Not taking offense, Chapman nodded, his face weary. “You’re right. I don’t. Every case is different. The one thing you learn in medical school that’s worth the whole shebang is that sometimes science doesn’t have all the answers. Sometimes it doesn’t have any of them. I did my best, Mr. Barnett, and I’m pretty damned good in messy situations. I gave her the best chance I could. The rest…” He stood up and stuck out his hand. “Who knows? For damn sure I don’t. We’ll see.”
“Thanks.” Sullivan shook Chapman’s hand. Long surgeon’s fingers. He said he’d done the best he could. A deep shudder rolled through Sullivan. He sank to the chair. “Sorry.”
Chapman started to pat his shoulder, let his hand fall, grimaced. “I wish I could do more.”
“Yeah. I know.” Sullivan did. Waiting in the hall, helpless, he’d wanted to butt his head against the wall.
“Wait here a while. Then head up to Intensive. They’ll let you know the arrangements up there.” Chapman stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “But if you want to stay with her, and you have any problems, have the head nurse call me.”
“Yeah.” Sullivan was able to get the one syllable past his grinding teeth.
“Anyway—” Chapman shrugged “—I don’t see any harm in letting you be with her. Might even help. I’m a firm believer with Hamlet that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of. So, as the melancholy Dane said in a different context, leave her to heaven.” He opened the door. “Go on up to Intensive, Mr. Barnett. I’ll check in with you later.” He shut the door softly behind him.
Leave her to heaven? He’d be damned if he would. Sullivan jerked to his feet and staggered to the door, caffeine jolting through him and purpose propelling him. If Maggie-the-Cop thought she was going anywhere without him, by damn he was going to tell her a thing or two that would scorch those shell-like ears.
Staggering like a drunken man on a two-day bender, he found his way to the Intensive Care ward.
She was still in recovery, but he’d wait. He was becoming expert at that occupation. He’d add it to his résumé if Walker fired him.
Finding a vinyl chair, Sullivan stretched out in it, slouching down as far as his tailbone would bend. Damn Lizzie, anyway, to think she could pull a trick like getting herself shot on his account and backing out on the deal. She’d saved him and she was going to have to put up with him. That was all.
He shook his head. He had to get ready for Maggie. Lizzie. Ready for her.
When they eventually wheeled her through the doors, she looked so small and defenseless under the dripping tubes and flashing monitors that she broke his heart open in one cracking, rending upheaval.
She needed him.
He explained the situation very calmly to the nurses, letting them see what a restful person he was to have around their series of pastel prints. He’d fit in. They’d never know he was there. “Call Chapman,” he said when nothing else had worked.
Chapman was a miracle worker, all right. The head nurse herself came down and explained what they were doing as they plugged in monitors and raised the metal bar of Maggie’s bed. Once the nurses finished and left him alone with her, Sullivan began talking, drawing on every reputed skill the Irish had ever had for blarney, talking, talking, giving her the river of his words to find her way back to him.
“Let’s begin at the ending, sugar-buns. You hate that, I know. So? Sugar-buns. Getting mad, Maggie? Good. Get real ticked off with me, sweetheart. I want you to be so busy thinking of ways to tear a strip off my hide that you won’t have time to do anything else. Hear me, Maggie?”
Floating in darkness where waves washed her gently back and forth between two shores, she waited for a signal.
And in that darkness, words wove in and out of her consciousness. Words washing her to and fro. Sometimes she floated with the tide, letting it carry her along to a bend in the river bright with sugary sand. Sometimes she struggled against that inexorable tide toward darkness and pain, and that voice tugged at the line holding her in the dark river’s midpoint.
The voice was rough and harsh, dwindling sometimes to a whisper like wind turning the leaves, like rain pattering gently against the river, pocking its surface.
That voice caressed her, lulled her.
Pissed her off.
Agitated, she fought toward that irritating sound.
But the struggle exhausted her and left her content for a while to drift with the tide moving the river forward to that white shore.
