Chapter 15

The drive to the hospital seemed interminable. Veni kept going through everything her mother had said over these recent months of their working so closely together. Yet it was her variable personality that should have raised red flags with Veni—her mother’s violent mood swings, the fatigue that would hit her all of a sudden, and sometimes the harsh irrational need for Veni to do the work that her mother demanded that Veni do, whether it was what Veni wanted or not.

All of it just clicked into place now. It had been such a large part of the problems between the two of them, as Veni just hadn’t been dedicated to the same cause as her mother. Yet now Veni found herself in a situation where her mother was no longer capable of doing this work, and all Veni could do was feel guilty. “I should have helped her more,” she blurted out.

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Reid argued. “You still have to pace yourself, and you still aren’t doing as well as you would even like. You’ve taken a lot of chances in these last few years with her as it is.” He shook his head and then took her hand. “You’re not responsible.”

“I didn’t help her.”

“You were working in a Russian lab for the last year at least, doing nothing but your mother’s work,” Reid argued. “She didn’t tell you about her cancer, which means none of your decisions were based on being fully informed,” he added, and she glared at him. “No, I won’t let you feel guilty. Your mother was totally invested in that stem cell research, and she made the decision to pursue it, even at the peril of her own health. She must have felt this was the greatest purpose for her own soul’s journey, and you cannot take that from her. However, you also cannot blame yourself for something you did not know.”

She stared at him in surprise. “That was very esoteric,” she muttered.

“Yet how do you know I’m wrong?” he asked right back to her. “When we look at all the things that people do and at some of the absolutely miraculous things that they do for each other, this is just another example. This is what she wanted to do. Don’t take it away from her, don’t make her feel guilty because she didn’t tell you that she would not be around much longer. Maybe she thought this would be her own cure but then noted it wasn’t working anymore. So, she needed to get you out of Russia before you couldn’t get out at all. Maybe that had nothing to do with it. Maybe she thought, when she got to the Western world, there would be other medicines for her. I don’t know. We don’t know everything there is to know. The fact remains, as far as the doctors are concerned, it’s too little, too late.”

Veni winced at the bluntness of his tone. “God, the reality of it all is such a bitch.”

“It can be. It absolutely can be,” Reid agreed, “but it doesn’t have to be your reality. Right now your mom could be in the last stages of her life, but that doesn’t mean that your life has to be completely destroyed because of her choices.”

“Yet they were my choices too,” she cried out. “I could have helped her more. Maybe we could have found a cure sooner.”

Veni knew that there was no rhyme or reason to the guilt running through her, except that she had always refused to do more, and now that she understood why her mother was so adamant, it just made Veni feel even worse. “I feel so guilty,” she whispered. He reached out a hand and just gently held hers. She stared down at it saying, “Why would you even want to be with somebody like me?” she muttered. “I could have done so much more, and I didn’t. At every turn, I walked away from opportunities.… I didn’t even think about other people, what I could do for other people. I just didn’t want to do what was right there on the table.”

“Life is all about choices,” Reid pointed out. “Maybe you weren’t ready. Maybe it was more about rebelling against your father’s never-ending mandatory rules, and, once you found freedom, it was hard for you to even want anything else. And maybe, if you knew your mother was dying months ago, then you would have gladly helped more. But now? You have to cut yourself some slack here. It won’t be an easy afternoon, if we even get in and get a chance to talk to her. Still, you need to be calm and help her through whatever is coming up. Can you do that?”

She nodded immediately. “Yes, I can be there for her. She was there for me all these years. I can be there for her.”

“What about your father?” Anders asked from the front seat. “Did he have anything to do with your mother’s work?”

She laughed. “He tried to take credit for it. The two of them fought constantly, and he finally ended up going off and doing his own research. I don’t know if it was exactly the same thing because I haven’t had anything to do with him in quite a while,” she shared, thinking hard, “but it was the same kind of work.”

At that, the two men exchanged glances.

“What does that mean?” she asked, her tone hardening.

Reid sighed. “It means that we’re wondering if he would have anything to do with this kidnapping event and if he wanted the research she’s got, so he could continue his work.”

She stared at him. “I don’t know.” She rubbed at her face. “I don’t know how much between them was good and how much of it was bad. As a teen I just saw the bad. I saw and heard the fights, the anger, the constant working, the competition,” she shared, with a shudder. “That was one of the worst parts. They were always fighting about who was better, who was the best, who would get the next grant. It was really very sad. It turned me away from so much in life,” she admitted. “I just wanted to live a little in peace.”

