by Lisa Kleypas
Crash at my place, Rye texted. You know the door code.
Thanks.
It was a nice offer, but Neva expected to stay at the hospital for most of the night, in case Zach needed anything. He had no one else. For a man who was admired and respected by so many, Zach was remarkably friendless.
From what Neva knew about Zach’s past, which wasn’t much, he’d always been a loner. After having been abandoned in infancy by a mother barely in her teens, he’d been raised in a series of foster homes. He had survived through a combination of toughness and intelligence, and had eventually worked his way through school to earn a journalism degree. He was a fascinating man, driven and smart, a tough reporter with an instinct for ferreting out elusive pieces of information and seeing how they fit together. He looked exactly how a foreign correspondent should look, with his agreeably roughened handsomeness and sense of endless, effortless confidence. But the qualities that made him so good at his job were the same reasons no one could ever get close to him.
Neva had tried. For a year and a half she had thought that if she loved him enough, if she was patient and forbearing, they would finally be happy together. Zach had flown back and forth to Friday Harbor between assignments, staying with her for days at a time. He would tell her about his work when he could, when the stories weren’t too dark and he could make them sound like adventures. But sometimes he would return with a hollowed-out stare as if he’d been to hell and back, and she had known there would be no talking. Instead she’d held him, offering silent comfort, carefully waking him at night when he was troubled by nightmares. It was after one of those visits that Zach had proposed to her. She had accepted joyfully, and had tried not to notice the shadow of uneasiness that had crossed his face when she said yes.
In the months afterward Zach had refused to set a wedding date, finding one excuse after another.
Finally Neva’s father had talked to her privately. He was a man who preferred to keep his opinions to himself, especially in personal matters. But he had seen enough of Neva and Zach’s push-me-pull-you relationship to decide that something needed to be said.
“Cut him loose, honey,” he had told Neva with his typical bluntness, although his voice had been quiet and kind. “If you think you’re ever going to be happy with him, you’re putting your money in the wrong bank.”
“Dad, there’s a lot of things you don’t understand—“
“You’re right. But there are a few things I do know: If a man loves you, he doesn’t put you on hold while he tries to figure out what he wants.”
“He just needs to be sure.”
“He should be sure right now.” Her father had gripped her hands in his large, warm ones. “Don’t settle for the wrong guy, Neva. Keep looking for the right one.”
“Zach is the right one,” she had insisted, but she hadn’t been able to hold his gaze. “Almost the right one. And I can be happy with that.”
“For a lifetime?”
“Dad, not everyone gets to have what you and Mom had. Some of us have to be okay with settling.”
“Not you,” her father had insisted. “Not my daughter.”
Troubled by her father’s advice, Neva had eventually brought herself to ask Zach if marriage was what he really wanted.
“I proposed because it seemed like the right thing at the time,” he had admitted. “And you seemed to expect it.”
“But it’s not what you want?” she had asked huskily.
“It doesn’t seem necessary. We can promise to love each other, but promises are broken all the time. There’s no guarantee that I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and feel the same about you as I do today.”
“If we can’t at least start by believing in forever,” Neva had managed to say unsteadily, “we may be better off not trying at all.”
Soon after that, Zach had told her that he’d decided to go to Iraq for about six months. He would be embedded with a Provincial Reconstruction Team to report on joint civil and military efforts to rebuild unstable areas. He didn’t expect Neva to wait for him. In fact, he didn’t want her to.
After the call had ended, Neva realized he had just broken up with her by phone, on the way to the airport. She couldn’t hold it against him, however. That was just Zach, taking care of his personal life between plane flights.
She hoped that someday, some woman would walk into Zach’s life and change everything for him. But that wasn’t likely. He was the type who would always go from one relationship to the next, shutting it down whenever someone got too close. The defensive walls that had always protected him had become his private Alcatraz.
