by Sandra Brown
Tate noticed, even if the surgeon failed to acknowledge it, that Carole’s eye was roving as though looking for a friend among them, or possibly a means of escape. He kept telling himself that Sawyer knew what he was doing. The surgeon might be accustomed to anxiety like this among his patients, but it was as disturbing as hell to Tate.
Sawyer extracted a glossy eight-by-ten color photograph from the folder he had carried in with him. “I want you to look at this, Mrs. Rutledge.” It was a picture of Carole. She was smiling the beguiling smile that had caused Tate to fall in love with her. Her eyes were shining and mischievous. Glossy dark hair framed her face.
“It’ll be an all day, bring-your-lunch operation,” he told her, “but my staff and I will fix you up. Give us eight to ten weeks from the day of your surgery and this is what you’ll look like, only younger and prettier, and with shorter hair. Who could ask for more than that?”
Apparently Carole could. Tate noticed that, rather than assuaging her fears, the surgeon’s visit had seemed to heighten them.
* * *
Avery tried moving her extremities and coaxing motion out of her fingers and toes, but her limbs still felt too heavy to lift. She couldn’t move her head at all. Meanwhile, each passing minute brought her closer to a disaster she seemed incapable of preventing.
For days—it was difficult to calculate exactly how many, but she guessed around ten—she had tried to figure out a means of letting everyone else in on the truth that only she knew. Thus far, she hadn’t arrived at a solution. As the days passed and her body healed, her anxiety increased. Everyone thought it was caused by the delay of her reconstructive operation.
Finally, Tate announced one evening that her surgery had been scheduled for the next day. “All the doctors involved consulted this afternoon. They agreed that you’re out of the danger zone. Sawyer issued the go-ahead. I came as soon as I was notified.”
She had until tomorrow to let him know that a dreadful mistake had been made. It was strange but, even though he was partially responsible for this tragic chain of events, she didn’t blame him. Indeed, she had come to anticipate his visits. She felt safer somehow when he was with her.
“I guess it’s all right to tell you now that I didn’t like Sawyer at first,” he said, sitting gingerly on the edge of her bed. “Hell, I still don’t like him, but I trust him. You know that he wouldn’t be doing the operation if I didn’t think he would do the best job.”
She believed that, so she blinked.
“Are you afraid?”
She blinked again.
“Can’t say that I blame you,” he said grimly. “The next few weeks are going to be tough, Carole, but you’ll get through them.” His smile stiffened slightly. “You always land on your feet.”
“Mr. Rutledge?”
When he turned his head toward the feminine voice who had spoken to him from the doorway, he provided Avery a rare view of his profile. Carole Rutledge had been a lucky woman.
“You asked me to remind you about Mrs. Rutledge’s jewelry,” the nurse said. “It’s still in the safe.”
Avery’s mind quickened. She had envisioned him entering her room and dumping her jewelry onto the bed. “These aren’t Carole’s things,” he would say. “Who are you?” But that scenario hadn’t occurred. Maybe there was hope yet.
“I keep forgetting to stop by the office and pick it up,” he told the nurse with chagrin. “Could you possibly send somebody down to get it for me?”
“I’ll call down and check.”
“I’d appreciate that. Thank you.”
Avery’s heart began to pound. She offered up a silent prayer of thanksgiving. Here, at the eleventh hour, she would be saved from disaster. Reconstructive surgery would have to be done to her face, but she would come out of it looking like Avery Daniels, and not someone else.
“The jewelry won’t do you much good in the operating room,” Tate was saying, “but I know you’ll feel better once your things are in my possession.”
In her mind, she was smiling hugely. It was going to be all right. The mistake would be discovered in plenty of time, and she could leave the emotional roller-coaster she had been riding behind.
“Mr. Rutledge, I’m afraid it’s against hospital regulations for anyone except the patient himself or next of kin to retrieve possessions from the safe. I can’t send anyone down for it. I’m sorry.”
