The plane touched down on the runway, the wheels grinding on the tarmac. Outside the porthole window, grass and buildings sped backward as the brakes screamed and the engines thundered.
Vibrations shivered through the floor under the thick soles of Cadell’s motorcycle boots, and he held his computer tablet in one hand and his phone in the other. As soon as the plane’s wheels hit the ground, he tapped the screen to turn on the phone’s regular mode. It was still searching for cell phone towers.
Please, he prayed. Let her still be there.
As the plane was rolling to the gate, Cadell logged onto an Internet poker account. Electronic cards lit up his screen. He wagered and lost money and won some, and the flip of the pair of cards in his hand and the flop of the cards on the table between him and the other players circled in his mind.
A pair of nines.
Low chance.
He bet heavily that some of the cards that were still face down on the table would give him a good hand.
They didn’t.
He lost.
A text came through on his phone from the contact called Andy Candy: Hurry.
He was hurrying. Every cell in his body strained to get out of the plane and speed across the city to her.
More cards flew on the electronic screen.
Cadell watched the cards, calculated the odds of what was remaining in the deck when he saw the other players fold and throw their cards in, and tapped the screen to bet more money.
Cards flew.
Money swelled. Money flowed away.
Cadell clutched the tablet, running his calluses that thickened the fingertips of his left hand along the edges of the screen as he walked off the plane and down the jetway to the terminal. His guitar case hung on his shoulders from backpack-like straps and slapped the backs of his thighs as he walked.
Behind him, the other guys in the band Killer Valentine shouted his name.
Cadell Glynn was the lead guitarist, the virtuoso who shredded the guitar solos and gave the band street cred among the music purist snobs. He was supposed to be the second songwriter, too, but he hadn’t been able to write a lyric for eight months.
Tryp yelled, “Where’re you going? Hot date?”
Cadell waved with one hand as he trotted through the private terminal, stretching his long legs over the plush carpeting as he ran for the doors that led outside.
Somewhere far behind him, the band’s lead singer Xan shouted, “Cadell! We’re going straight to the studio! We have a demo to cut tonight.”
“I can’t right now,” he called, glancing behind himself. “I’ll catch up with you guys later.”
“What the hell!” Xan shouted after him, waving his bandaged left hand in the air. “I booked studio time!”
“Family emergency.” Cadell strode through the opening doors into the wan New Jersey sunlight.
“Yeah. Right.” Xan sounded every bit as sarcastic as Cadell had expected him to.
Cadell ran into the daylight.
A black car was waiting at the curb. A man in a dark suit held a sign written in blue marker that read Mr. Glynn.
Waiting right when they had landed, just like the car company had promised. Thank heavens.
At least one thing was going right.
Cadell dove into the open rear door of the car and shucked the backpack straps off his arms in the seat.
As soon as the driver got in the front, Cadell said, “Get us there as fast as you can, please. I’ll pay for whatever tickets you get. I just need to get there.”
The driver said, “I’ll do my best, sir.”
Cadell latched the seatbelt around himself and rocked backward in the seat as the car accelerated.
His tablet had slid to the floor, and he fumbled around down there before he managed to grab it.
Once the tablet was safe in his big hands, he curled his whole body around it.
The broken teeth of the skyline of New York filled the car’s windows as they drove over the parkways and bridges.
Cadell was navigating in his mind, telling the driver no, don’t take that bridge. Take the other one, the wrong one.
Turn there, instead.
And then turn here.
Stop here, and wait for me. I’ll only be a minute.
And then he would cradle a small, plastic-wrapped bit of white powder in his palms.
And then he would ask the driver to take him to another place that he knew of.
And there, they would have the supplies that he needed: a spoon, a lighter, a cotton ball, and a syringe.
Then the heroin would flow into him and make him bold and sunny and whole and at peace. The pain in his shoulder would subside.
Cadell’s whole body clenched as he held the tablet and watched the cards fall.
He lost more money.
But he didn’t speak to the driver.
The car sped him out of the city, flying over the crowded bridges and tunnels and to a wide, tall bright building.
She was in there. He just had to get to her.
Cadell grabbed the handle of his guitar case, carrying it in his hand, just how the physical therapist had told him not to. The sturdy case weighed in his fingers, pulling on his shoulder. Pain shot through him.
Pain was how it had all started.
He stumbled into the elevator, standing his guitar case on the tops of his boots and waiting as the elevator crawled up the shaft.
Just another minute. Just one more minute.
The elevator doors opened on the wrong floor, and two people got off. Three more entered the elevator and turned to face outward.
Or two minutes.
The elevator doors parted, and he shuffled off with another man who held a large bouquet of red roses.
Damn. He should have brought her flowers.
Her door was the third one on the left. He grabbed the knob and twisted it, shoving it open and dreading what he would find inside.
Someone was lying in the hospital bed, a very small someone.
