The Kiss

by Danielle Steel

  At the hospital in London, nothing had changed. Isabelle and Bill had been put in separate private rooms in the intensive care ward. Both of them were covered with monitors, had their own separate teams, and were in such dire straits that they were being kept apart from the ward. Isabelle had been running a high fever since three o'clock that afternoon. Her heart was beating irregularly, her liver had been badly damaged, her kidneys were threatening to fail, and they knew, from the trauma and the surgery, that she had some slight swelling of her brain. But at least an EEG had determined that her brain was functioning. The doctors were fairly sure there would be no permanent brain damage, if she survived. It would have been hard to determine which of her many injuries was causing her temperature to rise, and she was still in a deep coma, as much from the trauma as from the anesthetic and the drugs. Looking at her clinically, it was hard to believe she was going to live.

  And Bill was faring only slightly better than she. His neck was set in a torturous-looking apparatus with steel bolts and pins, he had an iron brace on his back, and he was on a board that allowed them to move him, although he was unaware of it. He was still in a coma too.

  “His family is arriving from the States around midnight,” one of the nurses said at six o'clock that night when they changed shifts. “His wife called from the plane. They're on their way.” The other nurse nodded and adjusted a beeping sound on one of the monitors. At least his vital signs were good, better than Isabelle's, who seemed to be fluttering between life and death constantly. Her survival seemed even more unsure than his. And one of the nurses asked if anyone was coming to see Isabelle too.

  “I don't know. I think they called Paris this morning, and spoke to her husband, but he didn't say when he'd come. Katherine said he sounded very cool. I guess he was in shock.”

  “Poor man. This is one of those calls you have nightmares about,” one of Bill's nurses said sympathetically. “I wonder if she has kids.” They knew almost nothing about either of them, no medical history, no personal details, just their nationalities and the names of their next of kin, and what had happened in the accident. No one even knew the relationship between the two of them, if they were business associates, related in any way, or just friends. And there was no point guessing at any of it. Right now all they were were two patients in the intensive care ward, fighting for their lives. They were talking about operating on Isabelle again, to relieve the pressure on her brain. The surgeon was due back at any moment to make a decision about it. And when he came shortly after six, he checked the monitors and, with a grim look, decided to wait. He didn't think she'd survive another surgery, and might not anyway. It seemed unreasonable to him to challenge her more at this point.

  It was after seven, and the doctor had just left, when Gordon arrived. He walked into the intensive care ward quietly, spoke to a male clerk at the desk, and told him who he was. The clerk looked up at him, nodded, and asked a passing nurse to take him to Isabelle's room. And without a word, Gordon followed her with a somber expression. He had had all day to prepare himself for this, and as he stepped into her room, he had expected to find her looking very ill. But nothing he had imagined had prepared him for this. To him, she seemed like an almost unrecognizable hunk of flesh, there were bandages and wires and tubes and monitors everywhere, even her head was swathed with gauze, and the arm with the severed artery was heavily bandaged as well. The only thing familiar about her was her deathly pale face peeking out of the gauze. It was the only part of her that seemed untouched.

  There were three people standing next to her when he walked in. One of them was changing an IV, another was checking the monitors, and a third was checking her pupils as they did constantly, but just looking at her, Gordon felt ill. He didn't feel anything for her except horror at what he saw. It was as though she were no longer there, and the shell of what was left meant nothing to him. She was a broken body, nothing more. He said nothing, and did not approach, as one of the nurses spoke softly to him.

  “Mr. Forrester?” He nodded his head and cleared his throat, but he didn't know what to say. And it embarrassed him to have to see her with an audience focused on him. He wasn't sure what they expected of him. To throw himself on the foot of her bed perhaps, kiss her fingers, touch her lips. But he couldn't bring himself to come any closer. Watching her was like staring at the angel of death, and it frightened him.

  “How is she?” he asked in a gruff voice.

