“I was not,” she mumbled, unable to resist the urge to rub at her eyes, “asleep.”
“Oh, I see,” was his response. “Did you remember Jana coming into the room a while ago?”
“Er, no,” she sheepishly replied. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”
“Ah” he said, with an air of the greatest comprehension. “I understand now! You were resting your eyes and thinking very hard!”
“Yes, I was!” She stuck to her story in spite of the twinkle in Luke’s eyes. Then she looked back at him with something like fear in hers. “Luke, I—I don’t want it to end.”
His face gentled unbelievably. “It won’t, love,” he whispered, and touched her lips with his own. “I swear to you that it won’t.” Then, without waiting to see if she went straight inside or not, he turned and strode on down to his room, shutting the door behind him.
It was incredible, she thought sleepily as she opened her eyes the next morning and looked at the brilliant ring on her left hand, how good life can be. She knew a sudden fear; life was, she felt, too good. How unreal events seemed in comparison to how her life had been such a short time ago! Something would happen, and her whole world would come crashing down around her ears. What, she couldn’t say, but something would happen.
She was still huddled under the covers and thinking unpleasant thoughts when Jana knocked on her door. “Come in,” she called, sitting up quickly.
The door opened and Jana slipped in, carrying a hot, steaming mug and wearing a delightful smile. “Now I’m pulling a Katherine trick,” she announced with a twinkle. “Here, dear. I’m so happy for you.”
“You are? I find I’m very happy, too.” Katherine twinkled back. She stretched out lazily. “Oh, Jana! Life isn’t supposed to be this good to me. I—I don’t trust it, when it hands me someone so incredibly wonderful, like Luke. It’s all going to blow away at the first strong wind, and…” Her eyes met the older woman’s and saw the kindness in those blue eyes. “I’m being stupid. I think I’d better get dressed, don’t you?” She kicked off the covers and got up.
Contrary to her rather unformed fears, nothing in the next few days proclaimed disaster. In fact, she felt as if she were floating through a fairy tale, she was so supremely happy.
She loved her new appointment on the children’s ward, and was soon a favorite with both nurses and patients. Of course, many were too sick to be very aware of anything outside their own discomfort, but the ones who could enjoyed her careful attention. She found to her own surprise that she possessed an abundance of patience with the little ones, more so than with the older folks. Soon she was the one called upon to help feed Susie, who wouldn’t let anyone else feed her, or to calm little Joseph when his mother left to eat supper. They were, she told Luke, much better behaved than the older folks.
This pattern of serenity lasted for several days.
The hospital was being operated with a skeleton staff, because of an outbreak of flu, and both Katherine and Jana were putting in extra hours. One afternoon, Jana called Luke’s office and told him not to come and pick up Katherine. “We’ve had a bit of an upset,” she told him, a note of strain underlying her calm voice, “and quite a few are staying over their shifts. There’s been a street fight and several bystanders were seriously hurt. A car swerved to miss a little boy who was mistakenly pushed out into the street, and caused a three-car accident, so things are going to be a mess. We should be getting the first ambulance in a few minutes—what a time to be short-staffed! See you later.”
In the meantime, Katherine was involved in a very personal crisis of her own.
Chapter Nine
The front door opened with a crash, and Katherine walked in quickly, checking only at the sight of Luke coming down the hall. They looked at each other for a moment, his shocked ejaculation bursting forth at the sight of her reddened dress and her white, set face with the blazing green eyes. She broke away from his gaze, feeling a little odd as the world seemed to blur a bit, but then she focused on the stairs. She started up them very fast. He was quick behind her, even quicker than Jana, who had come in at the door just behind Katherine.
“Kate—Kate!” he called after her sharply, but she made no reply. She entered her room with the same sort of crash that had heralded her entrance to the house and strode across to the bathroom, slamming the door and locking it behind her. Luke was only a mere split second behind her, but it was long enough for her to barricade herself in. He pounded on the door after her. “Kate! Let me in, love. Come on, let me in!”
There was no answer. Katherine had listened for a moment to his voice as she leaned against the locked door, and she felt the door heave with his pounding. She couldn’t seem to feel anything, though. She didn’t feel the slightest inclination to open the door as he’d asked her to. She hadn’t felt anything after that knifelike pain when the little boy had died beneath her fingertips. She couldn’t even remember how she had got into her bathroom, but that didn’t matter. She was glad, because she didn’t want to feel anything, not ever again.
If life could be cruel to her, she thought tiredly, resting her head against the vibrating door, then it had been unbearably cruel to that little boy. A deep, agonized sob broke from her as she began to experience again that knife-like pain.
She had been mercifully numb as the head nurse had pulled her away from the little body, and she had continued feeling that dull, sustaining numbness as Jana, told of what had happened, later drove her home. She had sat in uncommunicative silence all the way home, unaware and uncaring about the silent, concerned presence beside her. But now, she wasn’t to have that escape.
