Kiss

by Ted Dekker

  She gasped and pulled back, touching her forehead. It was cooler than her fingertips.

  “What is it?” Wayne asked.

  “Didn’t you feel that?”

  “Feel what?” Wayne’s forehead creased.

  The blush of embarrassment, not supernatural heat, flushed Shauna’s cheeks. She hardly knew what had just happened, though it seemed clear enough that she had experienced it alone. And maybe entirely in her mind.

  “It’s nothing.” She shook her head. “I’m on edge, I guess.”

  Wayne stood, then moved to the window. “What is this like for you, Shauna? What does it feel like when you try to remember? I’ve been trying to put myself in your shoes.”

  The right analogy took several seconds to present itself. “It feels like I’m looking in the index of a textbook and can’t find the topic I need, even though I’m pretty sure I’ve read it in that book before.”

  “What can I do to help you?”

  “You’ve done so much already.”

  “Well, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon, so if you have any brilliant ideas . . .”

  “You could take me to see Rudy.” She said it before she fully contemplated what it would mean—returning to her father’s home. Her childhood home.

  Patrice’s home.

  Wayne closed his eyes and sighed. “Shauna.”

  She said, less confidently, “They have to at least let me out of this thing to use the bathroom, don’t they?”

  “Shauna, the police have instructed the staff to keep an eye on you.”

  “They like you, Wayne. They’ll believe whatever you tell them.”

  “If you go now, the authorities will know. They’ll take you right away. You might only get minutes with Rudy. In fact—”

  “That’s all I need. Just long enough for an answer.” She looked at the wad of sheets in her hand. “Just long enough to apologize.”

  Wayne seemed to soften.

  “Please, Wayne. Please do this for me. I will do whatever I need to do to make things right, okay? But first, I am going to see my brother. You can help me, or I will march out of here on my own and get a taxi. What’s it going to be?”

  Amusement overtook Wayne’s eyes and mouth. “I’d like to see you march, let alone figure out how to pay for the ride,” he said.

  “Take me. Make my father deal with me to my face. You shouldn’t have to be the one in this position.”

  He leaned against the windowsill and dropped his head. “Please rethink this.”

  “I have thought it through! Repeatedly. Please help me.” She begged with her eyes too. “You’re my only friend right now.”

  Wayne turned toward Shauna and crossed his arms. “And how do you suggest I bust you out of here?”

  For the first time since she had awakened in this horrid white room, Shauna was overcome with relief. He would think of something. Wayne wrapped one hand around his chin the way she had seen him the day she awoke. He considered her plea until Shauna’s relief turned to worry. Maybe he wouldn’t help after all.

  She looked away, then he said, “I think I can find a way to get you five minutes with your brother. Ten tops. Can you live with that?”

  It was a rhetorical question, right?

  4

  West Lake bordered the Colorado River in the foothills overlooking the city, one of the many Austin suburbs that considered itself “the gateway to hill country.” Wayne drove Shauna there in his wine-red Chevy truck through a weak October drizzle. It was nearly seven o’clock on Wednesday evening.

  She fidgeted with her fingers in her lap. “Is Landon back from California yet?”

  “Yes. He came in this afternoon.”

  What would she say to her father? Maybe after she saw Rudy she would be better equipped.

  And Patrice . . .

  Patrice would be here. Shauna’s stomach turned. She hadn’t set foot on her father’s property since Christmas her senior year of college. She’d tried to keep up the holiday routine for Rudy’s sake, but even that had become an impossibility for her. When Rudy told her she didn’t need to suffer through Christmas for him—because it made everyone suffer—Shauna finally gave herself permission to avoid the estate completely.

  Shauna closed her eyes. God, please help me. The spontaneous prayer came from a long abandoned place in her subconscious, and she felt irked that it had popped out unannounced. “You’ve been a lifesaver to me in so many different ways, Wayne. I never thanked you for pulling me out of the river. For saving my life.”