She raised her spindly arms. “Daddy.”
His guitar case clattered to the floor, and he was already beside the bed and gathering Emily up into his arms. Her sallow skin seemed so pale next to the black tattoos curling over his arms. “I’m here. I’m here, baby.”
A woman’s voice fussed, “Don’t! You’ve got the IV lines. Don’t pull them. You’ll hurt her.”
Fingers plucked at his arm.
Over the top of Emily’s brown hair, a dainty woman in a white coat glared at him. Her huge brown eyes, lined with dark eyeliner and mascara to look impossibly large, widened further. She said, “Don’t move. Let me untangle you.”
Her small brown hands plucked the flopping tubes that had snagged around his fingers. Her delicate wrists disappeared into her white coat.
Dr. Andal Kumar, whom Emily called Dr. Andy, her favorite doctor, was untangling the IV tubing from around his hands.
Cadell waited, trying to concentrate on his child in his arms rather than the voluptuous young woman who was brushing her dark red fingernails over his wrist and forearms as she freed him.
He came to the hospital to see his daughter every chance he got, but he always hoped Dr. Kumar would be waiting for him, too. She often was in Emily’s room or dropped by soon after he got there. He tried to be casual around her because the woman was at work. Emily’s hospital room was not a pick-up bar, and Dr. Kumar was not a groupie who was waiting naked in Cadell’s bed after breaking into his hotel room.
“Thank you,” Cadell said to Dr. Kumar, “and thank you for staying with her again.”
“You have got to hire a better class of nanny,” she muttered while she straightened the clear tubing that ended with a shunt buried in his daughter’s hand.
“Oh, believe me, I’ve tried,” he said. “I’ve tried everything I can think of.”
Emily whispered against his shoulder, “I don’t want another nanny. I want Dr. Andy to stay with me.”
Cadell cradled his two-year-old daughter, who would be three in just a few months, against his chest with one arm. He leaned back to look at her better. Her face had yellowed more than when he had seen her a month before, and the parts of her brown eyes that were supposed to be white had turned pale yellow.
His skin went clammy all over, and a bead of sweat trickled between his shoulder blades and soaked into his tee shirt.
The email from Dr. Kumar—drily stating that Emily’s condition had worsened, medical decisions may be necessary, and the nanny had dropped her off at the hospital and left—had reached Cadell just as he had been boarding the plane to leave Monaco for New York.
Again, he had walked into this hospital room to find Dr. Kumar with Emily.
Sometimes Dr. Kumar was snuggled up to the tiny child in the bed, reading picture books to her. Sometimes, Dr. Kumar was playing a game on the tablet with her. Sometimes, the doctor had a needle buried in the child’s arm and was drawing blood.
But every time, Dr. Kumar was beautiful.
Her glossy black hair flowed around her shoulders nearly to her waist, tumbling in thick curls. Her eyes were huge and dark, outlined in black and with thick, lush lashes, and her lips were lush and ripe. Her skin was the color of a rich milk-chocolate mousse. She wore a white doctor’s coat with her name embroidered on it over her voluptuous curves.
Everything about her was sensuous and luxurious, like she should be wrapped in silk or served in a double-cream sauce with saffron and sugar.
He reached out with his other hand to her, standing on the other side of the hospital bed. “Dr. Kumar, I can’t thank you enough for staying with her. I got here as soon as I could.”
Dr. Kumar took his hand, her small fingers curling around his rough, callused ones. It seemed like a touching moment—and it might have been some sort of a connection for him, the human touch of a beautiful woman reaching for his fingers—but she rotated his wrist and inspected the underside of his arm and the crook of his elbow. Black tattoos crawled up his arm. A few very light scars, old and pale, marked the softer skin on the underside.
She asked, “Are you still a donor candidate?”
“Yes. I haven’t used at all. Not for eight months.”
“Yes, well, that’s nice,” Dr. Kumar said.
She didn’t believe him. No one believes an addict, especially a surgeon who was specializing in liver transplants. Dr. Kumar had probably seen hundreds of addicts and alcoholics, if not thousands, all of whom said that they weren’t using but most of them were.
Cadell said, “And before that, I only used new needles. I never used dirty needles,” he told her for what had to be the five-hundredth time.
“Yes, of course you did,” she said. “We’ll just check your functions while you are here and make sure no nasty little viruses have poked their heads out.”
Cadell knew that she would check his blood for tattletale signs that he had been using heroin, too. He didn’t have to protest. The blood test would show that he had stayed clean.
For the first time in nine years, he had been clean for eight whole months.
Nearly eight months.
As she let his hand drop, Cadell caught a sparkle on her ring finger. “Hey! What’s that?”
She frowned at her ring. “I am engaged. The boy’s family thought that it was important to have a Western-style engagement ring.” She turned her hand over and showed him her ring, one huge rock trapped in an ornate gold setting. The metal of the ring shone particularly yellow, like it was at least eighteen karat gold, if not twenty, instead of the pale fourteen-karat stuff that most jewelers used. She said, “I am to be married in about two months.”
