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“Well, tough, because I’m not having an abortion and you’ll just have to deal with it.” She sucked in a deep breath, wincing from the stretching of her sore rib muscles. “I don’t want anything from you, Adam. Go away.”
“You need my help.”
She gritted her teeth. Did he think her helpless? “I’ve got a good job. I’ll get by.”
“You’re in a wheelchair.”
“So? Until I get on my feet, I’ll work a desk job. Lots of people are in wheelchairs and they get by just fine.”
“A desk job?” He shook his head. “You aren’t thinking straight, Liz. Yet another thing that’s my fault. How could you when you don’t have all the facts?”
Adam’s look of torment did little to endear him to her. He truly found the idea of her being pregnant with his baby horrific. “All the facts? What facts?”
He paced across the small stretch separating her bed and the one Nannie had occupied. “Liz, a week or two before Gramps died, I started having…problems.”
“Problems?” Dear Lord, had Kelly been right? Was Adam on drugs? She couldn’t wrap herself around the notion no matter how hard she tried.
“Headaches. Mostly in my right temple. My vision got blurry on and off. Still does.”
Liz’s anger melted away in a single heartbeat, to be replaced with fear. Hadn’t she thought something was wrong with Adam?
“I kept ignoring it, thinking I was just tired, stressed, had a virus. I can’t even remember all the excuses I gave myself. The truth was, in my heart I knew something more was going on.”
Liz’s fear escalated. She stared at him, waiting for him to continue with what was sure to be a horror story.
“When my hands went numb I couldn’t ignore what was going on any longer and I saw Larry, uh, Dr Graviss.”
Liz’s gaze dropped to where Adam clenched his fingers. He released them in a slow, exaggerated movement.
“I expected him to write a prescription for migraines. Tell me I’d been under too much stress. Maybe check me for diabetes. Imagine my surprise when he said he was referring me to a neurologist.”
Liz bit the inside of her lip.
He slid his fingers into his pants pockets and looked directly into her eyes. “I have MS, Liz.”
“No,” Liz gasped. Adam had MS? It couldn’t be true, but there was no denying the truth written on his face. “Oh, Adam.”
He’d been dealing with all this and hadn’t told her?
“You missed out on so much by caring for Gramps all that time, Liz.” He made taking care of her grandfather sound like a prison sentence. “I just couldn’t see continuing our relationship when it meant possibly putting you back in that position.”
“That’s insane. You sound like I had to be with Gramps, that caring for him wasn’t my choice.” She scooted up in her bed, biting back the need to wince at the pain the movement caused. “It was my choice, Adam. At all times I chose to care for Gramps, to keep him at home, because it’s what he wanted and it was the right thing. But if you want to know the truth, it was mostly because I wanted every second with him. The time I had with Gramps meant more to me than anything.”
“I know that now, Liz, but when this started I was grieving just as much as you. Grieving for my health, for the future I’d wanted for us, grieving because of what I believed was the right thing—ending our relationship because I knew you’d never walk away from me if you knew I was ill.”
“I can’t believe you were going through all this and didn’t tell me. That you’d let me think I’d done something wrong after Gramps’s funeral.” She closed her eyes, counted to ten. She’d believed they loved each other, trusted each other. She’d been so wrong. He hadn’t believed in her, hadn’t trusted her. He’d kept the knowledge he had MS from her. “How could you be so selfish?”
“Selfish?” he asked, his brows drawing together. “I was trying to be selfless, Liz. To give you up so you wouldn’t have to go through this hell with me.”
“This hell? You look just fine to me.”
“I went blind in my right eye on the day I performed May Probst’s surgery,” he blurted out.
“Blind?” Liz said in horror.
“Completely black. I collapsed onto the OR floor. The hospital board slapped my hands for my unprofessional conduct, threatened me with probation if anything of the kind ever happens again.” He snorted. “Just wait until they find out about my MS.”
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