Charli

CHARLI TOOK EACH VIAL of blood and labeled it exactly as Dr. Josh had told her. He’d given her a name to use—she had no idea how he’d come up with it, but he seemed to know what he was doing, so she was going to trust him.

Her belly was a mess of slick, horrible knots and even though she was a doctor, even though she’d had unprotected sex with a man who’d been around the block so many times he might as well have blazed a path his very own, she still felt shell-shocked.

Shell-shocked and half-sick with worry, although not all of it was for herself.

Yes, plenty of it was, even more of it would be later once she had time to think about herself, but for now, she kept hearing her own voice as she threw the words at Max.

He wants to make sure I don’t have something like HIV, you dumbass.

It was nothing less than the truth and she should have figured out this was coming sooner. Max was dealing with an opportunistic infection, one that had spread like wildfire, but it hadn’t occurred to her that it was anything other than some freaky infection.

And it should have.

Max lived on a razor’s edge, all but daring life to throw another punch at him.

Sometimes it was almost like he wanted it.

And if he’d gotten what he’d been daring fate for this time...

Her belly twisted all over again as another vial of blood appeared beside her.

“That’s all the blood we need,” Dr. Josh told Max.

“You sure, Doc?” Max asked, his voice thick with sarcasm. “I still got a little bit left in my veins, I think.”

“Only seems fair you get to keep some of it,” Dr. Josh said, unperturbed by the biting humor. “Now...we’ll get to work on the physical. Charli, do you want to step outside?”

She nodded stiffly, but even as she turned toward the door, Max said, “I want her to stay.”

“Now, come on, Max...”

“She stays,” Max bit off.

Charli turned around with a huff, glaring at him. “I don’t really care to be in here when he has you drop your drawers and cough for him, Max. Do you?”

Max’s cheeks flushed a dull red and he opened his mouth.

She pointed a finger at him. “You gave your word.”

“I know,” he bit out. “But you can stay until he decides it’s time to grab my fucking balls, right?”

Her face went red and hot, but she glanced at Dr. Josh. He gave a small shrug and Charli bit back a groan as she realized there was no getting out of this.

She needed a few minutes away from him, a few minutes away from all of this so she could maybe breathe.

But Max needed her.

He’s never cared that you needed him, a sly voice in her head whispered.

She silenced it and crossed her arms over her chest as Dr. Josh started the physical.

Max was already shirtless, so it made listening to his breathing and heart easier. While he sat there and Dr. Josh hovered next to him, Charli became acutely aware of just how thin Max had become. He’d always been lean, but this wasn’t lean.

This was thin.

He’d lost weight, probably close to twenty pounds, and his frame didn’t need that kind of weight loss.

We’re really birds of a feather now, she thought morbidly, recalling the way her hip bones jutted against her skin that morning as she’d gone to get dressed. None of her pants fit her, not without a belt at least, and her shirts all but billowed around her.

She needed to go shopping, but she kept telling herself she’d put the weight back on.

So far, she hadn’t been able to put back on even two pounds.

Her eyes slid back to Dr. Josh as he started to check Max’s lymph nodes. Was it her, or did he seem to linger over the task? Max’s lymph nodes were swollen—they already knew that. He had an infection, so they’d be swollen anyway.  But was this from the infection or something more?

As Dr. Josh probed Max’s neck, Max grimaced and went to pull back. “Ease up, Doc,” he said.

“Sorry, Max.” The doctor gave him a patient smile and beckoned him back closer. “I’m being as gentle as I can.” He continued moving his fingers downward and Charli had to fight the urge to knock the man’s hands out of the way and finish the job herself so she had a better idea of what was going on.

She glanced at the vials of blood.

How sick was he?

Was she going to be sick, too?

Oddly enough, even though she wasn’t trying to shy away from thinking about it, she realized she was more worried about him being sick than her. Almost everything was very treatable if caught early enough and she would treat herself if she had something.

But Max...

Her throat was now hurting too and it had nothing to do with swollen lymph nodes or a doctor feeling his way around, and everything to do with the salty taste of tears.

If he was sick...

No. She shoved the thought out of her head. She’d adjusted to the thought that she was going to have to live her life without him. Adjusting to any other withouts, when it came to Max, was just impossible.

The doctor had reached the lymph nodes under Max’s arms and again, he seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time there, something that made Charli’s anxiety ramp up more and more.

The longer the physical took, the worse she felt and by the time she was able to escape for the more private parts of the exam, she thought she’d puke.

* * * * *

“ARE YOU OKAY?”

She looked up from the position she’d taken in her kitchen, clutching a diet Sprite like it was a lifeline. It may well have been at that point. She felt like she was drowning.

“How sick do you think he is?” she demanded bluntly, staring at the doctor.

“It’s hard to say without knowing what’s going on,” he said gently. “You know that. It could still just be a bad infection.”

“Bullshit,” she snapped.

“Charli.” He held up a hand. “Speculating will get us nowhere. For now...I’m going to take the blood samples to the hospital and get them started. I’ll have...some answers in a short amount of time. But you may need to start talking him into coming to the hospital.”

