Даниэла Стил - All That Glitters

“I hope he comes back,” Sam said in a low voice.

“So do I, but I’m pretty sure he won’t. Bethanie will take it hard. She loves him, and he loves her. It almost killed him to see us go. He wanted to come with us, but he didn’t have it in him. Now we need to focus on what’s going to happen here.” She was determined. Every fiber of her being was focused on Bethanie.

Sam left a little while later, and picked them up at nine-thirty the next morning to go to Sloan Kettering. He had taken the day off from work to be with them.

Bethanie came bounding out of Coco’s old childhood room to greet him, and she looked better after a night’s sleep. Coco didn’t. She hadn’t been able to stop herself. She had called Ian, and he didn’t pick up. She had no idea where he was or if she’d ever see him again. She thought she wouldn’t, but she still hoped.

—

The news at Sloan Kettering, after Dr. Jeff Armstrong reviewed the bloodwork and examined Bethanie, was somewhat encouraging. He concurred with the diagnosis they’d gotten in London. Bethanie had AML. They had caught it early and he thought the odds were good, but she was a very sick little girl. He recommended their standard protocol for the disease, which was six weeks of intense chemotherapy, which would make her feel awful and she’d lose her hair. He wanted to start the next day. Ideally, they hoped she would go into remission after the first intense round of chemotherapy. She had a ninety-five percent chance of remission, and even cure. The length of treatment would be about six months, depending on how she responded. And he felt that a full cure was entirely possible. He recommended that she be treated in Boston, Paris, or at Sloan Kettering, rather than go back to London, and he would treat her himself if they stayed. He was impressive in every way. Coco could tell he was brilliant.

“I want to get her treated here,” Coco confirmed. He nodded agreement and looked at her intensely. He was a tall, powerfully built man with sandy blond hair and deep blue eyes. He was very serious, and rarely smiled, except when speaking to his patients. He described the protocol to her. Bethanie would be in the hospital for six weeks, for chemo and to protect her from infection, and then she could go home for some of the time, and Coco could stay at the hospital with her as much as she wanted. There was something cold about him, but at the same time he inspired confidence. You could tell that he was used to being in command. He wasn’t sympathetic when he spoke to Coco, but he had been very gentle when he examined Bethanie.

He explained that they were going to put a port in to administer the medication more easily. “We start tomorrow then,” he said as he stood up. They had a hard six months ahead of them, but Coco wanted to get started. “When you’re finished here,” Dr. Armstrong told her, “you’ll need to choose between those three cities for follow-up. Paris, Boston, or here in New York. We follow the same protocol.” After he left the room, she thanked Sam again. And she knew she had to call Leslie and tell her. She couldn’t work until the end of the year, and London wasn’t on the list for follow-up treatment. There was so much to think about. She considered sending a text to Ian that they were starting tomorrow, but it would only torture him. She had to go through this alone, with Sam’s help when he had time. But she couldn’t lean too heavily on him either. He had a business to run, four children, and a depressed wife, and his mother hadn’t been well for the last year. There was only so much he could shoulder. She didn’t want to burden him.

But he took them back to the hospital the next day to start treatment, and then left to go to his office an hour later. He said he’d call and check in throughout the day.

The first treatment didn’t seem to have too violent an effect, but they increased the dose progressively, and by the end of the first week in the hospital, Bethanie was as sick as they had predicted. Her immune system was depressed from that point on, so she couldn’t leave the hospital. They were living in a bubble, and she felt sick and slept a lot of the time. Coco spent hours with her on her lap or reading to her until she fell asleep. She stayed at the hospital with her. She went home every few days for fresh clothes, but other than that, Coco never left her.

She texted and called Ian several times, but got no response. It was an endless six weeks. Sam came to see them every day.

—

The star physician, Jeff Armstrong, checked on Bethanie several times a day. He came to see her repeatedly during her chemo treatments, and he stopped to chat with Coco in the hall whenever he saw her. He surprised her when he mentioned a gala evening to benefit the hospital, and suggested that she should go. She didn’t want to leave Bethanie, but she felt obligated to once he suggested it, and asked Sam if he would go with her. But he had to be at home with the kids. Tamar still wasn’t doing well after her C-section, so Coco bought a thousand-dollar seat and went alone. She hadn’t brought anything dressy to wear, but found an old evening gown in her closet that still fit her. It wasn’t exciting, but she wore her hair up, and stopped at Saks to buy a pair of evening sandals and a big rhinestone brooch that looked real, and a black satin evening bag. She wasn’t in a festive mood, and she was shocked when she found herself at the head table, seated next to Jeff Armstrong, who offered her a private tour of their research facilities the next day. She couldn’t turn that down. She didn’t want to be rude to him after all the personal attention he was giving Bethanie.

The tour of their research facilities the next day was fascinating and intense. He explained every detail to her, and gave her a two-hour tour himself, and then stopped to visit Bethanie, and as he left he bestowed one of his rare smiles on Coco. She could feel the strength he emanated. He exuded power and a brilliant mind. As she thought it, she recognized the early signs that were always so attractive to her. Supreme intelligence, a man at the top of his field, and unlimited success. The flash. It defined every man who was attracted to her, and whom she was drawn to like a moth to flame. She reminded herself to be careful. He had an important function in her life. He was trying to save her daughter, she didn’t want to become too personally involved with him. During the benefit dinner he had mentioned the kind of donations they were trying to elicit in their fund drive. He suggested a million dollars and upward, which was obviously not for himself, but for research. There was clearly an ulterior motive and an agenda behind his random moments chatting with her in the hall. A donation was certainly possible, though perhaps not quite that large. If they cured Bethanie, she would be forever grateful, but it made her uneasy that he saw her as a source of money and was preying on their plight, however subtly.

“Do you like to sail?” he asked her one day in the hall, and she said she did, but hadn’t in a long time. “I have a small sailboat I keep tied up at the Chelsea Piers, if you’d like to come out with me sometime.” He was very attractive, somewhere in his mid to late forties. He reminded her of a younger Ed, or a more professional-looking Ian. He was definitely a type, her type. He was at the top of his field, as Ian was. She had called Ian several more times, and he still hadn’t responded. But Jeff Armstrong made it clear that he was eager to spend time with her during their lengthy stay in New York.

“I don’t think I should leave Bethanie right now,” she said with a warm smile, and she mentioned him to Sam when he came by that night. He brought a drawing from Nathan to Bethanie. She was still very sick, but on the whole, she was holding up well.