Levi focused on the dog pacing at her heels. Rifle had been running loose on the property—she let him do that when someone was out with him—and there hadn’t been any trouble between the two of them. Still, before she drove off, Callie wanted to be sure Levi felt safe. She didn’t want to come home to see either him or her dog hurt. The stitches that snaked across the golden skin on his arms were a constant reminder.
“He’s fine. He doesn’t go more than a few feet from me.” Levi’s biceps strained as he adjusted a piece of heavy metal he was attaching to the roof.
“You’re sure?”
He shifted the metal until he was satisfied he had it in place. “Positive.”
He’d made a lot of progress since breakfast. Not long ago, she’d heard him start his motorcycle, knew he was double-checking his repairs. Now he was working on the barn.
She gazed around the property, seeing all the other jobs he could do. But he wouldn’t want to stay, even if she could offer him work. Whatever had sent him out on the road seemed to be chasing him, especially when he let down his guard. He refused to allow himself to form any attachments. For whatever reason, even friends were too much of an emotional risk for him.
She wondered what had happened in Afghanistan, guessed it was the tragedies of war that had left him so scarred.
“When will you be back?” he called as she walked toward her car.
“It’ll be several hours.”
“You’ll be at the studio?”
She cleared her throat. She’d said she had some errands to run. Apparently, he assumed that stopping at the studio would be one of them.
She didn’t correct him. “That’s right.”
“Can you pick up a handful of these nails from the hardware store on your way back?”
He got off the ladder to show her what he had in his pocket, and she took one with her, just to be sure she got the correct kind.
“Don’t worry about dinner,” she said. “I’ll bring something.”
He squinted against the sun as he stared at her.
“What?” she said when he didn’t go back to work.
“You sure you’re okay? Last night was...last night seemed bad.”
“The flu always seems bad. I’m fine.”
“Good.” His gaze moved down. “By the way, I really
like that dress.”
A tingle of awareness made her curl her fingernails into her palms. She’d chosen the dress with him in mind.
* * *
Callie chewed her bottom lip as she tried to read her hepatologist’s expression. Had her situation worsened? Would her placement on the national organ-donor list change?
She hated going to the doctor’s alone. She was most tempted to tell someone about her condition whenever she faced an appointment. One of her friends would gladly have driven her the hour it took to reach the University of Davis Medical Center.
But then she’d have to confront the reality of her situation every time she looked into her friends’ or family’s eyes, and she wasn’t ready. She kept coming back to that, to putting off the moment of truth so she wouldn’t have to deal with other people’s emotions while struggling with her own. Maybe it’d be different if she had any chance of finding a live donor. With live-donor transplants doctors took a portion of a living person’s healthy liver and put it inside someone like her. Both pieces regenerated, which made the procedure sound very attractive. But it wasn’t quite that simple. Only a small number of these operations were performed and it was usually done between family members. As an only child, she wasn’t likely to find a match. Her mother had multiple sclerosis and required a wheelchair to get around, and her father had type 2 diabetes, which ruled them out.
Briefly, she thought of Levi’s comforting presence last night and wished she’d brought him with her today. Very soon he’d be out of her life. What would it matter if he knew the truth?
That was what her head told her. But her heart said something else. Maybe he’d be moving on come the weekend, but while he was staying at her place she didn’t want him to know she was critically ill. She found him attractive. That made her hope to be attractive to him, too. And she couldn’t imagine it would be remotely appealing to hear that she had non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, even if it was, as her doctor said, idiopathic, meaning no one could say why her liver had suddenly stopped functioning properly. She didn’t have hepatitis or anything, wasn’t contagious.
“So?” Breaking a silence that had felt stifling, she wiped her sweaty palms on her sundress. “What do the latest tests reveal?”
The doctor was sitting on a rolling stool, studying her chart. After everything she’d been through, she couldn’t believe she still found it difficult to wait for the latest results. While being evaluated by the center’s transplant team, she’d undergone a biopsy to confirm her diagnosis and a computed tomography to determine the size and shape of her liver. She’d also had an echocardiogram to check her heart, numerous blood tests to search for infection and determine her clotting ability, an upper endoscopy to examine the state of the veins in her abdominal wall, some pulmonary function studies to ensure that her lungs were exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide properly and several ultrasounds. She’d been at this center so often over the past two months it sometimes felt as if she lived there. That was another reason she’d decided to entrust her photography business to her assistant. She couldn’t do certain shoots. Even if she felt well enough to work, there were days when she had to be gone. What would she have said every time she had to run to Sacramento for new tests?
“Well...” Her doctor set her chart aside. “Unfortunately, I see some degradation of your condition.”
After feeling so terrible last night, she’d prepared herself for this. But how much degradation? Would he classify her as status one? Status one meant she’d be given the highest priority for a new liver. It also meant she wasn’t expected to live longer than a week.
A week! Maybe she’d be gone before Levi....
She swallowed. “How bad is it?”
“It’s affected your MELD score by a fairly significant margin.”
The Model for End-stage Liver Disease or MELD score was how the United Network for Organ Sharing determined where she belonged on the national donor list. A computer-generated number between six and forty, based on blood tests, indicated how likely she was to die in the next ninety days without a transplant. The higher the number, the more serious her condition.