  “You actually saved yourself. By the time I got to you, you were out of the car. Scraped your way out of a broken window, I guess. All I did was pull you out of the water. Not exactly Superman.”

  “I can’t begin to imagine how fortunate it was that you were there.” There was a time when Shauna would have given God the credit for that kind of a miracle. But now, she wasn’t so sure. “Uncle Trent said you were following me home? What was that all about?”

  “We were at Trent’s place—”

  “Which one?”

  “The one at Lake Travis. He was having a shindig for a friend of his. You left the party early. I was concerned about you and followed you back to town. You lost control of the car at the bridge on 71. Went over the guardrail. I didn’t actually see it happen.”

  “But you know how.”

  “There was a truck on the bridge coming the other way. The driver says you swerved into his lane, then overcorrected.” He paused. “It was slick. Dark. You were upset.”

  “Upset?”

  “An argument with your dad.”

  She and Landon were always fighting about something. Even that fact had survived her amnesia. “I try to avoid him when I can. We’re just . . . not good together. He never did believe me.”

  “That’s been hard for you, I know.” The remark caught Shauna off guard.

  “I forget that you . . . that you know some of this already. You get along with your dad?”

  “Yeah, actually. My mom and I were a different story, though. She’s been gone a long time.” He reached across the seat to squeeze her hand. “I know that doesn’t make you feel better, though.”

  Tears burned the corners of Shauna’s eyes, but she held them back. “How much do you know about my family stuff?”

  Wayne chose his words carefully. “You and Patrice are archenemies, and the reason why is off-limits. You and the senator have trouble communicating, among other things. Rudy and you are best friends.”

  The fact that Wayne understood her situation so simply gave her a surprising measure of security. “I don’t know if I can face going home.”

  He nodded. “We can always turn around, just say the word. I’ll be right there with you, okay? I won’t leave your side. If anything gets weird, or too intense, I’ll take you out of there.”

  Shauna exhaled and relaxed against the seat.

  “What did Landon and I argue about? That night.”

  “I’m not sure. You didn’t fight in public.”

  Well, that was something to be thankful for.

  “And what about us? I feel terrible. I don’t understand how a mind can just lose that kind of thing.”

  “Like I said, we’ll figure it out as we go. You haven’t kicked me out yet.” He grinned at her. “That’s a good start.”

  She laughed. “How did we meet?”

  “Our paths crossed a few times—before you resigned—at Harper & Stone.”

  “I resigned?”

  “In July. You told me you needed some time off to plan your next move. Said the CPA life was not working out for you.”

  Well, that sounded like a brilliant way to advance a career. But more and more it seemed she had fallen into the habit of making foolish choices.

  “How far back do you remember?” he asked. “Have you pinpointed that?”

  “I remember vacationing in Guatemala in March. After that . . .” She men-tally calculated that her memory was blank for the prior five or
six months. “If I’m lucky, I haven’t forgotten anything of value.”

  A streetlight flashed over Wayne’s face through the wet windshield. He looked away from her.

  “Except you, naturally.”

  He frowned. “Naturally.”

  Maybe the reason she didn’t have many close friends had nothing to do with her avoiding relationships; perhaps everyone saw her for the insensitive clod that she was and went out of their way to avoid her.

  “So you’re a CPA too?” she asked.

  “No. I’m the CFO of McAllister MediVista.”

  This news startled her. “You work for my father?”

  “You always preferred me to say I work for your uncle.”

  “You must think I’m a silly girl.”

  Wayne shook his head. “Not at all. You remember that Harper & Stone handles our books.”

  She nodded. “But Mr. Stone felt I presented a conflict of interest. He kept me off those accounts.”

  “He did. But you helped me with some fact-finding during the last audit. That would have been May.”

  She tried to call up the event. Futile. But it was true that when it came to audits and overtime, everyone pitched in.

  “So are we . . . what are we, exactly?”

  He kept his eyes on the road. “We hadn’t landed on an answer to that question. We saw each other socially, went out several times. We liked—I liked your company.”