Dully, she stared outside. Fall had come and was painting the trees with its colorful brush, but everything seemed brittle, dry and colorless in that moment. “That will be fun.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“I told him I would,” she said softly.

“Perhaps you should...hold off, until we know more. You might need to bribe to get him to go into the hospital in case we need more tests.”

“You’re thinking it could be something we won’t find in the blood.”

Dr. Josh lifted a brow. “He says he’s tested routinely. He’s a man who is terrified of doctors, being touched...but I don’t see him lying about this. And there are a number of things that can make a man his age suddenly take ill. You know this.”

“Yeah.” And none of them were good.

She still had the urge to vomit and took a sip of the canned soft drink, hoping to fight it back. “I need to tell my brothers,” she whispered. “And he won’t want me to.”

“You aren’t on an easy road right now,” Dr. Josh said. “Maybe you’ll make another deal. You can tell your brothers when he does. You both need your family right now, Charli.”

* * * * *

SHE FOUND MAX HALF-slumped, half-sitting on the bed.

His lids drooped, and she could tell he was fighting to stay awake.

Waiting for her, she realized, as his gaze lasered in on her as she came back into the room.

“How sick are you?” he demanded the moment she closed the door.

She blinked at him, caught off guard by the question.

“What makes you think I’m sick?” she asked calmly.

“The way the doctor is acting around you, the way you’re acting. The fact that you’re hiding something from your brothers...and don’t say you’re not.”

She inclined her head. “Point to you. I am hiding something from my brothers, but I’m not sick.”

Taking a deep breath, she waited for her heart rate to level out. It didn’t, though, not even after two or three breaths.

Man, what she wouldn’t give for one of her brothers to call or just show up at the door right now. Even a vacuum salesman would be nice. And welcome! She’d buy the damn vacuum, two of them, even, just for something to distract her from what she had to do.

Something brushed her hand.

Looking down, she saw his fingertips touching hers. Without thinking about it, Charli turned her palm over and let him entwine their hands. He adjusted himself on the bed and tugged her down until they were sitting next to each other, side by side. “You promise me that you’re not sick,” Max said, his voice implacable, that hard monotone that tended to make most people back away.

Charli cocked a brow at him. “I’m not the one who had IV antibiotics running into his arm, Max.”

“Okay.” He blew out a breath and nodded. “Okay. So, you can...fuck, I’m tired.”

As if her sardonic reply was all the reassurance he’d needed, Max took a deep breath, then let his head fall back, the heavy fringe of his lashes dropping over his eyes.

She waited a moment for his ice-blue eyes to open back up, but they didn’t.

After a moment, she realized he’d gone and fallen asleep.

“Shit, Max,” she muttered.

* * * * *

IT WAS THE LONGEST two hours of her life.

When the phone finally rang, she all but pounced on it. The caller ID let her know it was one of the hospital extensions and she answered, half out of breath. “Yes?”

“Make sure you breathe, Charli,” Dr. Josh chided. “Oxygen isn’t optional.”

“Dr. Josh,” she said in a warning voice.

“Are you ever going to call me Josh? We are colleagues.”

“I think I’ll stick with Dr. Josh,” she said. “It’s habit. How bad is it?”

“I need to talk to Max, Charli. You know that.”

She tried to read something in his voice, but couldn’t. He had the perfect doctor’s voice, one that was reassuring without offering anything false, firm without being stern. And she wanted something to show in his voice. “He fell asleep,” she told him. “He’s been out for a couple of hours, since almost after you left.”

“Wake him up and have him call me.” Dr. Josh hesitated, then asked, “Did the two of you talk?”

“He fell asleep before I told him much of anything. He thinks...” Her voice skipped. “He thinks I’m sick. But I’m not the sick one, am I?”

“It will be okay, Charli. Just wake him. Have him call me. And be prepared to be stubborn so you can make him bring his equally stubborn self to the hospital.”

“Why?” she demanded, her hand tightening on the phone while her stomach threatened to drop to her knees.

“More tests,” he reminded her. “Remember, we told him we’d probably need to do more tests.”

She hung up the phone. Half-collapsing against the counter, she buried her face in her hands.

It’s not going to be anything related to HIV, she thought. He doesn’t have AIDS. Probably not some sort of viral hepatitis, either, although still a possibility.

If it was any of those three, it would show on the tests that had already been done and she suspected Dr. Josh would come out here and talk to Max if he had found HIV or hepatitis. It was just his way.

Combine that with the fact that Max said he got tested regularly and it was almost safe to assume there wasn’t anything of that nature going on.

But she wasn’t automatically going to stop worrying, because while a few things had been knocked down lower on the list, some of those that had risen to replace them were equally dismal.

God, please don’t let it be what I think it is. She kept remembering how he’d winced when the doctor had been checking his lymph nodes.

She’d had a patient do that once, when she first started her internship, and while she hadn’t been sure what it could mean then, she’d found out soon. The look on that man’s face as he heard his diagnosis would haunt her until her dying day.

“Stop thinking about it,” she whispered, rubbing at her eyes. “You need to go wake Max. Make him call the doctor. Make him go to the hospital.”

And she still had some uncomfortable truths to tell him, too.

That was how Max found her, standing there, struggling to breathe and cope.