She looked down at herself and was shocked anew at the amount of blood that had somehow got all over her. She’d been wiped off at the site, and when she had got back to the hospital she’d washed completely clean, but there was still that horrifying red down her front. A feeling of panic invaded her; she must get it all off. Scrabbling at her shoes and getting them off her feet, she started the shower going with very hot water and stepped in, clothes and all. Standing under the burning spray, she tried to erase from her mind what had happened, but she couldn’t. Passing her arms round her waist tightly as she felt that knife of anguish, she cried aloud from the pain of it, and bent over double in the shower, going to her knees.
It was at that sound, coming as it did over the water’s gushing, that Luke put his shoulder to the door of the bathroom and crashed into the little cubicle.
He moved faster than Jana had ever seen him move before, and was bending over, trying to get Katherine to stand up, but she was too rigid and wrapped in her own terrible grief to attend to him, and too slippery with wetness for him to be able to grasp her with any degree of safety for lifting out. Those awful, heartrending sobs were tearing at him. He stepped into the bath and knelt beside her, pulling her into his arms and straining her close. The scalding water still streamed on them painfully, and he reached behind with one hand to turn it off. Then he put his head down on her shoulder, hiding his face in her wet hair, rocking her back and forth.
Slowly his presence penetrated her anguish, and suddenly, convulsively, she thrust her arms about his neck in a stranglehold. She pushed her face into his warm, wet neck and cried like she had never cried before.
After urging her out of the bath, he turned to his sister and said quietly that while she helped Katherine get out of her wet clothes, he would go and change himself. After making such a decisive statement, he remained for some moments, staring at Katherine’s wet, bent head, until Jana gently shooed him out. When he had closed the door of the bedroom behind him, she turned to the younger girl and found her already stripping.
Katherine’s teeth had begun to chatter, and her lips were blue by the time she slipped into the warm nightgown that Jana had found for her and belted her dressing gown about her slim waist. She didn’t notice Jana’s worried glances at her alarming silence, nor did she feel the gentle, helping fingers that prompted her to sit on
the edge of the bed and later brushed out the sodden tangles in her long hair.
Katherine had thought that she could feel no greater pain than she had already experienced. She had also thought that she could feel no greater happiness. She had been wrong on one count: the pain that she felt now, the first grief she’d experienced for a human being other than herself, was deeper than any self-absorbed emotion she’d ever known. She knew, for the first time, how deeply one can hurt for another’s plight. She had tasted the consequences of a life built on caring for others.
The way she felt now, she never wanted to care for another person as long as she lived. And so it was, when Luke re-entered her room scant minutes later in dry clothes, his damp hair brushed off his forehead, that he found her completely absorbed in herself. She had retreated from the outside world to her dark, bitter thoughts. When Jana quietly talked with Luke over her head, she heard every word that was spoken; one part of her mind even registered and understood what was said. But for the most part her consciousness rejected the whole conversation and anything addressed to her as superfluous. It was, in comparison to what she was experiencing inside, unimportant.
“She hasn’t spoken a word to me since you left,” Jana told him worriedly. “In fact, she never spoke at all on the way home from the hospital. Luke, I’m very concerned about the way she’s handling all this.”
He did no more than nod absently at his sister, his eyes dwelling thoughtfully on Katherine’s sad face as, with her head bowed, she watched the pattern that her fingers were drawing on her dressing gown. He asked Jana, “Have you heard anything about dinner yet?”
She replied, “Marian said something about it being ready—she poked her head in here a few minutes ago.”
Why don’t you go down and eat with Marian?” he suggested quietly. “I’ll tuck Kate into bed and sit with her until you’re done. Then perhaps you could fix a tray and bring it up for the two of us, if you would?”
“Certainly,” was her immediate response. She glanced back down at Katherine’s bent head, her eyes filled with sorrow. She said, “I think they said that the little boy was five years old.” Katherine’s head jerked at this, which both saw, and Jana’s face was wet with tears as she left the room quickly.
Strong hands clasped tightly on her shoulders, startling her into looking up. She obediently obeyed the slight pressure and stood. Her eyes followed Luke’s movements as he leaned to twitch the covers back and throw her pillows against the headboard. Then he turned back to her, and a gentle arm about her shoulders coaxed her forward to slip into the soft bed. Instead of pulling the covers up around her, as one part of her mind half expected, he slid into the bed with her also, and then pulled the top, quilted bedspread over them both. Bracing his broad back on the headboard behind him, he reached out and pulled her into his arms. She went willingly and settled on his chest with a slight sigh. Putting one leg up and letting her body fit into his strong curves, with one arm around his waist, she gradually began to relax from the awful tension that had gripped her since the early afternoon. He began to talk quietly, lightly, about several unimportant everyday circumstances in his workday, and at first the pain was almost unbearable to listen to his calm voice talking of such things and remember the terrible scene from earlier. But soon his droning voice had its desired effect, and she began to pay attention to some things that were being said. She even managed to smile at a mild witticism, although he couldn’t see it from where he was. She began to feel the extreme exhaustion that so often accompanies strong grief, and soon she was dozing lightly, comforted by the even and untroubled rise and fall of his firm chest.
A quiet click roused her, and both she and Luke looked around as Jana came through the door with a loaded tray, Marian following close behind. As she put the laden tray beside the bed on the floor, Marian placed two glasses of wine that she had carried on the bedside table. They only stayed long enough to look with deep anxiety at Katherine’s silent head, but a slight smile and a shaking of Luke’s dark head had them backing out.