She listened and waited, content to let the words wash over her, pain fading in the brilliance around the river’s bend.
“Lizzie, did I tell you what Leesha’s up to? She has this little dude, Tommy Lee by name, a real terror. Leesha’s working on him. You know how she is. The squirt has stopped pushing the other kids around. For a while when he first started at Sunshine, Leesha couldn’t understand why none of the kids had their quarters when they went to the ice-cream shop down the corner. You know she keeps that quart jar filled so every kid can buy a creamy—that’s what Katie calls her ice cream now.” Sullivan moistened Maggie’s mouth with the damp washrag, slipping a bit of ice onto her tongue.
Her sweet mouth was dry and starting to crack at the corners. There had been one time when the monitors had indicated a change in her comatose state. The squiggles on the screen gave him hope.
“Remember Katie, sweetheart?” he continued, his throat raw after days and nights of talking hours on end. “She remembers you. She wants you to read to her again, that story about a nighttime kitchen? You know the one.”
He dabbed lotion onto Maggie’s lips.
“Anyway, sweetheart, Leesha found out Tommy Lee was putting the squeeze on the kids. After she passed out their money, Tommy Lee’d make them give it to him. Skipper blew the whistle. Beat the bejeebers out of Tommy Lee, first, though. Katie played peacemaker.”
Sullivan poured water from the carafe into his glass. Ice tinkled to the bottom. “Lizzie, they need you. They miss you.”
Stroking her arm, he whispered, “I miss you, too. I need you so much more than I ever let you know. Wherever you are, sweetheart, come back home where you belong. Please.”
He took another sip of water, his throat aching and his eyes itching with unshed tears.
The river flowed faster, with her bobbing along in its current, the tether of that rough voice fraying with the power of the tide as it flowed toward the wide bend. She was fretful, wanting the voice to be silent and let her reach that bend where the river’s sweep would snap the thin line holding her.
“Lizzie, you know I forgave you the minute I walked out the beach-house door. I had to. I love you too much to stay angry with you. You should have believed sooner. I told you I loved you. Why couldn’t you believe that, Lizzie? I would never have let you down. No one in the universe has ever loved anyone the way I love you, sweetheart. Don’t leave me in this darkness alone again. I’m begging you.”
The bend was near, and the current strong, pushing her along in its grip. She yielded to that power as she watched the shore approaching, huge in all its shining whiteness.
Sullivan pressed his ear against her breast, listening to its thready beat as he continued his stream of words, his voice cracking. “Sweetheart, there’s never been anyone in my life except you. You’re the only person I’ve ever loved In my whole life. You know that. You’re the only person I’ve ever trusted. After my mom walked out on the old man and me, he vanished, too, burying himself in work. That’s why I joined the navy after the old man died. There wasn’t anything else for me. Until you. Loving and trusting haven’t been easy lessons for me to learn, sweetheart, but you’ve been a good teacher. How can you leave me now?”
Sullivan’s voice broke and he rubbed his eyes. They were burning with fatigue. Swallowing, he buried his face against the edge of the bed, holding Maggie’s thin, dry fingers.
She was so small and pale, slipping away from him day by day.
Her heavy bro
wn hair was dull and matted against the pillow. He picked up the natural-bristle brush he’d bought for her the first week she’d been in the hospital. Pulling her hair back from her face with long, slow strokes, he ran the brush down the strands of her hair. Lifting her palm to his hand, he kissed its center.
The high-pitched shriek of the monitor startled him and he looked up, puzzled. To the left of Maggie’s head, the monitor shrilled loudly as a straight green line pulsed across its screen.
“Maggie! Don’t you dare…!” He leaned over her, one knee on the bed, and placed his palms one on top of the other flat on her chest, compressing five counts and breathing twice, compressing and breathing into her, breathing his life force into her.
As his breath passed into her, he swore at her, willing her to come back to him. “Live, damn you,” he muttered fiercely, tears sliding down his cheeks, all the tears he’d never shed burning down his face, splattering the sheet over the small mound of her chest with their hot acid.
