here to talk about hair ties or what they’d done. He was here to see if Zika was growing to epidemic proportions on their shoreline. “You haven’t been to any of the countries involved, have you?”
She frowned as if confused by the question. “No. But it can be passed sexually, from what we’re hearing.”
“Yes. It can.” Thank heavens they’d used condoms over the course of the night. “Your ex?”
She gave a short sound that could have been described as pained. “He barely steps out of his office, much less travels out of the country.”
But they both knew that there were many diseases that could be spread down the line if there were multiple partners involved. And from what he’d sensed in Cassie at Mad Ron’s a month ago, the man had done some straying.
Maybe she sensed what he was thinking because her chin tilted. “Do you want to go see Renato? Or not?”
There was a definite chill to her voice that hadn’t been there a few moments earlier. He guessed she didn’t take kindly to him mentioning the man she’d once been with.
“Yes.” As she started to walk past him he touched her arm. “Sorry for leaving you alone in the hotel. Did you make it home okay?”
Her brows came together and she motioned to the conference room. “Yes. I’m not quite destitute, as you can see. I didn’t need your...contribution. I found it insulting, actually. I left it for the maid.”
Contribution? Oh, the money.
“I didn’t know what arrangements you’d made, and I was already late for work. I was afraid I might leave you stranded.”
“I’m a big girl. I make it a point never to get myself into a situation that I can’t get out of.”
Rafe himself lived by that same motto, actually. He never let himself get embroiled in something that might require any emotional input. Or painful goodbyes. Even the job he’d chosen reflected that. Although he was an MD, he’d chosen epidemiology as his specialty. He was one step removed from being in contact with patients on a daily basis. A buffer zone that physicians didn’t have. His role was more detached. And that’s the way he’d chosen to live his life.
Deciding whether or not to give a hair tie back to its owner was as personal as he wanted to get. And even that was giving him some trouble.
But it was on a whole different level from deciding whether or not to disconnect life support. He’d vowed never to be put in that position again. So as long as the only people he allowed into his life were his brothers, he was good to go. Besides, he should be celebrating. Santi, the brother who had up and disappeared for a long period of time, had just come back into their lives.
He switched his thoughts back to Cassie and her statement about not getting into situations she couldn’t get out of.
“And yet you came to Mad Ron’s because of one, didn’t you?”
She gave a visible swallow, not answering immediately. And then she said, “Shall we go see Renato?”
He let the subject go, waiting for her to pass him, then he followed her down the hallway. The decision about what to do with the hair tie was made. It would stay in his pocket, and when he got home he would throw it away. And then he would most definitely forget about it.
And her.
* * *
Poor Renato had been poked and prodded so much since he’d been born, and yet the baby was taking everything much better than she expected him to.
Maybe even better than she was. Rafe had seemed so genuinely puzzled over her reaction to the money he’d left her that it had put her mind at ease. She’d been just about ready to forgive the lapse in judgment, and then he had to go and poke at what was still a very sore spot: her reasons for going to Mad Ron’s in the first place. Her cheating fiancé, who she’d heard from exactly once since she’d caught him in flagrante, had asked for the ring back. Good thing she hadn’t dumped it down the storm sewer outside the bar, like she’d thought about doing. She’d sent it via certified mail, gratified that his signature closed the final chapter on that relationship. Thank goodness she’d discovered who he really was now, rather than after they’d been married.
And yet it still hurt that someone she’d trusted could do something like that to her. Especially since she didn’t hand that trust out to just anyone. Tossed from foster home to foster home—she’d been seventeen before a kind couple had decided to adopt her—she’d learned very early on that most relationships didn’t last.
So she’d avoided them altogether. Until Darrin. Who’d seemed like everything she could possibly dream of—steady, good-looking, career oriented. He was all those things. But he wasn’t faithful.
Well, she was putting it all behind her. No more dating for a while.
Was that why she’d jumped into bed with the first available guy?
Ugh! No, Rafe was simply the punctuation mark that ended her relationship with her ex. From now on her job and her patients were what she was going to focus on. They were enough.
She forced her mind back to where the man in question was carefully listening to Renato’s heart. “He has a slight murmur.”
“Yes. He has a prolapsed mitral valve. And his breathing isn’t quite where we want it to be yet, although it seemed fine right after birth.”
“All Zika-related?” Rafe glanced up from the exam table.