“You did. You went and lived a little while you went to college,” Reid reminded her, “but now reality is biting you in the butt again, and decisions have to be made.”

She took a deep breath. “Right. Decisions must be made,… whether I like them or not.”

Reid added, “And I am wondering if he’s behind the rescue, not so much because of you guys trying to come to England and leaving Russia, but so that Natalia’s material didn’t get lost with her. Her lab material, her research.”

“He might have been able to hack into her databases,” Veni suggested. “I don’t know. That was something my mother was also incredibly protective of. She told me that my father had no scruples and that he would steal anything from anybody.”

“Interesting marriage,” Anders muttered from the front seat.

“As I said, it was a nightmare. They were just so competitive with each other that there was no break, no joy to be found. They were two of a kind, which is probably what brought them together, but it’s also what split them apart.”

“And that can happen too,” Reid noted. “I mean, there has to be give and take, and when there’s just take and more take, it doesn’t work.”

She smiled mistily up at him. “That’s partly why I sent you away. I could see your dedication to finding out more about your gift. I could see how eager you were, how passionate you were about all this.” She whispered in a monotone, “It terrified me to think that you would be like my father.”

He stared at her in surprise. “That hurts.”

She laughed. “I was a whole lot younger then, and I wasn’t looking for permanence. I was just looking for a life that wasn’t the same kind of nightmare I’d been raised in,” she murmured. “Of course that wasn’t really helpful.”

“Yet it explains a lot,” Reid noted. “So I’m glad that you had a few years with your mom, with some relative peace and quiet and joy, amid what seems to be a ton of work.”

“Yet, when she needed me, where was I?” she asked.

“At college, you were doing what you were doing,” he stated. “Enjoying life on your own terms. Don’t hold that against yourself. You deserved some peace and quiet and joy too. Then you went to work with your mom. You were doing what you could to be loyal to both of you.”

It was easy for him to say, but Veni knew it would be a long time before she could come to terms with all that had happened between her and her mother. Veni could only hope that they still had some time,… a few years, something. Veni needed more time. “Do you think she’s… dying-dying?” she asked hesitantly. “Did they say anything?”

“No, they didn’t really want to talk to us at all,” Anders replied from the front seat. “You are family, so they’ll tell you more. Of course the government also wants to know because they helped bring you over. Along with that is the fact that they’ll want something for all their efforts, and if she’s dying on them…”

“Then she isn’t there to give it to them.” Veni tried to hold back the bitterness in her tone, but both men obviously heard it. She sighed and took a moment to calm her nerves. “I’m sorry. I don’t… I don’t mean to be upset about that,” she explained. “Obviously I am much happier here. I’m safe, or at least safer, and that’s what’s important. It’s just frustrating to think that we’re more or less safely in England now, but my mother can’t live that life that she wanted to have here.”

“I’m not sure it was a life she wanted at all,” Anders suggested. “I mean, if she’s as sick as we’re thinking she is, that wouldn’t have been what she was concerned with. I’m certain her thought processes were on you.”

Veni pondered that because, although she had no illusions about her mother’s drive and dedication, she also knew that her mother loved her. It’s just that it was a constant war as to whether she loved Veni enough to let her do the things she wanted to do or to keep Veni as a pawn for the things her mother wanted her to do. “I just need to talk to her,” she muttered.

“We’re hoping we can give you that. At the moment we’re not being followed, and our ETA is approximately six minutes,” Anders shared. “There will be some security meeting us there, and more is at her bedside. So don’t be alarmed to see more strangers around your mom, when we visit her this time.”

“Right. So don’t freak out when I see men with guns, huh? Got it.”

Reid chuckled. “You’ve done very well so far. Just stand strong.”

And again, it was easy for him to say. It wasn’t his mother lying in that hospital bed, having just gone through hell to get them here. She thought back to the last conversation she’d had with her mother. “Why wouldn’t she have said something about this, when we were together for maybe five minutes, while still in captivity? My God, even under those dire circumstances, she couldn’t tell me?”

“Think back on what she did talk to you about,” Reid suggested, studying her. “Maybe that viewpoint helps put it in a different light.”