“No problem. I’ll try to get down there sometime tomorrow.”
Avery’s spirits plummeted. Tomorrow would be too late. She asked herself why God was doing this to her. Hadn’t she been punished enough for her mistake? Would the rest of her life be an endless and futile endeavor to make up for one failure? She had already lost her credibility as a journalist, the esteem of her colleagues, her career status. Must she give up her identity, too?
“There’s something else, Mr. Rutledge,” the nurse said hesitantly. “There are two reporters down the hall who want to speak with you.”
“Reporters?”
“From one of the TV stations.”
“Here? Now? Did Eddy Paschal send them?”
“No. That’s the first thing I asked them. They’re after a scoop. Apparently word has leaked out about Mrs. Rutledge’s surgery tomorrow. They want to talk to you about the effect of the crash on your family and senatorial race. What should I tell them?”
“Tell them to go to hell.”
“Mr. Rutledge, I can’t.”
“No, you can’t. If you did, Eddy would kill me,” he muttered to himself. “Tell them that I’m not making any statements until my wife and daughter are drastically improved. Then, if they don’t leave, call hospital security. And tell them for me that if they go anywhere near the pediatric wing and try to see my mother or daughter, I’ll sue their asses for all they’ve got.”
“I’m sorry to have bothered you with—”
“It’s not your fault. If they give you any trouble, come get me.”
When his head came back around, Avery noticed through her tears that his face was lined with worry and exhaustion. “Media vultures. Yesterday the newspaper took a statement I had made about the shrimping business along the coast and printed it out of context. This morning my phone rang incessantly until Eddy could issue a counterstatement and demand a retraction.” He shook his head with disgust over the unfairness.
Avery sympathized. She had spent enough time in Washington to know that the only politicians who didn’t suffer were the unscrupulous ones. Men with integrity, as Tate Rutledge seemed to be, had a much more difficult time of it.
It was little wonder that he appeared so tired. He was not only burdened with running for public office, but he had to cope with an emotionally traumatized child and a wife facing her own ordeal.
Only she wasn’t his wife. She was a stranger. She couldn’t tell him that he was confiding in an outsider. She couldn’t protect him from media assaults or help him through Mandy’s difficulties. She couldn’t even warn him that someone might be planning to kill him.
* * *
He stayed with her through the night. Each time she awakened, he instantly materialized at her bedside. The character lines in his face became more pronounced by the hour as fatigue settled in. The whites of his eyes grew rosy with sleeplessness. Once, Avery was aware of a nurse urging him to leave and get some rest, but he refused.
“I can’t run out on her now,” he said. “She’s scared.”
Inside she was crying, No, please don’t go. Don’t leave me. I need someone.
It must have been dawn when another nurse brought him a cup of fresh coffee. It smelled delicious; Avery craved a sip.
Technicians came in to adjust her respirator. She was gradually being weaned from it as her lungs recovered from their injury. The machine’s job had been drastically scaled down from what it had originally done for her, but she would need it a few days more.
Orderlies prepped her for surgery. Nurses monitored her blood pressure. She tried to catch someon
e’s eye and alert them to the mix-up, but no one paid any attention to the mummified patient.
Tate stepped out for a while, and when he returned, Dr. Sawyer was with him. The surgeon was brisk and buoyant. “How are you, Carole? Mr. Rutledge told me you spent some anxious hours last night, but this is your big day.”
He methodically perused her chart. Much of what he said was by rote, she realized. As a human being, she didn’t like him any better than Tate did.
Satisfied with her vital signs, he shut the metal file and passed it to a nurse. “Physically, you’re doing fine. In a few hours, you’ll have the framework of a new face and be on your way to a full recovery.”
She put all her strength into the guttural sounds she made, trying to convey the wrongness of what they were about to do. They misinterpreted her distress. The surgeon thought she was arguing with him. “It can be done. I promise. In about half an hour we’ll be underway.”
