Chapter Sixteen
Kate
“Where is she?” Jonathan demanded, as he walked onto the ward and straight towards the reception.
The young nurse looked up at him from the desk, her inner turmoil battling with the correct hospital protocol.
“Sorry, sir. I mean, there’s no more visitors permitted…”
“I said, where is she?” He lowered his voice angrily. “Meredith Davenport. Which room?”
The poor nurse fumbled with the logbook, flicking the pages quickly as her cheeks turned red, and I gave her a sympathetic smile—a silent apology, because right then Jonathan wasn’t his best. He hadn’t been since Jessica called back in Paris and it was understandable, as all he’d heard was that his mother had collapsed suddenly. There wasn’t anyone in this world that would be able to stop him from getting to her and unfortunately, this poor girl was only just beginning to understand that.
“Um, room twelve,” she mumbled, “but, the room’s at capacity I’m afraid… Sir?”
He walked away from the desk counting the numbers on the door but stopped when he noticed I wasn’t by his side.
“Kate?” he turned to me, confusion and frustration on his handsome face. “You’re not coming?”
“I think you should go alone. It’s a family matter and I don’t really know your mom enough. I don’t want to inter—”
He came back towards me, took my hand in his, and guided me along with him to the room.
“You’re going to be my wife, Kate,” he said firmly. “I need you now more than ever. You’re my family now.”
I squeezed his hand in reassurance, and together we walked until we came to room twelve.
He stopped outside it, looking at the number on the door, and I glanced up at him. He was the most powerful, demanding man that I’d ever met, but now, even after his romantic proposal in Paris, I saw yet another side to him. This side was vulnerable beyond belief, because he knew that once he walked into that room there was no going back. He was going to see the way his mother was now, and even though he was the great Jonathan Davenport, I knew it got to him. I knew he can handle anything the world had to throw at him… apart from this.
I lifted my hand, taking charge for the one time he would let me and knocked firmly, before I pushed the door handle down. It opened easily and we walked in together, his grip on my tightening ever so slightly.
The room inside was large, light, and airy—everything I expected the mother of a billionaire to receive care in, and as I scanned around at the faces looking back at me, I noticed Jessica beside her mom, holding her hand whilst surprisingly sitting on Evan’s lap. She gave me a sad smile, her eyes red rimmed and bare from crying.
Meredith was propped up in her bead with an abundance of huge white pillows and her usual smiley expression had been replaced with a gaunt, tired and physically exhausted soft frown. I felt the pang of sadness hit me because there was no denying that she’d gone dramatically downhill since I’d last been in her presence.
“Don’t come in here with that face on!” She said to us from her bed. “I’m not dead!”
“Oh God mother!” Jessica wailed, her face crumpling slightly as she held back the tears.
Jonathan left my side and went to plant a kiss on her forehead, the sentiment touching the deepest part of my inner core to see him so gentle and so loving to someone.
I went over and squeezed her hand, and she gave me a wink.
“Jess said you were both in Paris,” she whispered smiling weakly at me. “You shouldn’t have come home so early, really. Not for me.”
“It’s fine,” Jonathan said before I could speak. “What the hell happened?”
“She collapsed,” Jess said from her perch on Evan’s lap. “The home nurse found her in the hall unconscious.”
“Unconscious?” He glared at his mother. “You were supposed to stay in bed. Those were the doctor’s orders put in place to keep you safe!”
“Your mom’s still young,” a woman said from the other side of the room. We all looked back at her standing with someone I assumed was her husband.
They’d been there in the room the whole time and because I’d been so concerned about Meredith, I hadn’t realized they were standing there. I tired to hide the embarrassment by smiling warmly, but nobody had noticed my mistake.
“This is mom’s sister Aunt May and her husband Charles,” Jonathan said, “Aunt May, Charles… this is my fiancé, Kate.”
They stepped forwards and shook my hand, and I noticed that May had the same crinkle and sparkle in her eyes as Meredith.
“I’m sorry we have to meet under such circumstances,” she whispered, giving my hand a squeeze.
“There aren’t any circumstances!” Meredith reiterated from her bed. “Despite everything, I feel fine.”
“Tell him…” Jessica said, looking away from us. “You’ve got to tell him, Mom.”
“Tell us what?” Jonathan asked, his expression stern again.
She sighed and motioned for him to come closer to her.
“What is it?” he asked, keeping his emotions steady as best he could and judging by the look on Jessica’s face, I already knew in what vein the news would be. Shit.
“They’ve found another tumor,” she said solemnly, unable to look at us.
He nodded, keeping calm.
“Fine, okay. So that’s not an issue. I’ll have Helen arrange for you to be transferred to the private Cancer Institution by the end of the week, and we’ll sign you up for more radiotherapy and chemo—”
She took hold of his arm and shook her head.
“Not this time, Jonathan,” she said firmly. “This time there’s nothing they can do. That’s it.”
He refused to believe it.
“I’ll speak to your doctors and we’ll book you in for surgery to have it removed!”