  “She has a fever. The doctor just left. They were considering another surgery to relieve the pressure on her brain, but he thinks she's too compromised to tolerate it. He wants to wait. He said he'd be back at ten o'clock.”

  “And if he doesn't do the surgery? Will she be braindamaged?” He couldn't imagine anything worse than her surviving with almost no brain function, or even severely impaired, and he wanted to tell the surgeon that. If she was going to be anything less than she had been, he thought their efforts to save her were a travesty. She had been beautiful and intelligent and talented, and whatever their differences, she had been a good wife to him, and a good mother to their children. To save her in order to lie in a bed like a living corpse was abhorrent to him, and he was prepared to fight to see that that didn't happen to either of them. He didn't want their children to remember her that way. Or to live with it himself.

  “It's impossible to tell at this point what the prognosis is, Mr. Forrester. But the brain scans have been encouraging. It's too soon for anyone to know.” It was impossible to believe that she would survive hours, let alone months, in the condition she was in.

  “Is there a physician here that I can talk to?” Gordon asked one of the nurses, without any visible sign of emotion. The nurse thought he looked like a distant friend, or a remote member of her family who had come to the hospital dutifully. He kept his emotions to himself.

  “I'll let the surgeon on duty know that you're here,” the nurse said as she slipped past him into the hall, leaving the remaining two nurses with Isabelle. Gordon Forrester made her acutely uncomfortable. Looking at Isabelle tore at her heart. She was so beautiful and so young. But the man who had flown from Paris to see his wife seemed to feel nothing at all. She had never met anyone as cold.

  Gordon stepped out of the room, and walked slowly down the hall, waiting for someone to come and talk to him. It was another ten minutes before a young surgeon appeared. He confirmed to Gordon what he already knew, more or less, and acknowledged the grave danger she was in. He said they were debating performing another surgery on her, but were hoping to avoid it if they could. All they could do was wait and see how her own body responded to the trauma it had endured. And in his estimation, it was going to be a long wait before they had good news. But he felt that the fact that she had come this far was a hopeful sign, the only one they had. Hope for Isabelle was still slim.

  “I'm sorry, Mr. Forrester,” he said finally. “Given the nature of the accident, it's a miracle that they survived at all.” Gordon nodded, and then his attention caught on something the younger man had said, in direct conflict to what he'd heard earlier in the day.

  “I thought the driver was killed.”

  “He was, instantly, as was the driver of the bus, and nine passengers.”

  “I thought I just understood you to say that ‘they’ had survived.” It made Gordon pause.

  “Yes, I did. There was another passenger with her. He survived as well, though he's not in any better shape than your wife. His injuries are different than hers, but they're equally grave. He's listed in very critical condition too.” Gordon had an eerie feeling as he listened to him, and couldn't imagine what she'd been doing in a limousine with another man, particularly at that hour of night. He knew she had come to London to see an exhibit at the Tate and to go to some other museums and galleries, and he'd seen no harm in it, but now this all seemed very strange.

  “Do you know who it was by any chance?” Gordon asked, appearing casual. Absolutely nothing unusual showed on his face.

&nb
sp; “We know his name, but we don't know much more than that about him. His name is William Robinson, he's American. I believe his family is flying over now. They're due here tonight.” Gordon nodded, as though he was expecting old friends, and he turned the name over in his mind for a moment, as it clicked, and he wondered if it was the same man. There was a William Robinson he had met several years before, an important figure in the political world. And he knew that Robinson and the ambassador to France were old friends. But he couldn't imagine what he'd been doing with Isabelle. He wasn't even sure they'd ever met. He couldn't remember if Isabelle had been with him when they were introduced at the embassy. It was so rare that she went out. It was a complete mystery what Isabelle had been doing with him.

  “Will he be all right?” Gordon asked with a look of concern, which masked the unspoken questions on his mind.

  “We don't know. He fractured his neck, and damaged his upper spinal cord. There are some internal injuries as well, but none as severe as your wife's.”