When a friend who worked at the island hospital clinic called to tell Neva that Zach had been in some kind of accident and had been airlifted to Bellevue, she had debated inwardly about whether or not to go to him. Zach’s welfare was no longer her concern. She had moved on. But as far as she knew, Zach had no one to help him. And she couldn’t stand the idea of a man she had once cared about lying alone in a hospital.
Her gaze dropped to her hands. She flinched at the rich cool glitter of the diamond engagement ring Zach had given her. It was a beautiful Tiffany solitaire set in platinum, easily the sum of her income for an entire year. She had planned to give it to Zach in person when he returned to collect the rest of the stuff he’d left at her house. It had been six months since she’d last worn the ring. But just before she had left for Bellevue, it had occurred to her that the hospital might have rules against letting non-family-members visit ICU patients. If she said she was engaged to him, they would have to let her see him.
A silver-haired nurse dressed in lavender scrubs came to the waiting area. “Anyone here for Mr. Logan?” she asked quietly. No one looked up from their magazines or cell phones.
“I am.” Neva rose quickly, picking up her bag. She accompanied the nurse to the hallway, where they stood to the side. “How is he? I don’t even know what happened. Someone called to tell me he’d been brought here from Friday Harbor.”
“You’re related to Mr. Logan?”
“I’m his fiancée. Neva Landry.”
“Would you like to sit somewhere while we talk?”
That meant the news was bad. Neva blanched and gripped her bag tightly. “No, thanks. Just tell me right away.”
“Mr. Logan was struck by lightning. We think it may have been a direct hit. “
Blinking, shaking her head slightly, Neva tried to absorb the news. “My God. It must have happened while he was on his boat.”
“It was a miracle that he survived. There are no serious burns; sometimes in people with high skin resistance, the electric current flashes over the skin and doesn’t cause external injuries. But unfortunately the current flowing around the body generates a magnetic field that can cause cardiac issues. Mr. Logan was brought in with a serious arrhythmia, which basically means that his heart’s electrical system went haywire. We defibrillated him to restore a normal rhythm.”
“So…he’ll be okay?”
“There’s still too much we don’t know yet. We’ll run more tests when he’s fully stabilized.”
“Can I see him? Talk to him?”
“He’ll be brought to a room in critical care in about an hour, and you can see him then. But Mr. Logan won’t be able to communicate. He has mild cerebral edema. Brain swelling. So he’s on a drip of barbiturate medication to quiet down the electrical activity in the brain and help lower the pressure.”
“So he’s been heavily sedated?”
The nurse shook her head. “Sedation is a semi-conscious state. This is a deep unconscious state—an induced coma.
Neva swallowed hard before bringing herself to ask, “Does Zach have brain damage?”
The nurse hesitated. “The doctors are looking at the MRI and CT scans right now. They’ll meet with you later tonight, and tomorrow morning, after we have a better picture of what we’re facing. They’ll want to lighten up the coma and bring him out of it as soon as possible, to find out more about the level of func
tion.”
Abruptly Neva felt drained, shaky, a little nauseous. “I sort of wish I’d taken you up on the offer to sit down,” she managed to say.
The nurse took her arm in a firm grip and guided her to a pair of nearby chairs. “Can I get you some water?”
Neva shook her head and carefully lowered into the chair. “I just…nothing’s ever happened to Zach before. He goes into the most dangerous situations you could imagine, and he always comes out without a scratch.”
The nurse sat beside her. “I don’t want to give you false hope,” she said gently, “but there are a few things working in his favor. He’s young and in good physical condition, and his heart rate is back to normal. And he’s got a team of doctors, nurses, specialists, a respiratory therapist, all of us doing everything we can to get him—and you—through this. Your presence here will play a big part in his recovery. I’m sure he’ll know you’re with him.”
