Cowboy Baby Daddy

“Hey,” I said, moving to intercept them.

Olivia gave me a brave smile and looked down at Emma. “Harlan went back home for the afternoon. Sorry to bring Emma here, but I had to see Mom.”

“I know,” I soothed. “Come here, let's see if Emma can stay with one of the nurses while you and I go in to see her.”

The nurse was more than happy to watch Emma, and Emma was more than happy to stay with her, once she was promised coloring pages, a sucker, and (if she was really good) a balloon. I breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that she'd chosen today of all days to cooperate.

“What's happening with Mom?” Olivia asked as we hurried away from the nurse's station. “She's all right, isn't she?”

I took a deep breath and pulled her into an empty room, closing the door behind us. “She's awake and aware, but she's not doing good,” I told Olivia. “The cancer has spread, and she's having a difficult time breathing. At this point, there's nothing else that we can do except make her comfortable.” I scowled, knowing that I shouldn't take my anger out on her, but I was frustrated. “You know, if the two of you hadn't ignored my warnings, we could have at least extended her life for a little while, if not managed to save her.”

Olivia stared at me, her mouth falling open. “Excuse me?” she asked.

“She's dying, Olivia. And soon. It didn't have to be this way. If you'd cared enough, you would have convinced her to take care of this when it first became an issue. And don't try to tell me you didn't know that it was this severe; you moved to Tamlin because you knew exactly how severe it was.”

Olivia was silent for a long moment, tears welling in her eyes. “You ass,” she finally whispered.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Olivia

I couldn't believe what I was hearing from Eric. My mother lay dying in a hospital bed, and he was blaming me for it? As though I hadn't done everything that I could.

“Maybe if you had done your job and convinced her that she needed treatment, we wouldn't be here!” I found myself shouting. “Rather than have me try to talk to her, with my utter lack of medical experience, maybe you should have found some way to convince her. I'm sure you have experience with stubborn patients. But you didn't even try!”

“As a doctor, I ultimately have to leave it up to the patient,” Eric snarled. “Which is what I did. I laid out all the facts, I told her how serious this was, and I even reminded her that it wasn't just herself that she'd be hurting if she didn't get the treatment. What else was I supposed to say to her? I don't know her the way that you do; you should have been able to find a way to reason with her.”

It was like a slap in the face; basically, what he was implying was that Mom didn't care enough about me to want to prolong her life. I knew that wasn't the case. I remembered what Mom had said about chemo ruining a person's quality of life. She just wanted to make sure that if she was alive, she was able to do everything that she wanted to do, rather than just hanging around as an empty husk, unable to work or garden or do any of the other things that she loved.

The fact that Eric would dare imply otherwise made me even more upset.

“Well, I can't force someone to receive treatment either, even if she is my mother,” I snapped. “I did my best to convince her, but, as you said, ultimately it was her decision.”

“You gave up too easily,” Eric said. “How many times did you even talk to her? You didn't want to have the conversation; you were perfectly happy just pretending that the cancer didn't exist, just like she was.”

“I tried, over and over again to talk with her. She didn’t want to deal with it.” I asked. “Again, I don't have any sort of medical background. I never had all the details on what was wrong with her, all the facts. I didn't know how far along we were or what might happen to her if she didn't get chemo, not in anything more than an abstract sense. What was I supposed to do?”

“You don't have to have a medical background to know that cancer often leads to death,” Eric said exasperatedly, rolling his eyes at me.

> I was silent for a long moment, tears still streaming down my face. I wiped at them, but more just took their place. I didn't understand why we were fighting about this. I could understand if there was still that unresolved tension between us, but I had thought that we had solved that. I thought we were okay. I would have expected him to comfort me. That was why he had been the first person I'd called after Mom complained to me: not because Eric was her doctor but because Eric was my friend. Or so I had thought.

I didn't know where this mean and angry-spirited man had come from. I had never seen Eric like this before.

But it's not like I know him well, I realized. We'd been on a couple dates; that was all. If he'd just wanted to sleep with me, it would have been in his best interest to be nice on those dates. Look where it had got him. But maybe this was what he was really like.

I didn't want to believe it, but a part of me was increasingly sure that the kind, charming Eric that I'd previously thought I'd known had been just a façade. I swallowed hard and shook my head.

“I did the best I could,” I repeated, for my own benefit as well as his. “Apparently that wasn't good enough.”

Eric didn't say anything.

“Where is she?” I asked. “I can see her, can't I?”

“She's down this hall, room 118,” Eric told me. “She's been asking for you.”

“And there's nothing that we can do at this point?” I asked, hating the desperate note that crept into my voice. But this is where we were at at the moment. I was desperate to figure out some way to miraculously save her, even though apparently all hope was gone.

“The chemo can't help at this point; the cancer has advanced too much,” Eric said dully. “We could try to remove the tumors from her lungs, but it would be a risky operation and a risky recovery, and at this point, the cancer is already in her blood. There's nothing we can do.”