When they had gone, Luke released Katherine to bend forward and inspect the contents of the tray. She settled back to watch him apathetically, and refused all offers of the delicious meal on the tray. She did, however, take the wine gladly, while Luke ate unhindered. She watched him, glad of the chance to concentrate on someone else after the self-absorption of her own depression. She smiled at his evident enthusiasm as he tucked into a very full plate, and this smile he did catch. His eyes met hers for a moment and his hand stilled, but what he saw seemed to reassure him, for he was soon finishing his meal after returning a smile. When he finished, he asked her if she had changed her mind about wanting to eat. With her negative shake of the head, he swung his legs off the bed, telling her that he would be back in a minute. He bent and picked up the tray, striding out of the door. The sound of footsteps on the stairs was soon heard, and she leaned back against the headboard with closed eyes.
He was back soon enough, carrying a book under one arm and a fresh glass of wine in the other. The wine he handed to her; the book he opened when he had settled on the bed against the headboard again and long legs stretched out crossed in front of him. Thus was the evening spent: when she had finished her second glass of wine, she snuggled deep into her pillow, under the covers, and watched his still face as he read.
When at last she was sleeping peacefully, Luke lowered his book to watch her face with a deep frown of worry between his level brows. He eased off the bed carefully, watching to see if he disturbed her at all. She slept on, and he tenderly tucked the covers around her, as gentle as any mother with her only child, and with his closed book in hand, he walked silently out of the room, switching off the light but leaving the door to her room open as he went.
She was so very tired that at first her sleep was unbroken and deep. Gradually, though, her consciousness was disturbed with nightmare images flitting through her sleeping mind, and she began to toss about. This action was soon pronounced, the sweat breaking out on her brow, and the hands that had been restlessly moving about on the covers clenched the sheets very hard.
The blood was everywhere—no matter how she tried to stem the flow, it kept coming out. She was drenched all down her front, and her hands and arms, pushed frantically against the horrifying wound that rent Luke’s chest, were stained almost black with it. She felt it pulse out, and knew that with every heartbeat he was pumping out his life right there in front of her eyes, and she was powerless to stop it. And all the while, his dark, gentle eyes watched her with a smile in their depths. In a frenzy of horror and grief, she screamed at him, “Don’t die! Don’t—don’t die on me! Please, don’t die! Stop smiling at me, damn you!” Impelled with a force prompted by terror, she sprang up, staring wildly into the darkness, her hands pressed over her cheeks and moving to her mouth to stifle the sounds of the sobs coming forth. She closed her eyes and bent over her knees, weeping, and then Luke crashed into the room, followed soon by Jana and Marian.
The two women crept out as Katherine blurted out to Luke’s bent head a veritable deluge of horror, grief and rage. Marian shut the door on her trembling voice just as she was attempting to tell him of the awful nightmare image, and the irrevocable stains on her arms from his life’s blood while he held her tightly.
Marian sent a troubled smile to Jana, murmuring, “‘What, will these hands ne’er be clean?’” But when Jana asked her what she meant by what was obviously a quote, she shook her head. The two stood talking irresolutely for some time in the hall, but after a little bit the conversation lagged, and each went back to her room in silence.
After Katherine had started, it was as if she could not stop the flow of words, and it was quite some time before her anguished voice petered out into silence. His arms were holding her so tightly that she thought her ribs must crack from the strain, and the neck muscles where her hands were nestled felt rigid. But his voice, when she told him of her nightmare, was mild and flatly matter-of-fact when he sa
id, “But my dear, I’m not dead and I’m not even wounded. And I promise you that I’m definitely not smiling at any of this.”
That steadied her more than anything else he could have done, and soon she was able to lift her head up from its resting place on his supporting shoulder and loosen her death-hold from his neck. He loosened his hold on her also at this, and leaned back to look searchingly at her face. Her hair was all over the place, and he pushed it off her face with one hand. Her eyes were extremely large, with the dark circles under them that he had hoped never to see again. Her face was set into lines of bitterness and exhaustion, and the curve of her mouth was tense.
“How could God—if there is a God—let that little boy die like that?” she burst out, with such an expression of bitterness that his heart seemed to contract. “I would have given my life, yes and gladly, too, to have that little boy live! I would far rather have died myself, than to watch his blood come out of him like that!”
“Don’t say that!” He gripped her slender shoulders roughly. Her shocked eyes stared up at his brilliant, expressive ones, until after a while his fell and his grip relaxed. “I’m sorry. Of course you feel that way; I’m sure that I would have felt the same.” He smiled twistedly, and it tore her heart to see him look so. “It’s just that I could never give you up, so that someone else could live. It’s asking too much of me.”
She raised a hand to cup his cheek. “I know,” she whispered. “I care about you the same way.” She paused, and then continued in a tone that conveyed how deeply the death of the little stranger had affected her. “But if caring means feeling this terrible, wrenching agony, then I don’t want to care at all. I don’t want to care about anything. Luke, I don’t want to feel this pain!”
The Gift of Happiness Page 14