“Live, or I swear to God, I’ll follow you. You’ll never escape me,” he said, breathing and compressing, as the medical team surged through the door with paddles and syringes, trays of life-saving supplies stacked on the metal cart rattling behind them.
Not stopping, Sullivan continued pressing and breathing, swearing at her. “You won’t escape me, Maggie. Wherever you go, I’ll be right behind you. Live, damn you!” he breathed into her.
Her eyes fluttered and she was looking at him, her eyes dazed and unfocused, not really seeing him.
Rushing to the bed, a doctor shoved him aside, yelling, “Clear!”
“Mr. Barnett, you must leave. We’ll call you.” One of the nurses grabbed his arm, urging him to the door.
“The hell you will,” he said, yanking his arm free. To one side, away from the equipment and out of the way, he stayed as Maggie’s body lifted with the force of the paddles. Lifted and dropped.
Tears running down his cheeks blurred the sight of her face, no matter how fast he blinked them away. Over and over he whispered, “Live, sweetheart. For me. For yourself. For the kids. Live, Maggie.”
In the dimness she heard him, the power of his voice, his will fighting the swelling tide, pulling her with him when she was too weak to struggle by herself.
That strong voice wrestled her free of the wild sweep of the river rushing toward the bend, wrenched her back toward that pain and darkness that held the voice. The river filled her mouth as she was yanked backward against the tide. She swallowed and coughed, jerking up through the swelling waves and sinking under again as the voice towed her back, each pull jerking her up out of the river’s grip.
In the place of shadows and phantoms where she had gone, Maggie heard Sullivan swearing at her in a long, unending stream, heard him muttering and cursing, calling to her, his voice filled with such pain that she ached for him.
She tried to tell him not to worry. She tried to tell him she’d be right back, that she knew the way home now, but she couldn’t. Her body was at the mercy of a jolt of electricity roaring through her like a jet plane, throwing her to the ground.
The beeping of the monitor resumed. The green peaks pulsed steadily across its screen, the tidal rhythm of Maggie’s heart translating into a series of tidy green hills marching forward.
Sinking into a chair at the end of Maggie’s bed, Sullivan rested his face against the soles of her feet, holding on to her as the nurses and residents packed up. Rubbing her toes under the sheet softly with his bristly chin, he took a deep breath.
She’d flatlined.
But she’d opened her eyes.
Wrapping up the cords of the paddles, the nurse who’d tried to remove Sullivan breathed out in a long whoosh. “Close. We almost lost her that time, guys. Poor little thing.” The nurse looked first at Maggie, then at Sullivan. “Anything I can get for you, Mr. Barnett? Flatlining’s sure a scary thing.”
“Yeah.” He’d experienced his father’s death, seen death on tour in the navy, held Maggie in his arms with her blood pumping over his hands.
This had been worse than anything he’d ever known.
“Dr. Chapman will be in later this evening. We’ve already called him. He’s been real interested in how things are going.” She put the paddles on the cart. “We’ve all been pulling for your wife, Mr. Barnett. She’s been a real trouper, but she’s not out of the woods yet.”
She wheeled the cart past him and out the door.
Sagging at the end of Maggie’s bed, Sullivan watched the rise and fall of the sheet over her chest. What a miracle of nature the beating heart was.
“Maggie, sweetheart? We’ve got a lot of talking to do. Any chance you could avoid more scenes like this one? I don’t know if I’m up to another round with the paddles and that green line, sugar-buns. Do me a favor, huh? Stay steady on course.”
Swaying among the weeds at the river’s edge, she heard the voice again, recognized it this time, had known it many times in many forms. Young when she was old, old when she’d been young. Sometimes they’d found each other; other times they’d just missed touching, their outstretched arms brushing past and on down the tunnels of time.
But always they’d loved and been torn apart, always lost to each other as time ticked forward in endless rounds.
No matter how fiercely they loved, they destroyed their love. Over and over, they repeated the pattern they feared.
