Her vehemence dumbfounded him.
“Take me back to the room,” she said, yanking at the brake levers. Her voice was quivering, her whole body shaking. “The two hours are up.”
They weren’t. But he picked up her blanket and unfolded it, intending to wrap her in it. “You’re shivering. At least put this on.”
She snatched it from him and hugged it to her chest.
He handed her the picnic basket and pushed her silently through the shattered day. It had to be seventy-five degrees in the sun, but her shoulders were convulsing. He didn’t touch her, just pushed onward.
Upstairs, Collins walked down the hall to meet them. “Hey, how’d it—whoa!” He stopped in front of Brenna. “You look awful. Let’s get you into bed.”
Daniel leaned miserably against the wall outside her room while Collins transferred her into the bed and reconnected the Wound-VAC.
“Dude,” Collins said, coming out past him. “What’d you do? She’s trashed.”
She boots me, and she’s trashed?
“I’m bringing her a shot for the pain.”
One for me too, pal. He pushed off the wall and went inside.
She was lying on her side, facing the window, her skin pale as snow in moonlight. “When James comes,” she said, “I’ll get him to hire someone who can sit with me at night. My brother can stay with Father or in a hotel, so you don’t have to worry about him being at your house.”
Dismissal, Rease style.
Apparently, these were the light bruises.
He sat in the chair out of her line of sight. She slept soundly, a drugged sleep that pulled her so far down she scarcely moved during the three hours he kept watch over her.
It was a mistake. The heat of the moment.
She recognized courtship when she saw it and she didn’t want it. The cutout sandwiches didn’t seem fun now—just foolish, like his headlong attempt to convince her to come home with him, while she was delivering her Dear John speech.
A simple little picnic had put him in the path of a wrecking ball.
He hadn’t known her long in chronological time. His heart shouldn’t feel this broken. He’d gotten his hopes up. While he’d been envisioning her by his side, her eyes shining up at him, her arm around his waist, she had been figuring out how to extricate herself from him. She regretted what she’d blurted in passion; he did not. He hadn’t made his promise in the heat of the moment. He’d made it in a moment of truth. The promise, however, meant nothing if she didn’t want him. It took two to build a relationship and only one to break it.
His cell phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out. Caller ID was his home number. He pressed Answer and moved to the passageway by the bathroom so he could speak without disturbing her. James was on his way and wanted to know what he and Brenna wanted for dinner.
“Whatever,” he said. He wasn’t going to stay after James returned. He was going to get his car and his house keys and go home. He hung up, walked around Brenna’s bed and sat in the chair nearest her. Her eyes were closed. Her chest rose and fell steadily. How was he going to say goodbye? What could he say—I love you? His high card was worthless. A woman who didn’t want courtship certainly didn’t want to hear a profession of love. She had welcomed his kisses, his caresses. She’d greeted him with fervor, allowed him to stay. Apparently he’d misread her. She’d just seen him as a comrade in arms, her fellow-survivor. They had come through an ordeal together. They were buddies. With benefits.
He got up, turned his back on her and stared out the window at the hospital campus. A cold front had blown in. The sun had given way to churning black clouds.
He stood there, unaware of time, until he heard the door open behind him. James, with dinner. They usually ate together, a family of three, enticing Brenna with treats from the outside world. This evening, Daniel would not be part of that circle.
“Greek, tonight.” James set the brown paper bag on Brenna’s tray. “Fisherman’s salad.” There were restaurants from every corner of the world within walking distance of Daniel’s home. Abundant food. In the wealthier parts of D.C., the UN ration boxes coveted by the Kavsaks would be set out on the curb for garbage collection.
“How’s she doing?” James asked, looking down on his sister.
“Slept all afternoon.”
“How was the picnic?” James grinned. “I bet she loved it.”
“It took a lot out of her.” He hesitated. “Listen, James. I’m…I’ve got some things to do tonight. Work to catch up on, so I’m going to head out. Tell her goodbye for me, would you?”
“Well, I’m going to wake her up anyway, to eat, why don’t—”
“No.” Daniel spoke with more heat than he intended. After the pissing contest he’d had with James to prove his place beside Brenna, the last thing he wanted was for her to wake and banish him publicly. “Just tell her ’bye, okay?”
Bye, I love you. Bye, I’ll miss you. Bye.
Daniel shook hands with James, briefly rested his fingertips on Brenna’s shoulder, and somberly walked away.
Brenna felt the butterfly-light touch on her shoulders and cringed inwardly, feeling Daniel’s pain as palpably as her own. But she kept her eyes closed, played out the pretense of being asleep.
It needs to be done. For his own good.
This was Daniel’s world. If she truly loved him, she had to let him go. He was wasting his beautiful courtship. She was too damaged, too corrupt, too sullied to stand at his side. He needed to be free to make the life he deserved with a woman who would give him children and do him proud.
She would just keep it in her heart that he had brought her cutout sandwiches. He had strolled her into the sunlight, invited her to his home. He had danced with her in Kavsak, made sweet, sweet love to her. As if she were worthy of that tenderness, that regard, that ineffable kindness. As if she were as good a woman as he was a man.