  “It sounds like she took the worst of it,” Gordon said, “but not by much. Will he be paralyzed from the spinal injury?”

  “It's too soon to tell. He's still unconscious, he never regained consciousness after the surgery. It could simply be a reaction to the trauma of the accident, or something more complicated as a result of his neck. He's in critical condition as well.” It occurred to Gordon as he listened to him that they might both die without ever explaining to anyone what they had been doing together that night. Gordon was wondering if it had just been a coincidence. If she had old friends in London from her youth that he didn't know about that she had gone to see, perhaps she and Robinson had shared a limousine leaving the hotel. But why would she be out at that hour? Where were they coming from? Where were they going? Where had they been? Why were they together? Did they even know each other? Had they just met? There were a thousand possibilities and questions racing through his mind. And there was no way of getting answers to any of them, certainly not if they didn't survive. He thought he knew Isabelle well, he was sure he did. She was not the kind of woman to be having an affair, or even having clandestine assignations with a man. And yet they had been together, in a limousine, at two A.M., and whatever the reason was, there was no way to discover it now.

  “Would you like to spend the night here at the hospital with your wife?” the young doctor asked him, but Gordon was quick to shake his head. He had a horror of sickrooms and hospitals and sick people. They reminded him of his mother in a sinister way.

  “As she's not conscious, I don't see what purpose I'd serve here. I'd just get in the way of your staff. I'll stay at the hotel. I'll be at Claridge's, and you can call me if anything changes here. That seems more sensible. I appreciate your time, and your efforts on my wife's behalf,” Gordon said formally, and looking uncomfortable, he stood up again. It was obvious that he was extremely ill at ease in the hospital, and had no desire to go back to his wife's room. “I'll just stop in and see her again for a moment before I leave.” He thanked the doctor again, and walked back down the hall, and when he reached her door, there were five members on the team working on her, and there was still no sign of life. He made no attempt to enter the room, watching them for only the briefest moment, and then turned and left, without saying another word. He had never touched her, never kissed her, never approached Isabelle's bed, and he took an enormous breath of fresh air as soon as he reached the street.

  Gordon detested hospitals and sick people and infirmities. It was why Teddy had always been hard for him. It was something he simply couldn't tolerate, and as he hailed a cab, with his overnight bag in his hand, and gave them Claridge's address, he felt slightly ill. He was enormously relieved to have escaped the intensive care ward, and in spite of the fact that he felt sorry for her, he hadn't been able to bring himself to walk into the room and touch even so much as her hand. It was merciful that she was unconscious, he thought, and it would be more so if she didn't survive to be brain-damaged. That was a fate that he didn't wish for her. But in spite of how sorry he felt for her, he couldn't seem to feel anything about it for himself. He had no sense of loss, no despair, no terror of losing her. She seemed like a stranger to him now, lying so broken and still in her hospital bed. She looked like a lifeless doll, and it was hard to understand that the woman he had just seen had been the young girl he once married, let alone his wife of twenty years. Her spirit already seemed to have fled, and all he wondered as the cab pulled up in front of Claridge's was what she had been doing in a limousine with Bill Robinson. But there was no one except Isabelle whom he could ask. She alone knew the answer to the mystery, and Bill of course, but he was just as unable to answer Gordon's questions as his wife.

  The doorman took Gordon's overnight case from him. He had only brought a few shirts and some underwear. He wasn't intending to stay long. He had come to assess the situation, and he was planning to return to Paris in a day or two. And come back to London again if need be. She might be dead by then, or she may have remained the same. The young surgeon had told him that night that she could stay in the coma, without change, for weeks or even months. And there was no way he could stay in London with her. He had to go back to tend to his own affairs, to monitor Teddy now, and see what was happening at the bank. If he had to, he would go back and forth between London and Paris every few days. But he realized that if this was going to take a while, it was going to be best if he called Sophie in Portugal and asked her to come home. If nothing else, she could take over watching Teddy for him. He dreaded calling her, but after what he'd seen tonight, he was beginning to think that he should. He needed to prepare her in case Isabelle died.

