“And here’s your breakfast,” Ellie told her, putting her dish down on the table in the girl’s usual place.
Taking her seat, Heather appeared ready to dig in.
“Those eggs look a lot better than the ones Uncle Colin makes,” she observed. And then she realized that she’d hurt his feelings with her honest assessment. Crying “Oops,” Heather covered her mouth.
“That’s okay, kid,” he said, absolving her of any guilt on his behalf. “They are better. Eat up.”
With an exaggerated sigh of relief, Heather did as she was told.
Chapter Sixteen
She kept telling herself to back off, to leave before she became too entrenched, too complacent.
Too happy.
The longer she remained, the more she felt it was like mocking the gods, and in every Greek mythology story she’d read as a child, mocking the gods never ended well for the one who did the mocking. The gods always got their revenge.
The only problem with all these points Ellie kept raising in her mind and her pep talks to herself was that it was already too late. Too late because she was too entrenched, too complacent and too happy for words.
And yes, she was afraid, really afraid that it would fall apart on her, but she just couldn’t force herself to leave, to end this once and for all.
Several times she’d even rehearsed the words to tell Colin: that their relationship had run its course, that it was all a big mistake on her part and that they should just stop now and go their separate ways, remaining friends.
But she didn’t want to be his friend, not when being his lover was so much more fulfilling. Life had meaning again and she no longer spent the first few minutes of every morning trying to pull herself up out of an oppressive abyss.
Instead, she woke up smiling.
Besides, she couldn’t end it. There wasn’t just herself to think of in this relationship, she argued. She’d become incredibly fond of Heather. They had bonded over their mutual experience of losing someone—in Heather’s case, two someones. She just couldn’t hurt the girl by ending it with Colin and walking out of her life, too.
If she did walk out, there was no way they could visit with one another. Doing something like that, walking away from Colin, would leave the girl reeling and in the terrible position where Heather felt she had to choose sides. Hers would of course have to be with her uncle. Anything else wasn’t feasible.
Any way Ellie looked at it, terminating her relationship with Colin only led to unhappiness and hopelessness.
Especially for her.
So she continued seeing Colin and thus seeing Heather, continued as if everything was all right and that deep down in the recess of her soul, she wasn’t haunted by the specter of a very real fear.
A fear that was always there, in the background, stuffed into a corner and hardly noticeable except in the right light.
So she tried not to pay attention to it and prayed that eventually, the fear would lessen or just go away altogether.
In the meantime, Ellie lost herself in the demands of her job. In her off hours, she joined forces with Colin. Christmas was swiftly approaching and he’d asked her to help him make this a memorable celebration for Heather. His goal was to keep his niece too busy to have any time to be sad.
“It’s going to be rough for her,” Colin speculated one evening as they sat on the couch together talking after Heather had gone to bed. “This is her first Christmas without her parents and I know it’s got to be making her unhappy, but I want to do something special for her to get her mind off the pain of missing them.”
Ellie looked at him and she could almost see the wheels in his head turning as he swiftly examined and then discarded ideas. And then his eyes seemed to light up.
“Maybe I’ll take some time off and we’ll go to Disney World for a week,” he said, turning toward Ellie and becoming more enthusiastic the more he thought about the idea.
She could see how that could be a good distraction for the ten-year-old, but there was a problem.
“It’s a great idea, but I can’t come with you. I can’t take off for a week,” she told him honestly. The holidays usually meant more work, not less. “The best I can do is get Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off.”
Colin was nothing if not flexible. He was already coming up with a plan B. “Okay, no Disney World. We’ll do Disneyland, instead.”
Ellie shook her head. There was a problem with that, too. “Disneyland is closed on Christmas,” she pointed out.
“Closed? You’re sure?” he questioned, momentarily disheartened.
“I’m afraid so.”
Regrouping, Colin restructured his plan. What mattered here was some sort of fun activity and the three of them being together.
“Then we’ll do Christmas Eve—it’s open Christmas Eve day, right?” he asked her.
She smiled at Colin, happy to confirm at least this much for him. “Yes.”
“Okay, then that’s the plan,” he finalized. “We’ll go to Disneyland on Christmas Eve day and then figure out something different for Christmas Day.” Ever positive, Colin tightened his arm around her shoulders, drawing her closer to him.
“How about celebrating it on the beach, just the three of us?” Ellie asked, the idea suddenly coming to her. “It’s pretty down by Laguna Beach this time of year, and there’re some trees and a few benches just a little ways in from the beach. There’s even this picturesque gazebo overlooking the water,” she recalled. “We could pack a lunch, eat there, then look for seashells or just walk along the sand.” She shifted so she could look at him. “What do you think?”
“I think that I’m lucky to have you,” Colin answered, hugging her to him. “Heather and I both are.”
There it was again, that feeling that they were a unit, a family. Ellie felt the same rosy glow she always did when she contemplated their situation.