Again, she protested, using the only means available to her, her single eye. She batted it furiously.
“Give her a pre-op sedative to calm her down,” he ordered the nurse before bustling out.
Avery screamed inside her head.
Tate stepped forward and pressed her shoulder. “Carole, it’s going to be all right.”
The nurse injected a syringe of narcotic into the IV in her arm. Avery felt the slight tug on the needle in the bend of her elbow. Seconds later, the now-familiar warmth began stealing through her, until even the pads of her toes tingled. It was the nirvana that junkies would kill for—a delicious jolt of numbness. Almost instantly she became weightless and transparent. Tate’s features began to blur and become distorted.
“You’re going to be all right. I swear it, Carole.”
I’m not Carole.
She struggled to keep her eye open, but it closed and became too heavy to reopen.
“… waiting for you, Carole,” he said gently.
I’m Avery. I’m Avery. I’m not Carole.
But when she came out of the operating room, she would be.
Six
“I don’t understand what you’re so upset about.”
Tate spun around and angrily confronted his campaign manager. Eddy Paschal suffered the glare with equanimity. Experience had taught him that Tate’s temper was short, but just as short-lived.
As Eddy expected, the fire in Tate’s eyes downgraded to a hot glow. He lowered his hands from his hips, making his stance less antagonistic.
“Eddy, for crissake, my wife had just come out of a delicate operation that had lasted for hours.”
“I understand.”
“But you can’t understand why I was upset when hordes of reporters surrounded me, asking questions?” Tate shook his head, incredulous. “Let me spell it out for you. I was in no mood for a press conference.”
“Granted, they were out of line.”
“Way out of line.”
“But you got forty seconds of airtime on the six and ten o’clock newscasts—all three networks. I taped them and played them back later. You appeared testy, but that’s to be expected, considering the circumstances. All in all, I think it went in our favor. You look like a victim of the insensitive media. Voters will sympathize. That’s definitely a plus.”
Tate laughed mirthlessly as he slumped into a chair. “You’re as bad as Jack. You never stop campaigning, measuring which way this or that went—in our favor, against us.” He dragged his hands down his face. “Christ, I’m tired.”
“Have a beer.” Eddy handed him a cold can he’d taken from the compact refrigerator. Taking one for himself, he sat down on the edge of Tate’s hotel room bed. For a moment they drank in silence. Finally, Eddy asked, “What’s her prognosis, Tate?”
Tate sighed. “Sawyer was braying like a jackass when he came out of the operating room. Said he was perfectly satisfied with the results—that it was the finest work his team had ever done.”
“Was that P.R. bullshit or the truth?”
“I hope to God it’s the truth.”
“When will you be able to see for yourself?”
“She doesn’t look like much now. But in a few weeks…”
He made a vague gesture and slouched down deeper into the chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him. His boots almost came even with Eddy’s polished dress shoes. The jeans Tate had on were at the opposite end of the wardrobe scale from Eddy’s creased and pressed navy flannel slacks.
For the present, Eddy didn’t badger his candidate about his casual attire. The political platform they were building was one that common folk—hardworking middle-class Texans—would adhere to. Tate Rutledge was going to be the champion of the downtrodden. He dressed the part—not as a political maneuver, but because that’s the way he had dressed since the early seventies, when Eddy had met him at the University of Texas.
“One of the crash survivors died today,” Tate informed him in a quiet voice. “A man my age, with a wife and four kids. He had a lot of internal injuries, but they had patched him up and they thought he was going to make it. He died of infection. God,” he said, shaking his head, “can you imagine making it that far and then dying from infection?”
Eddy could see that his friend was sinking into a pit of melancholia. That was bad for Tate personally and for the campaign. Jack had expressed his concern for Tate’s mental attitude. So had Nelson. An important part of Eddy’s job was to boost Tate’s morale when it flagged.
“How’s Mandy?” he asked, making his voice sound bright. “All the volunteers miss her.”