“Hey, Li’l Bear.” James shook her shoulder. “I brought dinner.”
She sat up. “I need you to make some calls.”
“Who to?”
“Find an aide to sit with me, nights. You take days. I asked Daniel to leave.”
“What?” James sat forward, shocked.
“He’s not coming back.”
“What the hell did he do?”
“He made me bunny sandwiches.”
He gave a confused shake of the head. “Wait—what?”
“He’s a good man, James. Good like Ari.”
“And so…you’re sending him away?”
She felt her body, her brain, her emotions shearing against each other, pulling in opposite directions. Love him. Send him away. Stay sane and remember. Lose your mind and forget. Survive at all costs. Just die. There was no choice that night. There was a choice. She made the wrong one. The right one. The wrong one.
She was Pangea, cracking up, fragmenting like once-joined continents that endlessly drifted apart then crashed together. She started rocking, emotional turmoil physicalized.
James sat beside her, slid his hand across her back. “Tell me,” he murmured.
“He thinks I’m someone good, too.” She whispered so no one would hear. She didn’t want anyone else to know Daniel had made such a big mistake.
“Oh, sweetie. You are. You’re good too.”
“I want to be.” The earth rose beneath her, pushing upward. Emotions boiled inside her, like molten magma pushing up from the core of the earth, seeking a fracture, a weakness where it could erupt. “But I’m not.” She rocked harder. “Oh, God, James. I did something awful.”
“What, honey? What did you do?”
She pressed her hands in her lap, fisted them into tight balls to keep them still. She felt like ripping her face off. “I saved his life.”
Chapter 21
Early Friday afternoon, Daniel was at his office, plowing his way through telephone calls and paperwork, catching up with all the independent producers who were preparing programs for him, identifying project sta
tuses, providing guidance, allocating resources. A mountain of work had accumulated since he left for Kavsak.
Starting at six every morning, ending at eleven at night, taking business lunches in between, he was getting his work life back on track. The only thing he did for himself was go to the gym.
Sam Chisolm, seeing him back, putting in his long hours, beamed.
And asked if he was writing yet.
No. Preoccupied as Daniel had been with surviving the war, he had taken scant notes. Those few he jotted the night after the surgery with Mariana were unintelligible. He recalled the gist of what she’d told him, but few exact facts or figures. He’d been concentrating on not hitting the floor.
Marga Velazquez, his senior video editor, had finished cataloguing the footage and was eager to start compiling the documentary. “This footage,” she exclaimed, eyes bright with an excitement he hadn’t seen in years, “is brilliant. Daring. Brutal.” An artist in her own right, Marga had worked with him for years. Talented and insightful, as well as technically masterful, she could work magic with moving pictures. The material, she proclaimed, practically assembled itself.
And yet, Daniel didn’t know where to start.
At home, one of his sleepless nights, he had cued up the dubs Marga had given him, and started watching. Sam called the process reviewing. To him, the material was just pictures.
To Daniel, it was reliving. Even after brief exposure, his nightmares started recurring. Watching the tapes was causing him to re-experience the fear, the terror. He was home again. He knew he was safe. And still, his recollection was so vivid it seemed real. It left him in a sweat, heart pounding.
Moreover, the work was pure Brenna. Her unique stamp was imprinted on every frame. It made him think of her, of everything they had endured together. Of how much he loved her. His mind drifted to her every minute of the day. He ached for her. How could he rebuild his life without her when he had to immerse himself in what was quintessentially hers?
His desktop phone rang as it had, incessantly, since word got out he was back in the office. He punched the flashing light and picked up with one hand while he finished signing a producer’s agreement with the other.
“Daniel Ellsworth,” he said, absently putting the handset to his ear.
“Daniel.”
Daniel froze.
“It’s James.” His voice sounded flat, exhausted. “James Rease.”
He put down the pen. “Yes, James.”
There was a pause. “It’s Brenna,” James said, so much anguish in his voice that Daniel’s blood turned to ice. “She’s not doing well.”
Pain pierced Daniel’s gut, no different than he imagined a stab wound would feel. He didn’t ask how Brenna was unwell. When a lover asked you to leave, it wasn’t because she wanted to keep sharing her life with you. Her personal information became her own again. Brenna had dismissed him. He was no longer entitled.
“I was wondering if…if you would come see her.”
Daniel shook his head. He wanted nothing more than to see her again. But that didn’t alter what Brenna wanted. “Did she ask for me to come, James?”
James hesitated.
He was ruthless in what he would do or say to protect his sister. Daniel listened carefully for any hint of deception.
“No,” James finally said. “She didn’t.”
The truth stung. Disappointment punctured his bubble of hope. She hadn’t changed her mind. “Then I don’t see how my going to visit her is going to help anything.”
“You all but told me you loved her,” James said, pleading and accusing at one time.
Hell, he all but told her he loved her. Fat lot of good it did.
“I’ve seen you with her,” James continued. “I know you do.”
James’ words hung in the void between them. Daniel said nothing. It was bad enough to be asked to leave, he didn’t need to lick his wounds in front of her brother. He was entitled to some shred of dignity.
“She said you were a good man.”