“It may,” she replied. “I’m just not sure I fully understand.”

“If you get a chance to talk to her, then maybe you can get the answers you need. Otherwise it’ll be anybody’s guess.”

That’s not what Veni wanted at all. Minutes later, the hospital loomed in front of them. As she got ready to bolt from the car, Reid grabbed her arm and said, “Easy. Hold up a minute.”

He got out, checked the surroundings, then walked around to her side of the vehicle. He quickly opened the door and, keeping her body shielded from anybody else, led her inside the hospital.

“What about Anders?” she asked.

“He’s coming, but he’ll park the vehicle and do a quick recon. Then he’ll check in with the security group here to ensure there’s nothing we don’t know about.”

“Got it,” she muttered.

She didn’t really care. She didn’t give a crap about anything but having a few minutes with her mom, if there were any minutes to be had. Veni hoped her mom wasn’t quite gone yet and that they would have six months or even longer, if that were possible. That was something she would definitely talk to the doctors about.

As they got up to her mother’s room, the doctor stood there, talking with a nurse. He looked up with relief in his expression and said, “Good, I’m glad you made it.”

She froze. “Is she that close to dying?”

“I’m not sure what medication she was on. She can’t tell us, but she’s experiencing withdrawal symptoms. Whatever it was, it appears to have run out of her system.” He took a moment to review her chart in his hand and then focused on Veni again. “Do you know anything about her medications?”

“No, I don’t,” she replied, staring at him blankly. “Honestly I didn’t even know she was sick.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” The doctor pinched the bridge of his nose. “She’s probably been experimenting on herself, and, whatever it was, it was working for a while to hold this at bay. Yet, in time, the crisis in her body, the devastation, has taken over, and she is declining rapidly.”

“I need to see her,” Veni said immediately.

“You can.” He led the way to the room and let her in.

“Can I go in with her?” Reid asked.

The doctor hesitated, then looked over at Veni, but she was already at her mom’s bedside. “I guess,” he murmured. “God knows it’s pretty sad when we finally get somebody free of the nightmare they’ve been in, and yet they end up dying on us anyway. I heard a lot of talk about some research she has been working on, and, if it was something keeping her disease at bay for a while, I would be interested in learning more on that. I would definitely like to see it. I just wish we had those actual lab records,” he murmured. “So, if nothing else, maybe you could see if that is available. While it may not help her mother in time, it could save others’ lives.”

Reid nodded. “I’m aware that the government is hoping to get something out of this as well.”

The doctor nodded. “They can hope all they want, but I’ll be surprised if she lives through the day.”

“Oh, crap,” Reid muttered, staring at him in surprise. “We were hoping she had more time than that. It’s been quite a shock, especially since Veni didn’t even know her mother was ill.”

“Nobody did, at least not until Natalia started to slide very quickly. Presuming that she had enough of the drug in her system to get her this far, then it was a case of whether she would make it or not when the drug was discontinued. I suspect she already knew all this going into it.”

“That’s what we’re slowly realizing. Maybe throughout all these machinations, Natalia probably had her own agenda heading in, and well…” Reid stopped and asked, “What’s her diagnosis?”

“Stage four lung cancer,” he replied. “No coming back from it.”

“Right, great.”

And, with that, Reid headed into the room to join Veni.

*

“How is she?”Reid asked Veni.

“Not conscious,” she grumbled.

“She has stage four lung cancer, according to the doctor.”

Veni stiffened and then sagged. “Of course she does. She had cancer years back and beat it, but she didn’t tell me that it had returned.”

“No, but there could have been all kinds of reasons for that.”

“I know she absolutely detested the treatment process. She told me that, if it ever came back, she didn’t give a crap. She wouldn’t go through the chemo and radiation again.”

He didn’t say anything to that. What could you say? Natalia had made a decision, and it was now obviously time to say goodbye.

“I just don’t understand how she went downhill so quickly,” Veni muttered.

“The doctor says that she was pretty heavily drugged, as if maybe she had her medication with her and took the last of it, knowing there was a possibility she would either make it or she wouldn’t.”

Veni stared at him blankly for a moment and then nodded. “I’ll just sit here for a while. I’m hoping she wakes up.”

“I hope so too,” he agreed, as he pulled up another chair and sat down with her.

“You can go off and do whatever needs to be done,” she said, waving her hand in the air.

