A Firefighter's Ultimate Duty by Beverly Long

Author:Beverly Long
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-06-07T20:09:54+00:00

Chapter 13

Blade silently stewed about the conversation with his mother while he and Daisy worked the street. Within two hours, they’d collected auction pledges from fourteen merchants, everything from ice cream to free haircuts to complimentary year-end tax processing. Daisy was confident that Pratt Sports Spot would donate a nice gift, and Blade had volunteered to see what the Emergency Room physicians at Bigelow Memorial would pony up. As a medical team, they’d been known to be very generous. He was confident that Jamie had something to do with that.

He and Daisy had parted ways late afternoon, and it had taken him about six seconds to decide to pay another visit to his parents’ business. This time he found his dad in the front office, standing behind the counter, his hands busy on a computer. As always, his dad looked up when the bell above the door tinkled, and smiled when he saw it was his son.

But Blade could see the wariness in his eyes and knew that his mom and dad had talked, and his dad had been expecting his visit. That wariness was enough to make Blade’s gut tighten.

“Hey,” Blade said. He took a quick look around to make sure they were alone.

“Hey, yourself,” his dad said. At sixty-three, Larkin Savick was still trim. Had walked two miles a day for as long as Blade could remember. His hair was more gray than brown, and he’d given up the pretense of only needing glasses for reading several years prior.

“How’s it going?” Blade asked.

“It’s okay,” his dad said.

Blade decided he wasn’t going to dance around it. “I stopped in this morning. Mom said that you were at a doctor’s appointment, but she didn’t want to provide much detail.”

His dad held up a hand. “Your mom was just doing what I asked of her.”

“Okay. So what’s the deal?”

“Three weeks ago, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.”

The words hit Blade like a sledgehammer. And because his mind refused to embrace pancreatic cancer, he focused on the timeline. “Three weeks ago! And I’m just hearing about this.”

“Things have been moving kind of fast,” his dad said. “And I didn’t want to worry you until we knew more.”

Worry. Pancreatic cancer. The words bounced around in Blade’s head, smacking into one another. Hell yes, he was worried. This was bad. But he was a trained emergency responder. Knew to get the facts so that he could assess. “So what are the doctors saying?” he asked, hoping that his voice didn’t reflect that his heart was racing.

“They said I’m lucky. That most of the time, this cancer isn’t diagnosed until it’s rather advanced, stage three or four. But I’m stage two. With an aggressive treatment plan, they’re optimistic.”

Optimistic that they could destroy the cancer? Optimistic that he would live another year, three years, five years? Blade wanted to drill into the definition but knew that now wasn’t the time. He knew what that aggressive treatment plan might look like. He walked around the counter and reached for his dad.

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