“Please, don’t try to get up,” Keith implored softly, his touch firm but gentle. “You shouldn’t move around too much.”
“What happened?” I dared to ask, and I found that my throat felt raw again.
“You went into cardiac arrest.” He looked and sounded tortured. “I nearly lost you. Again.” He stabbed his fingers through his unkempt hair. “I think that I have died a million times since Thanksgiving.”
That only confused me. “The accident happened right before Christmas.” Hadn’t it? Or was I missing more memories?
His laugh was full of so many emotions; humor, however, wasn’t one of them. “You were sneaking around with Christian. I thought I was losing you, Kari.”
I glared over at him. “I loved you. I came home to you every night, made love with you every night. How could you think I was messing around on you?”
“Why didn’t you just tell me what was going on?” His tone was soft but no less fierce and demanding as he shot back with a question of his own. “Why did you have to keep Christian’s proposal a secret from me?”
I looked away, not wanting to tell him my reasons. Not wanting to tell him my biggest dream had been that he would propose to me, too. And that by telling him about Christian’s plans and my excitement for my friend, I feared it would have made him feel like I was forcing his hand. “I don’t want to talk about this right now. Can… Can you just go?”
“No.” He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “I haven’t left this hospital since your father called me. I will sit here and be silent, and you can ignore me all you want. But I am not leaving you.”
“Keith…” I sighed and closed my eyes. “Fine.” There was no use arguing with him when I didn’t have the energy to keep up with him.
I still must have been getting regular doses of pain medication because I drifted off without even trying.
I thought I was dreaming because Keith was whispering sweet nothings to me, and all I want to do was cuddle closer to him. When I reached out in my sleep, I encountered…nothing.
My eyes opened, and I found I was still in the new room with the glass wall and sliding door. Keith wasn’t in the chair but outside at the nurses station with my dad, speaking to Dr. Hayes and Dr. Shelton.
My father was talking in low, harsh tones, and from what I could see of his expression, he was royally pissed. I don’t know what Baxter Brandon was so angry about, but it took quite a lot to make him that angry. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, except for a few words here and there. Bianca’s name was mentioned several times, and I grimaced. My father and Bianca had always gotten along well. If he was angry at her, then he must have found out what had happened right before the accident.
Very carefully, I sat up with the help of the button on the bedrail to lift the head of the bed. The movement must have caught the four men’s attention because the sliding door opened, and they all came in. I pushed my limp, oily hair away from my face. “What is this place?” I asked, directing my question at Dr. Shelton.
“Cardiac ICU.” He was already taking the stethoscope from around his neck. “How are you feeling?”
I rolled my eyes at the question. “Everyone keeps asking me that, but the answer never changes.”
He grinned. “Must be feeling a little better if you’re so snarky.” He pressed the stethoscope to my chest and closed his eyes while he listened. He moved it around several times before asking me to sit forward a little while he listened to my lungs from the back. “You still have a slightly irregular heartbeat,” he commented with concern as he stepped back. “But that might be from all of the pain medication. I’m going to lower your dose and see what happens.”
“Can’t you just give me some Advil?” I muttered, shifting in hopes of finding a more comfortable position. “I really don’t like taking strong pain medication.”
“Trust me, sweetheart. You would be begging me for them if you didn’t have them.” Dr. Shelton turned to face my father. “I want her to rest most of the day. No loud noises, no stress. You may each visit for a few minutes now and perhaps a little later today. But otherwise, you will have to wait in the waiting room with everyone else.” His gaze went to Keith, and the two men shared a hard, yet knowing look. “Understand?”
Keith gave a curt nod but didn’t say anything, and Dr. Shelton excused himself. Dr. Hayes stepped up beside my bed. “I would much rather have eased you back into your memories, Kari. But now that you have them, I think we should still see each other regularly. There were a few things we talked about yesterday that we should explore further.”
“What things?” But I had a feeling I knew what he was talking about, and I tensed, because I wasn’t sure how the other two men in the room were going to handle what the doctor was about to say. I’d never told either one of them.
The doctor glanced at the other two men quickly before lifting his brows. I sighed. “Don’t worry about them. They will find out one way or another. Especially Keith.”
Dr. Hayes nodded. “Very well. One of the issues I think we should explore is your experience with your stepfather.”
As I had expected, both Keith and my father turned to stone on either side of my bed.
“Okay,” I agreed, if only to get him to leave faster. I knew a storm was brewing, and I watched the doctor leave a few minutes later with a feeling of dread. I didn’t want to get into this with either of them now. I had never wanted them to know.
“What was he talking about?” Baxter half growled.
“It was nothing.” I didn’t understand why the psychiatrist wanted to “explore” my “issues” concerning the dirty old man when I had never given the episode very much thought over the years.
“It didn’t sound like nothing,” Keith muttered as he took the chair beside my bed. “Did something happen with my father?”
“No!” I couldn’t believe he would even think this was about his father. “I loved Charlie nearly as much as my own father. He was a great guy. Not like…” I broke off before I could even say the man’s name, feeling ill just thinking about him. Okay, maybe I did have some hidden issues, after all.