  “In a way, that might make things easier,” she said. She kept her voice light and hopeful. “To start over, I mean.”

  Wayne turned his truck in to the McAllisters’ private drive. “Yeah. Maybe it will.”

  The McAllister estate was a gated residence bordered by the Colorado River, a sprawling stucco-and-terra-cotta rancher on ten acres that included a guesthouse, tennis courts, a fitness center, and a small dock, where Landon occasionally anchored his cabin cruiser. Shauna often thought it could easily have been the villa of some Colombian drug lord.

  Shauna laid a hand across her roiling stomach. She hated this place and all the memories it housed.

  The security detail around her father was higher than usual, with the general elections less than a month away. And yet Wayne passed through without question.

  They entered the mansion through a side entrance that led to the McAllisters’ casual dining area, located off a sparkling stainless-steel kitchen. Shauna smelled barbeque mesquite and buttered potatoes, which only made her nauseated.

  She nodded at a cook she didn’t recognize and hurried her pace so as not to fall behind Wayne. He took her hand and paused before the door.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded, but she didn’t feel anything similar to okay.

  Shauna pushed the door open and stepped into the dining room.

  Landon, Patrice, and another woman sat at an oak pedestal table eating the last bites of their supper. Rudy sat by the window.

  The clinking of forks on plates came to an abrupt halt, and the room stilled to complete silence. As one they stared at her.

  Landon said something, but Shauna didn’t hear his words. She was only aware of Rudy.

  Her unstoppable brother, a fit and strong track-and-field champion, had been reduced to a twisted twig, contorted in a wheelchair contraption that looked expensive and custom-fitted to his shriveled body. The tilted chair put him in a reclining position and was jacked up on a frame like a monster truck on small wheels. A bag hung from a pole attached to the side of the chair, and a narrow plastic tube ran from it into Rudy’s abdomen.

  He must have weighed thirty pounds less than her last memory of him. His wild curls, light brown and thick, had been shaved, and large foam pads braced his fuzzy skull. A scar cut laterally through the new hair growth across the top of his head. “Rudy.” His name came out of her lips like a dying breath.

  Shauna felt too weak to stand. She groped for a side chair and gripped the back for support. Wayne took her elbow.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t know.”

  Mind numb, she pulled her arm free.

  She couldn’t tear her eyes from Rudy’s shriveled form. Shauna knew then that she should have died in the river that night. She’d done this . . .

  Below his hairline, a dark bruise that had long since gone through its rain-bow stages nearly covered his forehead and right eye. His gray eyes—she caught her breath—his gray eyes were watching her.

  “Rudy?” And this time his name rode out of her mouth on hope.

  “He can see you, but I can’t say whether he recognizes you,” the woman next to Patrice said. Shauna glanced at the middle-aged woman with over-rouged cheeks and a nose too small for her wide face. She rested an equally small chin on her folded hands. “He is in what we call a minimally conscious state.”

  Shauna turned back to Rudy. Tears filled her eyes at this unbelievable sight.

  “What does minimally conscious mean?” Shauna asked.

  “That he’s got a couple more functioning brain cells than a vegetable,” Landon said.

  “Mr. McAllister,” the woman said gently. “He is aware.”

  Shauna looked at her father for the first time since coming into the house. Landon McAllister’s voice was as she always remembered it: deep and rich and clear and charismatic, a pied piper voice that anyone would follow. But his normally flashing eyes were flat today. The lines of his wide mouth turned down. A surface vein pulsated at his left temple the way it so often had in the weeks after her mother died.

  This man was broken, and Shauna’s heart overflowed with a new kind of grief.

  He did not hold her eyes for long. Again, he was the first to turn away.

  “How aware is he?” Shauna asked. She returned her attention to her brother’s eyes.

  “We really don’t know,” the guest said.

  “Amazing how little you people do know,” Landon muttered.