Daniel grunted. Small consolation that was. “Yeah, well.”
James’ voice turned husky. “She’s killing herself. Right before my eyes, and I can’t do a thing about it.”
Daniel sat forward, alarmed by James’ despair, scared by his message. “What do you mean, she’s killing herself?”
“She hasn’t eaten since you left. Barely drinks water. Refuses personal care. Refuses physio. Hardly talks, even to me. She’s given up. Surrendered. All she does is tell the nurses she has a pain of ten so they give her whomping doses of pain killers and snow her into oblivion.”
“What happened to the anti-depressants? The psychologist?”
“The meds take two weeks to kick in, Daniel. They’re not instant. And even then, they may have to experiment to find ones that are effective. They sent down a psychologist with a brand-new degree and about two minutes life experience. May as well have thrown a guppy in a shark tank.”
“Christ.”
“I can’t hold Dr. Lee off much longer. He’s pissing himself, scared of having a Rease die on his watch. He’s pushing for the psych ward. Wants to put in a tube. Force-feed her. Tie her down if he has to, to keep it in.” James’ voice broke. “Jesus. It’ll push her over the edge. She’ll rage if she’s restrained, you know she will. They’ll put her on anti-psychotics, stronger and stronger doses until she’s tractable. There’ll be nothing left of her but a shuffling wreck of irreversible tics and flicking tongue.”
Oh, Jesus. Brenna.
And James. He’d been running a marathon, keeping the world at bay for her, but he was teetering. If he went down, Brenna was done for.
“It’ll take me about half an hour to get there, okay? I’m on my way.”
He hung up, punched Mildred’s extension, told her something urgent had come up and asked her to cancel the two back-to-back meetings he had scheduled for the afternoon.
Sam was not going to be happy.
When Daniel arrived at Brenna’s room, James was standing in the hallway, her door open behind him. His complexion was gray, his eyes sunken dark craters, his hair wild, and clothing wrinkled. He looked like a guard who’d drawn too many shifts in a row and had been counting the seconds for his relief to come.
Odd, Daniel thought, that of six Rease brothers, James was the only one pulling duty. Perhaps Captains of Industry, as the others all were, lost sight of the value of a sister.
James held out one arm, gave Daniel a hard shoulder hug, and a couple thumps on the back. “Thanks for coming.”
Daniel glanced into Brenna’s room, saw the foot of her bed. His heart started skipping beats. He was so not over her. So worried. So uncertain anything he could do would help.
“I held the nurses off on the pain meds. Brenna’s about as awake as she can be. I’ll stay by the door. Make sure you aren’t interrupted.”
“I’ll try, James. But I have no magic wand.”
“You have love.”
“I do, yes,” he said sadly. “But she—”
“She loves you. She lets herself be unprotected with you. She never does that. Only exception—ever—was Ari. I know what I’m seeing.”
He shook his head. “She sent me away.”
“I think she sent you away because she doesn’t feel she deserves you.”
The statement shocked him. “James,” he protested, “I’m just a guy from Maine. No Glory-Halleluiah. Just a guy.” He realized he was arguing with the wrong person. It was Brenna he had to say it to.
James grasped his forearm, forestalling his entering the room. “The night you left, she broke down. She said she wasn’t a good woman. That she did something awful.”
Daniel thought about the massacre, of how they’d left that woman in the marketplace to be gang-raped, of how Brenna had stood in the clearing waiting to be shot, of how she had stepped on a land mine and not made it back for the children. “Everything was awful,” he said. “Did she identify something in particular?”
He knew the feeling. He had a documentary he couldn’t write because he didn’t want to talk about it, either.
“The only thing she told me didn’t make any sense.”
“What.”
“She said the awful thing she’d done was save your life.”
His heart spun like water sucked down a drain into a black hole.
“What the fuck did she do for you?” James insisted. “Because she’s lying in there, dying from it.”
Daniel felt the ground shifting beneath him. “She saved my life over and over, James. I don’t see how that means she isn’t a good woman. Besides, what’s to hide? What she saw and did, I did, too. We were together the whole time.”
James stared down the hallway, then looked back at Daniel. “You don’t remember the whole time.”
The room smelled stale. The shades were down, blocking the sunlight. Fresh towels, bed linens, and a gown sat in an unused pile on the chair. The walker was folded, leaning against the bathroom wall, out of reach of the bed.
Brenna was lying on her side, back to the door, her bed covers hanging half off the side of the bed. He circled the bed and looked down on her. Her figure seemed insubstantial, a bundle of sticks gradually drying out, turning to ash. Her eyes were closed and tear-stained at the corners, face gaunt, hair limp and stringy on the pillow. Her lips were cracked from the dry indoor air.
His magnificent woman, reduced to this. Apparently for him. And he had no idea what she had done, or how he might help her recover from it. Hell, he wasn’t even sure that once he woke her, she would let him stay in the room to try.
He wondered what James had attempted, to shake her from her spiral. Everything, he supposed. Cajoling, entreating, threatening. To no avail. She was locked inside her pain. He remembered feeling like that after Aya and Joseph Alden died. All he had wanted was to be released from the grief.
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