“It was that damned Brice, wasn’t it? Something happened.” Baxter’s eyes turned a dangerous color as he realized the truth. “That was why you didn’t want to go anywhere near your mother that summer.”
“I…” Biting the inside of my cheek, I nodded. “Yes.”
“What happened?” my father whispered, as if he was afraid of the answer but had to know for sure.
I rested my head back against the pillows and frowned up at the ceiling. Thankfully, the lights were dim, but my head was starting to throb again. “He tried to touch me.” The room’s temperature cooled by ten degrees, but I didn’t spare a glance at either man in the room. “I was home one weekend. Mother was out somewhere, and he just grabbed me…”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Baxter demanded.
“You were in Dubai. And I wanted to forget about it.” I shook my head. “But don’t think I let him get away with touching me. I made sure he would think twice about so much as looking at me, let alone touching me, again.” I remembered the look on old man Brice’s face when my knee had made contact with his groin. The shade of red, then purple he had turned as he fell to his knees, holding himself. “He walked wrong for the rest of my visit.”
Baxter just stood there, glaring off into space, and I could see the menace churning inside of him. When he left a little while later, I knew he was going to do something horrible to the old man, and I couldn’t help wondering if my father would end up in jail by nightfall.
Keith continued to sit with me, not speaking a single word, and I remembered the promise he’d made to me the night before. I thought maybe he was afraid I would demand he leave if he did. But deep down, I was glad to have him there with me. It meant he cared for me more than Bianca, and that soothed something that had been aching since I’d first woken up a few days before.
When the
nurse came in with a syringe, she told Keith that visiting hours were over. Reluctantly, he got to his feet and leaned over to brush a kiss across my forehead. “Feel better,” he whispered in that gravelly voice I loved so much, reminding me again of the two dreams I’d had of him confessing all the words I had ached to hear for such a long, long time.
“Keith…?” I murmured his name just as he reached the sliding door. He turned, a questioning brow raised, and I faltered, not sure what I wanted to say to him. “Do you love her?” was what I really wanted to know more than anything in the world. Followed by the second burning question, “Did you prefer her to me in bed?”
But I asked neither question. Instead, I lowered my eyes to my fingers where they were playing with the corner of the sheet and blanket. “Will you come back later?”
“Yes. And I will be out in the waiting room if you need me.” His voice sounded choked and I lifted my eyes to look at him, but he was already walking through the sliding door.
fifteen
I spent three more days in the Cardiac ICU before the doctor was confident that my irregular heartbeat had gone back to normal. I returned to a private room filled with several flower arrangements and cards wishing me well.
And on the bed was a stuffed brown bear with a heart in his hands.
I knew it was from Keith, and even though I wanted to sling its giver out the window, I cuddled it closer when I was alone in my room.
Over the next two weeks, I slowly got my strength back. I had to have some physical therapy because of the length of time I had been in the coma. My legs were shaky from lack of use, and I gradually had to build the muscle tone up again. My head didn’t throb now. Instead, I had a constant ache I’d learned to cope with. My chest wasn’t nearly as painful either, and thankfully, the tube that had been in my lung to keep it clear of fluid after it had collapsed had been removed.
My father, who was supposed to be in Turkey for business, still came to see me twice a day. The day after I had woken up in the ICU, he’d come to see me with his right hand wrapped in a bandage. It seemed he had found old man Brice and shelled out the type of vengeance only a father could express. Baxter was lucky he hadn’t landed himself in jail, but then again, I doubted the old man had wanted to press any charges, considering my father’s reasons for beating the hell out of him.
The hardest part of it had been when my father had apologized to me. Apologized. He felt like it was his fault, blaming himself for constantly being away from me on business when I was younger and not being much of a father. I hated that he thought that way. I’d always felt he was a great father, and I understood that he had to work when I was a kid. I tried to explain all of that to him, but I wasn’t sure I got it through to him.
Christian visited me several times, and each time we avoided any talk of the accident, Bianca, or Keith. Instead, we focused on what was going on outside in the real world while I was cooped up in my small hospital room. He seemed a little more carefree than he had been before the accident, and I wondered if maybe he had been talking to Bianca, but I never asked. Just thinking of Bianca hurt and only spiked my anger at her. I was upset with both her and Keith, but I was more pissed at her. She had been my best friend since preschool. She knew me better than anyone else on the planet. I had held her when she lost Caleb, would have given my life for her willingly. And she had betrayed me in the one way she had to have known would destroy me.
Hunter dropped by from time to time and kept me company while I was doing my physical therapy. I enjoyed the time spent with him, and he made me laugh when all I wanted to do was scream at the therapist. Thankfully, for the therapist, at least, Hunter was there to keep the peace.
I’d already had my therapy for the day. Visiting hours were long over, and I was sitting up in bed going over some work from Winthrop Charities. Rachel, my assistant, had been handling everything at the office spectacularly, but there were a few things that only I could deal with.