As Neva waited for the opportunity to see Zach in ICU, her thoughts spun and collided like a carnival bumper-car ride. Zach had no family, but there were a few friends and business associates who should be told about what had happened. And his agent would get in touch with the people at the magazine and keep them updated on the situation. She wondered if he still had an apartment in New York—surely he had designated someone to take care of his bills and investments and property in case something happened to him? Probably not—Zach had always been convinced of his own invincibility. “If you let yourself get scared,” he had told her once, in regard to a life threatening situation he had faced in Libya, “You’re dead. You have to shut your feelings off in emergency situations.”
Neva had refrained from pointing out that sometimes Zach forgot to switch his feelings back on when the emergency was over.
Someone was going to have to gather all the stray threads of Zach’s life and keep them together. Someone was going to have to spend days, weeks, perhaps even months, sitting by him in the hospital and watching over him, trying to reach through to him. But Neva couldn’t be that person just because no one else happened to be there. She had a farm and a business to run. She couldn’t afford setbacks, especially right now. And no one would claim that she owed Zach a sacrifice on this scale. Especially after the way he’d treated her. How could she put her life on hold for a man who had refused to be part of it?
She thought about calling her father or brother, or one of her close friends on the island, but she already knew what they would say: Zach’s caused you enough pain for one lifetime. Let someone else pick up the pieces. If she allowed her business and her personal life to suffer for him, she could easily imagine what he’d say: Nobody asked you to do that for me.
Right. She was going to spend one day, two at the most, doing what she could for Zach. Then she was going back to Friday Harbor and leave her former fiancé to the life he had created for himself.
“Neva?” A petite brunette nurse approached her. “My name is Maureen. We’ve got Mr. Logan—Zachary—settled in his room. I’ll to take you to see him now, if you’d like.”
“Yes. Thank you.” Neva was surprised to discover that she was slightly out of breath. She was more nervous than she would have expected. “How does he look? I mean, I guess there are a lot of tubes and bandages and wires—“
“No bandages, really. He’s hooked up to a lot of machines, though. He’s on an IV, a ventilator, a catheter, an EEG, and there are lines to measure intracranial pressure and blood oxygen. If you have questions about the monitors or the intubation or anything like that, don’t hesitate to ask.” She sent Neva a faint smile. “He’s your fiancé?”
“Yes.”
“While he’s in ICU, you can visit him for five minutes every hour.”
“Can Zach hear anything while he’s in a coma?”
“It’s best to assume that he can. Just talk to him in your normal tone of voice—explain what happened to him, where he is, what time of day it is, things like that. Mention people you both know, or things you’ve done together in the past. The most important thing is just to let him know that you’re there, and you love him.”
That elicited a stab of guilty annoyance. She no longer loved Zach. And she wasn’t even certain why she was there. No one would have blamed her for staying on the island where she belonged. For a moment she let herself think of how nice it would be to go home and curl up in her big cozy loveseat with a glass of wine and a book. Instead she was going to sit in a hard plastic chair and spend five minutes of every hour talking to an unconscious ex-boyfriend.
“Don’t be surprised,” Maureen said as they entered one of the rooms in the ICU, “if you see muscle movement or eyelid-twitching, things that make it seem like he’s conscious. But those are just unconscious reflexes; he’s deep under.”
A skein of wires trailed from the motionless figure on the bed. This looked nothing like the scenes in soap operas or primetime dramas, where a small cannula was picturesquely arranged beneath the patient’s nose. This was ugly. Overwhelming. Zach was a mass of inert human flesh attached to machines, tubes hydrating, feeding, breathing, regulating, draining. Quiet beeps from the bedside monitor punctuated the ventilator’s constant rhythmic whoosh.
Neva approached the bed slowly, her hand trembling as she gripped the cold metal bedrail.
She wanted to touch him, but she didn’t know where. He was crisscrossed with leads that had been fastened to his chest with adhesive patches. A ghost-pallor had infused his usual tan, and his face was swollen, the hard line of his jaw nearly obscured. His eyes were closed, his mouth lax around a ventilator tube that had been secured with tape. An IV needle had been inserted and taped to his left hand, but his right, the one closest to her, was unencumbered. His palm was turned upward in a way that seemed broken and helpless.