A tiny voice in her head whispered, It’s not going to last. You know that. It’s not going to last.
Her sense of self-defense instantly kicked in, shutting down the voice and blocking it.
But even so, the little voice still insisted on echoing through her brain.
* * *
“C’mon, Jerry, get a move on. We’ve got two stories to cover and we’re not going to cover them from here,” Ellie urged.
It was several days after she and Colin had made their holidays plans and she had to admit, she was really looking forward to the day. She hadn’t been to Disneyland as a visitor for years.
She’d already reached the doorway leading out of the newsroom bull pen and doubled back to her cameraman in the time it had taken Jerry to secure the camera case he always brought with him on assignments.
Jerry raised his eyes to look at her. “Looks like someone got a double dose of vitamins this morning,” he commented. “Or are you just downing too many energy drinks?”
She laughed, dismissing his questions. “If you must know, I’m just being high on life,” she informed the man.
Jerry gazed at her knowingly. “Is that what you call him these days? ‘Life’?” he asked with a laugh, slinging the camera-case strap over his arm. It was heavy and required balance on his part, even given his height.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ellie sniffed, pretending as if Jerry had no idea that her life had taken this turn for the better and why.
“Uh-huh. Sure. On to more important things,” Jerry said, continuing. “Betsy and I are having our usual Christmas party this weekend. You’re invited.” He said it as if it was an afterthought instead of all part of the hazing that he loved putting her through. “Oh, and bring Mr. Life along,” he added.
“We’ll see,” Ellie said, grabbing another one of Jerry’s cases and automatically carrying it out for him. They were
a team in her eyes and there was no hierarchy to their relationship. “You take more time getting ready than my grandmother,” she said, shaking her head.
“Hey, I’ve met your grandmother. That’s a really together lady,” he told her.
Ellie just made a dismissive sound. Turning to walk out the door for a second time, she found that her way was unexpectedly blocked by the program manager.
The man didn’t look happy.
“I’m glad I caught you,” Marty said. Instead of his usual good-natured smile, the program manager had a rather grim expression on his face.
“What’s up, Marty?” Ellie asked, silently telling herself not to start coming up with dire scenarios. She had to stop being paranoid. “You giving us a third story to cover?” She glanced at Jerry, but he had no idea why the program manager had come to them instead of the other way around, either. “We might not be able to get to it in time,” she warned.
She got no further.
“Something just came down over the wire,” Marty told her. His voice had never sounded so serious, so bleak. Ellie immediately felt her stomach seizing up and then sinking.
“What is it, Marty?” she asked. “C’mon, you’re scaring me. What just came in over the wire?”
“Fifteen minutes ago, a local detective foiled a robbery in progress. Two guys tried to pull off a home invasion.”
“You said foiled,” Ellie repeated, her voice seeming to echo in her head as she spoke. She was afraid to say anything more, waiting for Marty to fill her in. Praying he wasn’t going to say something she couldn’t bear to hear. But then why did he look this way?
“The two burglars were taken into custody before they could make off with anything.”
He was doling out information.
Why?
Her breath suddenly backed up in her throat. She felt Jerry’s hand on her shoulder, as if he was silently trying to help her brace herself. She didn’t want to brace herself. She wanted this to be all right.
Ellie shrugged his hand away. Her eyes never leaving the program manager’s face, she held her breath as she demanded, “And the local detective?”
“He’s alive but in critical condition,” Marty told her. “The ambulance took him to Bedford Presbyterian.”
Her voice was shaking as she heard herself ask, “You have a name?”
Marty barely nodded before saying, “It’s him, Ellie. It’s Detective Benteen.”
For just one turbulent moment, the immediate world shrank down to a pinprick. She thought she was going to pass out—just like the first time. It took everything she had merely to struggle back to consciousness. She wasn’t going to faint! She was stronger than that.
But the next moment, Ellie just wanted to flee. To run and run until she was too exhausted to take another step. It didn’t matter where, just away.
She couldn’t go through this again, couldn’t take the fear, the horrible pain waiting to rip her apart only a heartbeat away.
She’d been through this once; she couldn’t go through this again.
She couldn’t.
And then she heard Jerry’s voice breaking through the fog about her brain.
“C’mon, I’ll drive you,” he told her, his hand up against her back as if he was afraid she’d sink to the floor if he took it away.
“I’m not covering this story,” she all but snapped at him.
“I’m not driving you as a cameraman,” he told her gently but firmly. “I’m driving you as a friend.”
Stricken, Ellie realized she’d turned toward Marty and was looking at him questioningly.
The program manager waved her out. “Go—don’t even think about it. I’ll get someone else to cover your stories today.”
Ellie didn’t wait to hear anything more.
* * *
She didn’t remember leaving the building, didn’t remember the ride to the hospital. She was hardly aware of running through the hospital’s electronic doors, which barely had time to open for her.