“I could, but that whatever happens to be looking after you right now.”

She sniffled, feeling the tears in her eyes.

“Don’t you dare say I’m a nice man,” he teased.

She burbled with laughter. “No, I won’t say that, not now that I know how you feel about it.” Then she turned and looked at him sideways. “But it’s true.”

He sighed. “There you go again, with the insults.”

She chuckled. “You just don’t like being hero material.”

“Hero material? Now that is a whole different story, but nice? No, that’s a friend-zone word.”

“Maybe it is to you,” she relented, “but the man I’ve seen, who’s looked after me these last few days, well, he’s the man I wish I hadn’t let go way back when.”

“We weren’t ready,” he repeated.

She sighed. “We were different people in a different time.”

“Yeah, and apparently you didn’t want somebody who was very dedicated to figuring life out—or understanding more of my gifts.”

“No, apparently not,” she agreed, with a headshake. “Sometimes I wonder if I had any clue who and what I was and where I even was.”

“A certain amount of that is to be expected. I mean, you were young,” he stated. “We were both very young and na?ve, and it’s not as if we can have all the answers just because we want to.”

“I guess so, but it still would have been nice to know I had the answers I needed back then.”

“I think we’re meant to figure it out,” Reid suggested.

“Veni?”

She sat up straight and reached out for her mother’s hands. “Mom, you’re awake. Are you okay?”

Her mother stared up at her with a smile and said, “It seems I’m in the hospital, so I guess you know about the cancer by now.”

“Yes. We’re in England and safe here at the hospital, but I’m just finding out that you have cancer, and you’ve been hiding it so well. That’s not fair.”

“I’ve been trying a chemical mix of drugs on myself for the last several months,” she shared, “getting ready for the day that we could potentially get out of there. You have to protect my research,” she declared, staring at her daughter, squeezing Veni’s hand tightly.

“I will, Mom. I will.”

“I don’t want you doing the same kind of work. I can see how it ruined my life, your life, and your father’s,” she admitted. “Yet there are doctors who need to see what you can do.”

Veni winced at that.

“I know you don’t want that, but if the wrong people ever find out what you can do—”

“I know. I’ll take care of it.”

“What does that mean?” her mother asked, with a groan. “You never really were the kind to take care of anything.”

Veni winced. “Hey, that’s hardly fair. I just wanted to have a life.”

“And it’s a life that we didn’t give you, I know,” she murmured. “Only as I look back on all these wasted years do I realize there was another way to do it. I want you to find that other way, Veni. Find a way to have a life and to enjoy it, instead of always yearning for something that we couldn’t give you.”

“Couldn’t give me?” she asked, frowning at her mom.

“Wouldn’t give you,” she corrected. “I’m just as responsible as your father.”

“Is Dad after your research material?”

“Oh, he might be,” she replied, “but he’s light years behind us, so he’s not really a worry.”

“But what if he spoke to the Russian government, which I presume he did. That was part of the impetus to getting us back there.”

“He didn’t know about the cancer coming back. I didn’t tell anyone,” she whispered. She started to cough then, and all conversation ceased, until she could clear her airways. “I’m not getting out of the hospital now either,” she admitted. “Honestly I just want to be pain-free for my last little while. I thought I could make it longer. However, the relief of making it here, of getting out of that country, of keeping you safe,” she explained, “now I feel that I can let go and be totally pain-free.”

Veni felt a flood of emotions at her mother’s words. “You’re free to go anytime you need to, Mom,” she whispered. “But if you can find a way to stay around a little bit longer, well, I know a young lady who would very much like to have her mother for as long as she could.”

“You had her,” she replied gently. “My time is done. I’m used up and worn out.” She took a few deep breaths and closed her eyelids for a moment. “Don’t do what I did, Veni. Don’t put it all into the lab. There are other things in life. Go find a partner, have children. Know that you were the best thing I ever did, and I didn’t even plan to have you,” she shared. “You are the joy that I never knew I needed in my life, but you helped me. You helped me to see that there was another way.”

Veni couldn’t imagine that because it hadn’t seemed as if there ever was another way possible with her mother.

“The thing is, I didn’t see it until it was too late,” her mother whispered. “Now it’s not to be. And I’m okay with that too. I’ll stay in the hospital where I’m safe.” Her mother closed her eyes and whispered, “I’d like to rest now.”