  Gordon stopped at the desk, and asked for Isabelle's key, and an assistant manager came out from an office instantly, and told Gordon how sorry he was.

  “It must have been a dreadful accident. We're all so sorry … such a terrible thing … such a lovely person … no idea it had happened until the police called …” He went on for several minutes as Gordon nodded his head and agreed with everything he said. “How is she doing, sir?” the assistant manager asked solicitously.

  “Not very well.” And then he decided to see what else he might know. “Apparently Mr. Robinson was severely injured too.” He searched the young man's eyes for whatever he could discover there, but it was just more of the same. Sympathy and an endless wringing of hands.

  “So we understand” was all the young man said. It was awkward asking him if he knew why they'd been sharing a limousine, and Gordon was searching for the appropriate question to satisfy his needs. But it was not an easy thing to do.

  “So unfortunate, such a shame they were riding together,” Gordon said noncommittally “He's an old friend of mine, they must have run into each other here.”

  “Yes, I suppose,” the assistant manager said, nodding his head. “I believe I saw them having tea together in the lobby yesterday afternoon.”

  “Do you know where they might have gone last night?” Gordon inquired, as though investigating the accident, but the young manager shook his head.

  “I can ask the hall porter if he made reservations for them anywhere, perhaps he did.” He stepped away for a moment and inquired, and the hall porter said Mr. Robinson always made his own reservations when he was in town, and rarely asked anything of them, except hiring a car, as he had this time. But he believed the other hall porter had made a reservation for them at Mark's Club. “He's off today. I can ask him when he gets back. Or I can call Mark's Club, if you like. Unfortunately, the driver died, as I'm sure you know. One of our best men, an Irish fellow, he had a wife and four boys. A terrible tragedy,” he said, obviously distressed by what had happened, and Gordon thanked him as he took the key, walked to the elevator, and rode upstairs. He was still thinking about what the manager had said about their having tea in the lobby the previous afternoon. He wondered if they had met through art circles somehow, or if he had just picked her up. She was such an innocent that she mi
ght just be naive enough to befriend someone like that, and tea in the lobby was certainly a relatively harmless pursuit, but in Gordon's mind being out at two in the morning in a limousine with a man was not. He still couldn't imagine what Bill Robinson had been doing with her. He didn't like the sound of it, and if it were anyone other than Isabelle, he would have jumped to the obvious, but in Isabelle's case, there may well have been some foolish, benign reason why she had been in the car with him. Gordon was still puzzling over it when he stepped into her room.

  There was an eerie feeling to it suddenly, as though she had just gone out, and as he looked around, it made him feel almost as though she had already died. Her makeup was spread out on the table next to the sink. Her nightgown was hanging on a hook behind the bathroom door. Her clothes were neatly hung in the closet, and there was a collection of pamphlets and brochures from museums and art galleries sitting on the desk. And then he saw that next to them, there was a book of matches from Harry's Bar, and as Isabelle didn't smoke, he thought that was somewhat odd. And what on earth would she be doing at a place like Harry's Bar? Or Mark's Club? And then he saw that next to the matches from Harry's Bar was another matchbook from Annabel's. And when he saw it, he felt a finger of anger run down his spine. Perhaps the evening with Bill Robinson hadn't been as innocent as he hoped. He wondered if she had been to those places with him. He looked around the room for further evidence, but there was no sign of a man's clothes, no letters, no notes, no flowers with cards from him. There was nothing but two matchbooks from two fashionable watering holes that he somehow knew she had kept as souvenirs. Maybe Robinson had just picked her up, and she had been vulnerable to it. In all likelihood it was innocent, and whatever had happened between them that night, or before, they had certainly paid a high price for it. But he couldn't help wondering what their bond to each other was, or if there was one at all. He slipped the two match-books into his pocket, sat down, and looked around the room, and then rang for the waiter and ordered himself a stiff drink.