  Patrice spoke to Shauna for the first time, cool and formal: “Shauna, this is Pam Riley, Rudy’s live-in nurse. Pam, my husband’s daughter and her boy-friend, Wayne. We weren’t expecting her tonight, as she is under house arrest at the hospital.”

  Pam’s bright cheeks turned brighter, and Shauna pretended not to hear. Wayne rested his hand on her shoulder.

  “So, minimally conscious is good?” Shauna asked Pam. “I mean, there’s hope?”

  “Hope is a fairy tale for the guilty,” Landon said, then threw back the last of his coffee. “So you can get any inspirational sap out of your head right now.”

  His words stabbed her. She moved her chair closer to Rudy and turned her back toward the table.

  “All brain injuries are really uncharted territories,” Pam said. “We don’t like to make predictions or promises. But we are hardly resigned to Rudy’s present condition. There’s plenty to do.”

  Landon rose from the table with his empty plate as if he’d heard this speech a thousand times. His long stride carried him into the kitchen.

  “The senator has taken every possible measure to increase the chances of Rudy’s recovery. Maybe later I can show you the—”

  “Shauna has an appointment with local authorities,” Patrice said. “I’m afraid it will have to wait.”

  Shauna clenched her teeth to prevent herself from snapping back. Not here. Not now.

  Pam adjusted. “To answer your question, Shauna, yes, there are documented cases of minimally conscious patients regaining their functions—”

  “After more than twenty years,” Landon said, returning. “And they call that a miracle. Sure there’s hope. I just won’t live to see it.”

  “Rudy’s case leaves a lot of possibilities open,” Pam continued, unfazed. “His injury was caused by trauma rather than by hypoxia—”

  “Which is?”

  “Lack of oxygen.”

  “He didn’t drown, then?”

  “No. He just got really banged up. Thrown from the car before it hit the water. But he was breathing on his own the whole time.”


  Rudy had not stopped looking at her. She shivered. “And why is that better than drowning?”

  “Hypoxia shuts down the entire brain,” Pam said. “Remember Terry Schaivo? That’s what happened to her. For Rudy, though, the damage was partial. Devastating, but partial. Some parts of his brain are still functioning fine. It’s possible, in time, that these areas will be able to rebuild his lost connections.”

  Landon moved to stand behind Rudy and placed a gentle hand on his son’s head. Rudy kept his eyes on Shauna. Those eyes might have been conveying recognition or fascination. Mercy or accusation. They might have been requesting a key to unlock their prison, or screaming at her to leave. They might be seeing nothing at all.

  “In time, Rudy might be able to compensate for his other losses,” Pam said.

  “There is no compensation for this,” her father said.

  Paired with her father’s words, Shauna believed Rudy’s eyes turned hostile. They burned through her, judging her forgetfulness.

  “Dad, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Rudy. Please forgive me.”

  She released the chair, crossed to Rudy, and eased herself into a seat close to him. Leaned forward and touched his hand. If she could make all this right she would do it without a second thought. She would sit in that chair and lock her-self up in that broken mind so Rudy could come back and be the calm force in the center of this stormy family. What would it take? She would do anything.

  “Please. I’m so sorry.” His skin felt rubbery and unnatural to her. He did not respond. She squeezed his fingers.

  “Stop it, Shauna,” Landon said, sending the command like a kick to her heart. She let go of Rudy’s hand, a defensive move. Stop what? Touching him? She looked at her father and instantly recognized his anger, which was so familiar to her: taut forehead, flat lips.

  Why couldn’t she be as familiar with his affection? Just a minute of the hours of love he had poured into Rudy. She didn’t need so much from Landon, only a moment, a glance, a smile.

  Certainty that he believed her. Trusted her. Protected her.

  “Your groveling doesn’t help anyone.”

  “I wish I—”

  “This isn’t about you, Shauna. This is about Rudy. This is about what you took from us. Rudy won’t get to campaign with me. He won’t get to attempt a single one of his dreams. For heaven’s sake, Shauna, he wasn’t even old enough to be disillusioned yet! He wanted to be a politician!”