“Mom has an aggressive brain tumor,” Jessica said, letting out a large deep breath as though she’d been struggling to hold the information in. “She’s not going to get better at all. The doctor said that—”
Meredith put her hand up to stop her and pulled Jonathan closer. I stepped back slightly until I was level with Aunt May and Charles in the room, feeling as though it would have been better for me to leave altogether and offer the Davenports their full privacy, but her words had me rooted to the spot.
“Jonathan,” she said quietly, “the doctors told us this morning that the tumor has taken a large chunk off of my life expectancy and…”
“Just tell me,” he demanded, and from where I was standing I saw the tension in his jaw. I wanted to go over to him and wrap my arms around his waist. I wanted to comfort him and show him that I wanted nothing more than to protect him from ever feeling such an emotion.
She tried to sit up in the bed, and Jessica stood immediately and helped her, fussing with the pillows behind her back.
“How long?” Jonathan pressed again. “Months? Weeks? Days? Hours?”
She hesitated before answering.
“Weeks.”
Her voice was low and small, and as I watched her I saw the fear behind her eyes, a far cry from the powerful and confident woman I’d seen at dinner the month before. A death sentence had the ability to do that to a person.
“Shit!” Jonathan snapped, pulling away from her grasp and pacing the room with his head in his hands. “Shit, shit, shit.”
I gingerly walked over to him, resting a hand on his arm. He tensed up, whipping his head around to look at me, his eyes empty and glazed over, hollow and lost.
I stepped back to give him some more space.
“Weeks…” he repeated. “You’ve got weeks left to live? What the hell am I supposed to do with weeks? It’s not enough time. We were told you had months!”
“Jonathan…”
“No, I want a second opinion. Look at you—you collapsed and now you’re fine. You’re not someone who’s going to die in a couple of weeks.” He turned to Jessica, his hurt now radiating as anger. “Get me the name and contact details of the doctor who gave the prognosis. I’ll have a meeting set up with him and—”
“ENOUGH!” Meredith tried to shout from her bed. “Enough, okay? Whether it’s two weeks or two months, the most important thing for me is that you’re both happy. That’s my concern. My time is up now, and I don’t want to spend the rest of it hearing you argue. Just leave now. All of you.”
“Mom…” Jessica began, wounded.
She closed her eyes; the conversation was over.
Jonathan stopped and took a deep breath.
“Fine, I’ll go.” He went over and kissed her on the cheek, and the others did the same, and then without another word, he left the room with several long strides.
I hurried out of the room after him, almost jogging down the corridor to catch up with his determined pace.
“Will you stop a minute?” I called, my heels not allowing me to go any faster.
He turned toward me, frustration on his face as I approached him.
“Were you just going to walk off and leave me in there?”
He ignored my question, took my hand, and half pulled me out of the medical center into the cool night.
I didn’t speak, because I understood from his reaction that it wasn’t the right time. At that moment, he just wanted me to be his companion and be by his side. He needed my presence, nothing more and nothing less.
James pulled the car up alongside us, and he opened the door for me to get in before sliding in after me.
I took his hand as the car pulled away from the curb and into the traffic, squeezing it so he knew that I was there and that I supported everything he did and needed to do thereafter.
The car stopped at the house in the Hamptons after a long journey of silence, and instead of going inside to rest, Jonathan took my hand and led me down the path by the side of the house to the beach.
The waves lapped at the water’s edge in a gentle hush, and we walked as close to it as we could without getting wet, and then he stopped and helped me to sit down.
We stayed in silence for a moment longer looking out to the darkness ahead before he turned to me, a glimpse of the old Jonathan back in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said simply.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” I said back, resting my head on his shoulder. “I get it. I understand.”
“She’s my fucking mom,” he said in disbelief. “She only has a couple weeks left to live and… fuck!”
I nodded, running my hand up his back, knowing that nothing I could say would soothe the way he felt about it.
“She’s a fighter,” I whispered. “She’s got that spirit about her.”
“But it’s cancer we’re talking about,” he retorted. “She can fight all the hell she wants, but that bastard just won’t let go of her.”
He picked up a shell from the sand and played with it between his fingers and then shifted so that he was looking at me, searching my entire face with his eyes.
“I wish I had more time,” he said. “There’s so much that I want to do or I want to know or… I just, I thought I’d have more time. People think money is everything, but it’s not. I can’t buy the one thing more important to me than anything else in this world.”
“What’s that?” I asked quietly, my hand resting on his leg.
“Time. I’d buy more time than anyone could possibly handle. I’d buy it all. I’d trade the money in, if it meant I could keep her health. If I could keep her alive.”
“You’re lovely,” I said looking at him. “If only people saw this side of you. If only they knew the ‘you’ I get to sit out here with, they’d understand you more.”
“If they did, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
I reached up to stroke the side of his face, and he stiffened at my touch and then relaxed, letting me run my hand around to the back of his neck as he’d done to me so many times before.
“Let’s make our own time,” I said, pressing our foreheads together. “Let’s do what we always intended.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, let’s get married! You’ve got the resources to create the best wedding for your mom. Let’s stick to the plan and make her happy.”
“I don’t know,” he sighed. “We don’t know how ill she’ll get or how quick. I—”
“It’s your turn to trust me,” I whispered, interrupting him and pressing my fingers to his lips in an act of boldness and confidence that surprised me. “I can make this happen. You just have to believe in me.”