At the moment of decision, she would pull back, lacking the courage to risk everything with him, to risk loving him despite the fear that her love wouldn’t be enough for him.
She’d lacked courage.
He’d lacked the ability to trust her, to know that she was always his, that he could be his truest self with her. Jealousy and betrayal, again and again.
Swaying there, she wondered if she had the courage to try again.
Perhaps it was time to forget the struggle and let the pattern end forever in this moment in time.
They had come so close this time, so close.
But they always destroyed each other, one way or another.
She recognized the voice.
But not herself.
Watching Maggie through the night, Sullivan finally slipped up beside her on the narrow hospital bed and held her, not moving her or disturbing her, but being there.
Just in case she opened her eyes again.
He would be there.
*
Chapter 14
« ^ »
Clattering in with her morning meds, the nurse woke him up. “Mr. Barnett, really. Not in bed with the patient. That’s asking too much of us.”
Opening one bleary eye, Sullivan surveyed the room. Light filtered through the closed blinds and hurt his eyes.
Maggie lay next to him, her lashes fanned across her pale cheeks. He thought her lashes fluttered for a moment. Yawning, he dropped his feet to the floor. “Yeah. I reckon it is.”
He wondered why he felt so good and so lousy at the same time. Too much adrenaline spiking over an extended period, probably. He’d seen guys get slaphappy after a thorny maneuver into unknown waters. The body adjusted to stress eventually and in weird ways. “Camping out seemed like a good idea at the time, though.”
“Perhaps.” She frowned severely, her short nose tipping down with the force of her disapproval. “This is the Intensive Care unit of this hospital. We’ve already made an exception for you because Dr. Chapman requested it. We try to accommodate him.”
“Of course you do.” Over the three weeks he’d stayed, nights and most of the days, Sullivan had learned that Chapman was, indeed, a very good surgeon. In this hospital, he was one rung lower than God. But not by much.
“This isn’t a hotel, as you very well know.” Her nose wiggled at the tip like an extremely annoyed bunny.
“Yep. I caught on to that right off, and y’all have been jim-dandy about letting me park here.” If Nurse Beatrice Bunny scolded him for one second longer, he wasn’t going to be his usual charming self. “I’
m going home to clean up, Beatrice. I’ll be back, though.”
“I’m sure you will be.” Wiggle, wiggle, little pink tip quivering.
She was the only nurse on the unit who liked asserting her authority. She earned his forbearance because she was terrific with patients. Beatrice was a martinet with visitors, but he’d also seen her leaning face against the wall, sobbing her heart out at three a.m. after she’d lost a patient.
She made him so damned eager to break her rules and regulations that he couldn’t stay around her more than ten minutes. He was afraid she would tempt his sarcastic tongue from where it had been hiding for the last weeks.
Grabbing his sneakers and shoving his feet into them, he looked at Maggie, the green peaks to the left of the head of her bed blipping across in a wonderful, monotonous rhythm. He bent down to tie his laces, not wanting Beatrice to see his expression.
While he was nose-to-tile with his shoe, she hesitated and said, “I wish I’d been here last night. I started my new rotation or I would have been here.”
“Yeah, I know.” He couldn’t hold her gaze. “Well.”
“Yes. Well.” She flipped back her clipboard and began recording vital statistics. “However, I’m on duty until three-thirty.”
Sullivan walked stiffly to the head of the bed. “I’ll see you, Maggie. Don’t go anywhere without me,” he whispered out of Nurse Beatrice’s hearing. Maggie’s breathing seemed different to him this morning. He frowned. It was nothing he could pinpoint, but he’d lived with her for three weeks in this space and her rhythms were as familiar to him as his own. A different sound. That’s what it was.
“Beatrice, what do you think? Come listen.”
He waited while the nurse checked Maggie’s respiration rate. “It’s the same as it was yesterday, Mr. Barnett. I’ll watch her particularly closely and keep an eye out for anything that might not show up on our monitors.”
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