Maureen sent Neva an encouraging smile. “I’ll come back in five minutes.”
Neva sat on the chair at the bedside and carefully reached for Zach’s hand. It was cold and motionless. What would it be like, to lie there unable to communicate or defend himself?
She kept both her hands around his. “Zach,” she said carefully, “It’s me, Neva. You’re in a hospital, but you’re going to be fine. There was an accident—you were struck by lightning. I’m guessing you were probably out on the dock. You’re on a lot of medication right now, to keep you still and let you heal. They’ve put you on a ventilator and you’re hooked up to monitors. I’m going to stay with you and take care of you. I’ll stay until—” She broke off, staring at his familiar profile, the long line of his nose, the smooth arc of his forehead that led to his hairline. The thick locks, a dark brown approaching black, had been chopped short and uneven. Forever lacking the time or opportunity or patience to hold still for a decent haircut, Zach had been known to grab the nearest scissors or hair clippers and trim it himself.
Retaining his hand in one of hers, she reached out with the other and gently stroked her fingertips through the hair at the side of his head. “You cut your own hair again,” she said, smiling slightly. “Probably at one in the morning in some airport bathroom. You hate to slow down, don’t you? I’m truly sorry about this, sweetie. I could think of a million things you’d rather be doing than lying in bed with only me for entertainment.”
Zach hadn’t said a word or moved at all, but she felt somehow as if she could sense the enormity of his need and pain. It seemed to radiate from him. Compassion welled inside her at the sight of someone so robustly healthy brought so low, a worldly and capable man who now had to let a machine breathe for him.
“Remember when you told me you never let yourself be afraid?” she asked, clasping his hand a little more firmly. “You said you could turn it off at will. But it probably isn’t so easy to turn it off now, is it? Anyone would be scared. The thing to focus on is that you’re not alone. You’re going to be fine. You’re safe now, and they have everything they need here to make you well again. And I’m…” Her voice trailed away. A long, wrenching sigh escaped her. There was no
way she could abandon him in this state, if only for the sake of what he’d once meant to her. Damn you, Zach.
Slowly she lifted his hand and pressed her cheek to the backs of his fingers and kissed one of his knuckles. “I’m going to stay with you,” she said. “For as long as we’ve known each other, I think this is the first time you’ve ever actually needed me. Once you told me the only person you could ever count on was yourself. Well, now I’m going to prove you wrong.” She rested their joined hands on the mattress. “We’ll get through this together,” she said. “I’m here for you. And you won’t owe me anything afterward, so don’t worry about that. You just focus on getting better. That’s all that matters.”
“The situation is…singular,” Elsegoode said. “There are angels who, of course, are able to assume a mortal appearance for various purposes. But I am not familiar with any examples of an angel actually replacing a mortal’s spirit in his body. And certainly an angel would never attempt to do so without having been directed by a higher power. “
“It was the lightning. I was in the way. It struck us both.”
Elsegoode looked troubled and perplexed. “Somehow the current must have conveyed your immaterial essence, or esse, into Zachary’s mortal form at the same time that his soul departed. It appears that you are united with this corporeal form and are giving life to it, just as Zachary Logan did until this morning.”
“But I’m not him.”
“Certainly not.”
“And he’s not…with me.”
Elsegoode shook his head. “Unfortunately his soul has gone astray. But do not worry, the situation is temporary. We’ll locate him in short order.”
Friday was far less worried about Zachary’s situation than he was about his own. “Listen, Elsegoode—I have to be released from this body right away. The central nervous system is fried and every damn second is agony. Let me out and I’ll go back and do my job. I’ll never complain again. I—“
“If it were in my power, I would free you at once. However, I can’t simply reach in and pull a soul from a body.”