Jerry was the one who rattled off the information to the woman sitting at the ER desk. Ellie just couldn’t speak. Her legs and body were heavy. She felt as if she was walking through a nightmare.
A recurring nightmare.
She’d been in this hospital before, faced some woman at the ER desk before only to be told that her husband wasn’t in any of the beds. Beds were for the living. He was in the morgue.
She was terrified of hearing that again. Terrified that it was happening all over again. That the person she had fallen in love with against every objection her common sense had raised had been ripped away from her by some madman firing a gun.
Just like last time.
Struggling to focus, to think, she only just realized that Jerry was talking to her.
“He’s in surgery, Ellie. The nurse said Colin’s in surgery.”
Ellie stared up at the tall cameraman, her heart pounding so hard she could barely hear him. She blinked as if that could somehow clear her ears.
“Then he’s alive?” she asked fearfully.
Jerry nodded, his curly reddish hair bobbing almost independently.
“He’s alive,” he confirmed, looking extremely relieved, then added, “They don’t like to operate on dead people.”
She tried to smile at the joke he’d made for her benefit, but she found that her mouth could hardly curve. Her face was frozen. Numb. The only thing she could do was repeat what Jerry had just told her. “He’s alive.”
And then, sobbing, she threw her arms around Jerry, burying her face against the lower part of his chest because that was all she could reach.
* * *
Ellie pulled herself together long enough to call Olga to inform the woman of what had happened and to ask her to stay with Heather. She tried her very best to sound positive.
“He is going to be all right?” Olga asked, her tone demanding the information, the reassurance.
“He’s going to be all right,” Ellie told the woman, praying that if she said the words often enough, it would be so.
She terminated the call before her voice broke. She cried the second she stopped talking.
* * *
Ellie waited in the hall outside the operating door, leaning against the wall for support. Jerry stayed with her, refusing to leave her alone.
Someone brought out a couple of folding chairs for them. When Jerry opened the first one up, placing it beside Ellie, she dropped into it, her knees collapsing at that moment.
He opened the second one for himself.
“You don’t have to stay with me,” she told the cameraman as a second hour melted into a third.
“I’m not leaving you now, kid,” he answered. “Besides, I’m your ride, remember?”
“I can call a cab,” she told him numbly.
“Oh no,” he told her. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.” He shifted in the chair. It wasn’t exactly comfortable for a big man like him. “You want something to drink?” he offered. “We might be here for a while. I think I saw a vending machine down the hall.”
Ellie shook her head. “You go get something for yourself,” she told him. “I’m okay.”
She was far from okay, but he knew better than to argue with her. He merely noted, “Dehydrating yourself isn’t going to do him any good.” Rising, he told Ellie, “Be right back.”
She was hardly aware of nodding. Her eyes remained trained on the operating room doors.
* * *
Jerry was just coming back when he saw the surgeon emerging from the operating room. The short, stocky older man didn’t even need a moment to look around for her. Ellie was immediately on her feet, at his side.
As she confronted the doctor, her eyes begged him to give her something positive t
o hang on to.
“Are you here for Detective Benteen?” the surgeon asked.
“Yes!” And then Ellie’s voice cracked a little. “Is he—”
She couldn’t bring herself to continue. She was too afraid to ask the question. And even more afraid of the answer she might receive.
“He’s out of surgery,” the doctor told her just as Jerry reached her side. “It was touch and go for a while. Detective Benteen received one bullet to the thigh, one to the chest. The latter just barely missed a major artery. A little more to the left and he wouldn’t have even made it to the hospital.”
“How is he?” Jerry asked the doctor before Ellie was able to find her voice.
“He’s stable now,” the doctor told them in a monotone voice. It was obvious that he’d been through a great many of these life-and-death surgeries. “The next few hours will be critical. If he makes it through the night, there’s every reason to believe that he’ll make a full recovery.” Only then did the doctor’s tone begin to sound a little more optimistic. “There’ll be some physical therapy involved and a lot of patience, but he should be good as new, given time.”
Ellie’s eyes were filled with tears and she had to blink several times just in order to see. Her throat felt completely parched and almost like leather as she cried, “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you!”
The surgeon merely nodded. “Detective Benteen’s going to be in recovery for a while, and then he’ll be taken to his room. I really doubt that he’ll wake up before morning.” He reconsidered his words. “Possibly even later than that. Why don’t you go home and get some rest?” he suggested, looking from Ellie to the hulking figure beside her.
It was Jerry who told him, “Doc, she’s not about to leave unless you get someone to carry her out. And he’d probably have to tie her up, as well.”
“I understand,” the surgeon replied. He had an alternate suggestion. “You might want to go to the cafeteria while you’re waiting.” With that, the doctor left.
“I’ll bring you something to eat,” Jerry volunteered. Tucking the can of diet soda he’d brought for her into her hands, Jerry put his own can on the folding chair and went to the cafeteria.
Twice a Hero, Always Her Man Page 16