“Two months? I just saw you three weeks ago, and you didn’t say anything then. What, are you pregnant or something?”
“Oh, no!” The tan skin on Dr. Kumar’s cheeks flushed a cute dusky rose. Her hands fluttered in the air, first at her shoulders and then up near her face and her mounds of glossy, black curls. “Oh, no. I would never.”
“Then why so quick?”
“Oh, it’s not quick. Indians have short engagements. Once you decide to get married, why would you want to put it off?”
“When my sister got married, it took a year to plan all that.” And it had taken only another year before she had divorced the guy and another year before she was dead, but Cadell didn’t need to mention that.
She said, “Well, that’s how we do it.”
“Are you going to have an Indian wedding?” he asked.
She chuckled. “Of course. What other kind of wedding would I have?”
Cadell grinned at her over Emily’s head, and he kissed his daughter’s scalp. Hospital disinfectant and sweaty child lingered in her hair. She snuggled closer to him and played with the chains around his neck. “Are you going to wear red?”
“Yes, my lehenga choli is red.” She smiled at him, even though one of her dark eyebrows still dipped in confusion. “You know about Indian weddings?”
“Some guys I knew back at Juilliard were Indian. One of them got married.”
“What was his name?”
“Uday Chowdhury.”
“Oh, Bengali. They throw great weddings. Almost as good as Punjabis.”
“Is it going to be three days long, too?”
“Oh, yes. It’s to be a traditional wedding. I was hoping for something smaller and less formal, but the boy’s family wants to show off that they got a doctor for their son. At least we don’t have to do it in India. I don’t have time for that. I’m not sure what I’m going to do if I have a transplant to do during that time, if I still even have my fellowship, by then.”
“I guess it’s nice that I know when Killer Valentine’s gigs are scheduled months in advance. It would be so much more efficient if people donated their livers on a schedule instead of when it was convenient for them.”
Dr. Kumar pursed her plush, plum lips and smiled at him like this was a very naughty thing that she was trying not to encourage but not quite succeeding. “Yes, it’s quite selfish of them not to notify us at least two weeks in advance when they are going to stop using their livers and thus can donate them to us.”
“Inconsiderate, if you ask me.” Cadell’s upstate-New York hillbilly accent crept into his voice.
Since he had been hanging out with Xan, Cadell’s accent had lightened, picking up a little of Xan’s British intonations. The British tones weren’t obvious in Cadell’s voice but just canceled out his natural redneck cadence.
Except that Xan didn’t sound like that anymore. Even his voice was different, but Cadell had other things on his mind.
He glanced down at Emily, curled in his arm. She was so small, closer to the size of a toddler because liver failure had stunted her growth. Her lips, which should have been the pearly pink of a child, almost looked orange.
If he could have given Emily his heart, he would have. Why did it have to be his damned, diseased liver?
“Did you redo her PELD score?” he asked, a headache starting at his temples. The PELD score was a measure of how sick a child is with end-stage liver disease, taking outward symptoms and lab results into consideration. It was how they ordered the list for who gets a transplant first. Higher numbers were worse.
When he glanced up, he saw that Dr. Kumar was looking out the window. Morning sunlight shone on her face, touching her smooth cheeks and lush lips. She always wore dark lipstick, and it wore away, lighter, in the center of her lush lips like the inside of a juicy, ripe plum.
Dr. Kumar said, “She’s at twenty-three now.”
Twenty-three. When he had left for the European tour, it had been at twenty.
“It’s getting close to the time when she will be offered a liver, when one becomes available. Her scores may increase soon or not at all. It is impossible to tell. We should be ready if one is offered. Are you in town for long this time?”
“At least a couple of months. Maybe three or four. We’re recording a new album in New Jersey. We’ll have a few club dates to demo the songs, but we’re not touring.”
“Oh, good!” Dr. Kumar looked back at him. Cadell could have sworn that her dark eyes flashed as she smiled. “I mean, it will be good for Emily.” She looked away, and a ripple passed through her, a small shake of her head, a flinch of her shoulders, and a tremor in one foot. “I mean, it will be convenient if we need to make medical decisions.”
Cadell’s heart thumped with a sudden spike of adrenaline.
“Daddy?” Emily asked, her high voice right under his chin startling him.
“Yes, baby?” He smoothed her hair back.
“I’m sleepy.”
He laid her down on the bed, careful to keep the silver rings on his fingers away from the IV lines that led to her hand. “You take a nap now, baby. I’m going to go get a cup of coffee. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, turning in the sheets.
“I’m glad I’m here, too.” He looked up at Dr. Kumar. “Would you like to get a cup of coffee?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I have other patients to see. Morning rounds, you know. Perhaps some other time.”