“We hung that get well banner they had all signed on her bedroom wall today. Be sure to thank them for me.”
“Everyone wanted to do something special to commemorate her release from the hospital. I’ll warn you that tomorrow she’s going to receive a teddy bear that’s bigger than you are. She’s the princess of this election, you know.”
Eddy was rewarded with a wan smile. “The doctors tell me that her broken bones will heal. The burns won’t leave any scars. She’ll be able to play tennis, cheerlead, dance—anything she wants.”
Tate got up and went for another two beers. When he was once again relaxing in the chair, he said, “Physically, she’ll recover. Emotionally, I’m not so sure.”
“Give the kid a chance. Adults have a hard time coping with this kind of trauma. That’s why the airline has counselors trained to deal with people who survive crashes and with the families of those who don’t.”
“I know, but Mandy was shy to begin with. Now she seems completely withdrawn, suppressed. Oh, I can get a smile out of her if I try hard enough, but I think she does it just to please me. She has no animation, no vitality. She just lies there and stares into space. Mom says she cries in her sleep and wakes up screaming from nightmares.”
“What does the psychologist say?”
“That dyke,” Tate said, cursing impatiently. “She says it’ll take time and patience, and that I shouldn’t expect too much from Mandy.”
“I say ditto.”
“I’m not angry with Mandy for not performing on command,” he snapped irritably. “That’s what the psychologist implied, and it made me mad as hell. But my little girl sits and stares like she’s got the weight of the world on her shoulders, and that’s just not normal behavior for a three-year-old.”
“Neither is living through a plane crash,” Eddy pointed out reasonably. “Her emotional wounds aren’t going to heal overnight, any more than her physical ones will.”
“I know. It’s just… hell, Eddy, I don’t know if I can be what Carole and Mandy and the voting public need, all at the same time.”
Eddy’s greatest fear was that Tate would second-guess his decision to remain in the race. When Jack had told him that there were rumors in journalistic circles of Tate withdrawing from the race, he’d wanted to hunt down the gossiping reporters and kill them single-handedly. Luckily, Tate hadn’t heard the rumors. Eddy had to keep the candidate’s fighting spirit high.
Sitting forward, he said, “You remember the time you played in that fraternity tennis tournament and won it for us our sophomore year?”
Tate regarded him blankly. “Vaguely.”
“Vaguely,” Eddy scoffed. “The reason the recollection is dim is because you had such a hangover. You’d forgotten all about the tournament and had spent the previous night drinking beer and banging a Delta Gamma. I had to rout you out of her bed, get you into a cold shower and onto the court by nine o’clock to keep us from getting a forfeit.”
Tate was chuckling with self-derision. “Is this story going somewhere? Does it have a point?”
“The point is,” Eddy said, scooting farther forward so that his hips were barely on the edge of the bed, “that you came through, under the worst possible conditions, because you knew you had to. You were the only chance we had of winning that tournament and you knew it. You won it for us, even though minutes before your first match you were massaging your blue balls and puking up two six-packs of beer.”
“This is different from a college tennis tournament.”
“But you,” Eddy said, aiming an index finger at him, “are exactly the same. Since I’ve known you, you’ve never failed to rise to the occasion. Through those two years we spent together at UT, through flight training, through Nam, when you were carrying me out of that goddamn jungle, when have you ever failed to be a fucking hero?”
“I don’t want to be a hero. I just want to be an effective congressman for the people of Texas.”
“And you will be.”
Slapping his knees as though an important decision had been reached, Eddy stood up and set his empty beer can on the dresser. Tate stood up, too, and he happened to catch a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror.
“Good God.” He ran his hand over the heavy stubble on his jaw. “Who’d vote for that? Why didn’t you tell me I looked so bad?”
“I didn’t have the heart.” Eddy slapped him lightly between the shoulder blades. “All you need is some rest. And I recommend a close shave in the morning.”