I had paperwork spread all around me in a neat mess only I could understand the logic of, there was a pen clamped between my teeth, and I was frowning down at some estimated figures for an Easter brunch that was being planned to raise money for the homeless, when the door opened. I didn’t have to look up to know who it was.
Keith had developed a set routine. He sat with me in the morning and read the paper. When I went for therapy or Dr. Hayes came in for a chat, he left to catch up on work. Around midafternoon, he would return and sit by my bed with his iPhone in hand, going through e-mails until my father arrived. I was not altogether sure what he did between then and seven thirty at night, but that was the usual time he returned and camped out in the chair, once more with his phone out until I would fall asleep.
During the time he was there, we rarely talked, but I felt oddly at ease in his presence. When he wasn’t with me, my mind ran marathons, and I got lost in my own nightmares. The one night he had left early, I’d found it incredibly hard to fall asleep. When I had, my nightmare was of him going home to Bianca and making love to her. When he had arrived the next morning, I’d had swollen, red eyes with dark circles under them. He had sat and stared at me for the longest time while I picked at my horrible breakfast.
“Are you all right?” he’d asked in that deep voice that made me shiver.
I only shrugged. “I’m fine.”
The quiver in my voice must have given me away, but he’d just stared at me a little longer and went back to reading his paper. He hadn’t left early like that since.
I pulled the pen out of my mouth. “Hey,” I greeted him now as he sat down in the somewhat comfortable chair beside my bed.
Keith seemed momentarily surprised. I hardly ever greeted or even willingly spoke to him unless spoken to first. “Hey, baby,” he murmured in return. “Feeling better today?”
“Yes.” In fact, I was itching to go home. Dr. Shelton and I had had a long, loud argument about it when he had checked on me right before dinner. He thought I needed at least another few days in the hospital. “I want out of here, but that damned doctor says I can’t leave yet.”
That sardonic brow, the one I loved so much and had been missing for the longest time, suddenly lifted, making my heart twist. “I’m sure he has his reasons for keeping you a little longer. Did he say why?”
“Some technical mumbo jumbo,” I grumbled as I scribbled a quick note across the bottom of the expense sheet and started gathering up my piles of work.
“I’m sure it is for your well-being. A few more days isn’t going to hurt you,” he assured me with a small grin. “Do anything interesting today?”
I snorted. “Does it look like it gets interesting around here?” I glanced around the small room. My stuffed teddy bear sat on the nightstand beside my bed. Some more flower arrangements had been added to the others, and there were a few balloons in the corner by the window that Hunter had brought me that afternoon to make me smile. Christian had stopped by earlier, but I didn’t want to bring that up.
“Did you eat?”
Another snort. “If you mean, did I eat the slimy pea soup and what the nurse said was meatloaf, then no. But your brother snuck me in some chicken and dumplings.” It had been one of the first real meals I’d had in forever, and I had practically inhaled the food.
“Want something gooey?” he asked in a lowered voice as if it was some naughty secret. And the seductive tone of his voice made it feel very naughty, but I quickly pushed away thoughts of all the things I’d allowed him to do to me in bed, knowing it wasn’t what he was talking about.
The thought of one of Keith’s sinfully sweet concoctions made my mouth water, and I leaned forward. “What do you have in mind?”
He grinned. “I happen to know that there is an ice cream shop down in the food court. They don’t close for thirty more minutes. I could go down and get you anything you want… Like a brownie sundae with extra hot fudge and whipped cream.”
I nearly moaned at the thought of the decadent dessert. Flash
es of another time eating just such a treat invaded my mind, and I pulled back a little. “Do you think you can get it by the General out there?” I teased. The night nurse who came on duty at six was a real stickler for rules. The only reason she allowed Keith to stay so late each night was because he had personally talked to the administrator, who had told the entire staff that what Keith wanted, Keith was to get.
“I think I can pull a few strings to get you what you want, baby.” He lifted that brow again. “Well?”
“Yes, please.” I settled back against the pillows as he stood.
“Be right back,” he promised with a wink.
***
“Okay, Kari.” Dr. Shelton was standing by my bedside. He had already given me three different lectures on making sure I kept up my appointments with my physical therapist, Dr. Hayes, and the extreme importance of a follow-up with him the next week. But he was letting me go home today, so I couldn’t be too “snarky” with him. “I want you to take it easy for the next week or so. No strenuous activities. No stress. No going into the office.”
I grinned up at him. “Damn, I was going to train for the Boston Marathon. So, I guess that is out?”
He returned my grin and shook his head at me. “I’m going to miss that smart mouth of yours.” He scribbled something on the forms he had in his hand and then tore off the top sheet. Instead of handing it over to me, he gave it to my father. “She shouldn’t be left on her own too often. She seems like the type to get into trouble.”
“She sure does like to cause it,” Baxter teased as he glanced over the paper in his hands.
A nurse appeared with a wheelchair. I sat down in it before anyone could order me to. I was so ready to get out of there and breathe fresh air once again. The only downside to the day—and part of me was angry at myself for feeling that way—was that I hadn’t seen Keith. For the first time, he hadn’t been to see me all day.
Our Broken Love Page 11