Forever Mine: Callaghan Brothers, Book 9(74)

Jack hoped he would eventually, though, because Brian still had Alexis to think of. Knowing that she suffered from the same disease as her mother made it doubly hard for Brian, because he was terrified of losing her as well. Brian was signing up for everything he could, leaving a confused and hurt Alexis at his mother’s while he tried to exorcise his demons in the only way he knew how -—with extreme prejudice. Jack had had to intervene more than once to keep the little girl from having to grieve the loss of another parent.

That’s why he was doing this. And Kathleen, God bless her, she understood.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he told her.

“I know. Go. Brian needs you. We’ll be fine.”

He wished there was a way to put this off, but he’d already delayed as long as he could. Accepting her assurance, he made a silent vow to get in, get out, and get back as quickly as possible.

“When I get back, I’m going to spoil you rotten,” he promised, drawing her close against him. “Draw warm baths and wait on you hand and foot. Take care of you the way you take care of all of us.”

“Sounds wonderful,” she murmured. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

“In the meantime, take your sister up on her offer to help, okay?”

“She’s got her hands full with Seamus and the kids. They all came down with it at the same time.”

“Mom! Bring the bucket!” Sean bellowed from the bedroom down the hall. “Shane’s going to ... uh, never mind. Better change that to a mop.”

Kathleen exhaled and kissed his chest. “Duty calls. Come back to me, Jack Callaghan.”

“Always,” he promised.

––––––––

Jack knew something was up when Charlie was waiting for them at the extraction point with the sleek black chopper instead of their regular transport.

“Go on,” he urged Brian. They were both thinking the same thing -—that something had happened to Alexis. Brian ran ahead and spoke to Charlie; Charlie put a hand on Brian’s shoulder and shook his head.

Dread began to pull in Jack’s stomach, but his gut didn’t take a complete nosedive until Brian turned and looked at him.

“What’s going on?” he asked as he drew up level with them. “Why the express?”

Charlie’s face was too even, too controlled to be anything good. “There’s a situation, Jack. You’re needed at home ASAP.”

“What situation?”

For just a second, Charlie’s mask broke and sympathy poured out of his eyes in waves. “It’s Kathleen. She’s been taken to the hospital. Tony here is going to get you there.” Charlie indicated the pilot, who nodded. Jack couldn’t see the guy’s eyes behind the mirrored aviator shades, but he’d seen enough to recognize the stiff body language of the bearer of bad news.

Ice filled his body, the kind that only came with the knowledge that something really, really bad had happened. Somehow, his body had gone into autopilot. He jumped into the copter, strapped himself in, and donned his commset while the pilot did his thing.

“What’s going on, Charlie?”

Charlie didn’t answer as the chopper left the ground in a vertical shot and then started hauling ass toward home.

––––––––

The heavy weight of dread doubled when the chopper touched down not at the private airfield, but on the emergency landing pad on the roof of the Pine Ridge hospital building. Jack was close to losing his shite by that point, because no one would tell him a Goddamn thing. All he knew was that Erin was at the Pub with the boys and Kathleen was in the hospital.

“What’s going on, Dad?” Jack asked when Conlan met him at the rooftop entrance. The older man looked as if he’d aged at least ten years since they’d seen him at Christmas less than a month earlier.

“It’s Katie, Jack. The doctors say it’s pneumonia.”

“Pneumonia?” Some of Jack’s worry eased a little. Pneumonia was bad, but nothing compared to the horrors he’d been imagining.

“Aye. Kane found her passed out in the kitchen this morning and called the ambulance.”

Passed out. Which meant that she had picked up the flu, too, and had pushed herself too hard -—again. The woman put everyone else’s needs above her own, too stubborn to ask for help. He and she were going to sit down and have a serious talk as soon as she was feeling better.

Conlan paused outside her room. “Jack, you should know...”

“I should know what?” Jack asked, impatient to see his wife after spending the last four hours imagining the worst.

“It’s ... it’s not good, son.”

Jack heard the words, but they didn’t make sense. He’d had a bout of pneumonia when he was a kid, right after Fitz had dared him to strip down to his skivvies and take a quick dip in the half-frozen pond behind his grandmother’s house. Pneumonia was just like a bad chest cold. Antibiotics, rest, fluid, that’s what she needed. It was 1991, for God’s sake, not the old days when they didn’t have medicine for that kind of thing.

Besides, Kathleen was strong. He’d never met a stronger, more vibrant woman.

Buoyed by those thoughts, he wasn’t prepared for the sight awaiting him. Kathleen was in bed, her skin so white it blended in with the bleached sheets. Her hair and the dark bruises under the eyes were the only splashes of color. The bed was raised slightly beneath her shoulders; silver poles holding transparent bags loomed beside her; a series of tubes snaking into her delicate arms filling her with God knew what.