“We’re not sure. The mitral valve issue is common enough in the general population that we have no idea if it’s due to the virus or if his valve would have been that way anyway.”
“Any of the other cases include heart valves?”
What could seem like random anomalies, if taken on a case-by-case basis, could actually be part of a disease process if they occurred in clusters.
“Neither of the other two infants had heart involvement at all. But then again Renato doesn’t have clubbed fingers or a cleft palate like one of the other patients.” She hesitated. “And, honestly, if we don’t see any more suspicious cases of birth defects, I will be ecstatic.”
“So will the CDC. But we can’t operate under that assumption.”
“Any advances on the vaccine front?”
Rafe, who had handed her back her stethoscope, went to test the baby’s grip reflex. Renato’s fingers curled around the epidemiologist’s thumb and held on.
A strange quiver went through her stomach when he didn’t immediately tug free and move on to the other hand, but rather stood there, looking down at the baby. When he glanced up again, his eyes were dark, pupils large. “There are a couple of promising trials coming up. Hopefully we won’t have very many more Renatos before a breakthrough is discovered.”
Her throat tightened. “It’s so terrible, isn’t it? He had his whole life in front of him, and now...”
“I know.”
Somehow, Cassie sensed Rafe really did know. She’d never found out exactly why he’d been drinking that night. He’d figured her reasons out by watching her take off her ring. But once they’d left the bar he hadn’t been all that interested in holding lengthy conversations. He’d been too busy kissing her.
And more.
There it was again. That stream of heat that started in her head and rushed rapidly to the outer reaches of her body. If this was what hot flashes felt like, she wanted no part of them.
“Do you need anything else?”
“I think I have enough for this visit.”
This visit? As in there would be more? She had been counting on this being a chance meeting. A fluke. Kind of like Mad Ron’s had been.
Rafe eased his thumb from the baby’s grip and carefully picked him up, tucking him under his chin and holding him close for a moment.
The warm flush grew despite her best efforts. Some woman was going to be lucky to get him. He was drop-dead gorgeous, and she could tell babies held a special place in his heart.
Except she had a feeling she wasn’t the first woman he’d picked up in Mad Ron’s. And she probably wouldn’t be the last. That should tell her right there that he wasn’t a one-woman kind of man.
Well, neither was her ex.
Yes, and it was a good thing she’d thought of Darrin, because it was enough to put her back on the straight and narrow. Maybe she could find a convent that would take her in.
As ridiculous as that was, the thought made her stop. She didn’t want to join an actual cloister or abandon the human race entirely, but couldn’t she turn her heart into one? She’d let one man in and it had been a disaster. One she didn’t want to repeat. If she could figure out how to fashion her life into an impenetrable fortress, she could stand in its turret and rain arrows down on any man who ventured too close.
Like Rafe?
No, he’d been a one-night stand, a fling, nothing more, nothing less.
Liar, liar...
Rafe’s amused words during their meeting in the conference room came back to haunt her.
She may have been lying about her name, but she wasn’t lying about the one-night-stand part. This man was dangerous. The less she had to do with him, the better.
Maybe she should make things as plain as she could for him—and for her—to make sure his references to “next time” were just idle talk. Especially if the Zika thing was actually a “thing” and they really did need to work together more than this one time.
She hesitated.
Come on, Cassie. Embarrassment is a small price to pay to make sure things don’t get more awkward than they already are.
“Can I say something?”
He glanced up, the baby still tucked close. “Of course.”
“That night at the bar was... Well, I wasn’t myself. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I’m not looking for a relationship.”
A frown appeared. “You made that pretty obvious when you came in with an engagement ring and handed me a fake name. But, just for the record, I agree with you. It was a one-time thing. Not to be repeated.”
The quick stab of pain was unexpected, but necessary. So were her next words. “As long as we’re both clear. And I’d appreciate your keeping what happened between us.”
“I wasn’t planning on writing any journal articles or using you as a reference on my résumé, if that’s what you’re worried about.” This time his voice was a little harder than it had been. She ignored it.
“Great. It sounds like we’re on the same page. Now, I’ll take the baby, if you’re done examining him.”
As he handed Renato back to her, Cassie breathed an inner oath to herself. As of this moment she was going to stay true to her word and watch her Ps and Qs with this man.
Although, if she were very, very lucky, there would be no more Zika cases at her hospital, and no reason to see a certain epidemiologist ever, ever again.
