Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
She looked out her tinted window, at Pharmatech’s giant glass penis of a skyscraper. “The airport.”
“No meeting at Anderson, then?”
“No,” she replied. “I’m rescheduling that. I’ve got work to do back in Walters.”
Settling back against the plush leather seat, she got out her laptop. Her hands trembled as she composed the email to Gus, forcing her to delete and start over one out of every five words. Good thing it wasn’t a long communiqué.
Besides, he would be excited by the news.
They had their patient one.
Rhobes, in all his arrogance, had been right about one thing. It was time to put Vita to the test, and the drug was her fucking baby, too.
After she sent the email, she got her assistant on the phone. “I need my lawyer. Now. I don’t care where he is on vacation.”
THIRTEEN
BACK AT C.P.’S subterranean lab, Daniel was having a bag of saline, a B12 shot, and a blood panel for breakfast. Not exactly Wheaties, but in his condition, the three-course meal was definitely for champions. Or someone who wanted to have enough energy to tackle a flight of stairs at more than a snail’s pace.
As he lay back in the hospital bed and stared at his bony ankles and his thick socks, he considered the merits of buying a new pair of pants. Like, sweatpants. $19.99. From Target. When he hadn’t been sleeping, he’d looked them up on his phone—but felt like he was cheating on QVC.
And it’d seemed like a waste of a twenty-dollar bill.
“What is?”
He glanced past his floppy pant legs at Lydia. She was sitting forward in the chair she always sat forward in, her elbows on her knees, her worried face pinched like she had a spike in the center of her forehead. Next to her, the built-in desk with its computer and rolling stool was a doctor perch waiting for a white coat. Undoubtedly, the vacancy would be filled soon enough.
“Daniel?”
“Ah, nothing.” Had he been speaking out loud? “Your head hurts, doesn’t it.”
Her brows popped. “I’m sorry?”
He pointed to the nape of his neck. “Tension headache, right? I can tell by the way your jaw is twitching, and you’ve got that pale thing going on.”
With a flush, she eased back and rolled her shoulders. “Oh, I’m fine. Really.”
At which point, the Jeopardy! theme started playing.
Closing his eyes, he cleared his throat and said weakly, “Lydia…”
There was a shuffle as she jumped up. “Do you need Gus? The nurse? Here, I’ll go get them—”
By the time he lifted his lids and opened his mouth to tell her he wasn’t stroking out, she was already leaning through the door and barking orders. No competing with that. He waited until she ducked back in and came over to the bedside.
“I don’t need Gus,” he said as she took his hand.
“Better safe than sorry—”
“I don’t need him!” As she recoiled, Daniel couldn’t decide which out of the two of them he wanted to curse more. “I need you, goddamn it.”
Lydia shook her head like she was trying to translate his words into a combination she could understand—and as she winced and rubbed the back of her neck, he wondered why he had to be such a dick.
“You have me,” she said with exhaustion.
“No, I don’t. I have a nurse who looks like you.”
“Daniel.”
The image of her covering her breasts in the bathroom would not leave his mind. Of all the side effects of the medication and the cancer, losing her while she was right in front of him had not been on any of the warning labels he’d seen. Then again, did the FDA screen drugs for that kind of shit? Nope.
And he couldn’t blame her. Not only was he impotent now… given the way he looked, he wouldn’t want to have sex with him, either. Could he fault her for not wanting him?
Maybe the truth was, he was just hurt. As much as he understood her reaction, it was still painful.
But sex wasn’t everything, right? The commitment was there, he didn’t doubt that, and so was her love.
“Or maybe I’m just a responsibility to you now.”
“What?” Lydia rubbed her eyes. Her face. “What are you talking about? Look, can we not do this right now—”
The door to the exam room flew open and Gus jumped into the room. Today’s t-shirt was a faded peach color and had “Harvey Milk for Supervisor” in two lines on the front.
“What’s going on?” the doc said as he checked the vitals monitor on what was clearly a reflex—given that Daniel wasn’t hooked up to it. Yet. “What’s wrong.”
“Nothing,” Lydia said as she fell back into her chair by the desk.
Gus didn’t look at her, but stayed focused on Daniel, his dark eyes narrowing like he was reading heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature from across the room. The Coke can in his hand was a reminder that that enormous power plant of a brain seemed to run on carbonated caffeine and carbs that came out of a vending machine.