Midnight Rain

by Kate Aeon

  That late at night, the parking lot was almost empty. She waited with the car doors locked and her heart in her throat until she saw a security guard making outdoor rounds — then she flashed her headlights and got out, grabbed her cane, and shouted for help.

  He turned.

  “Wheelchair, please!” she yelled, and he grabbed one from just inside the doors and hurried to help her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Can’t walk.” She slid her pant leg up to the knee, showed him, and watched him wince. “Dr. MacKerrie is expecting me.”

  He looked down at her leg, and his gaze focused, then slid away. “You call ahead?”

  She nodded. “We’re next-door neighbors.”

  He waited while she levered herself into the wheelchair, carefully not bending her supposed-to-be-injured leg. He adjusted the footrest to let her keep the leg straight — she kept the pant leg pulled up for the shock value. The knee did look swollen, actually. It didn’t hurt any worse than usual, but maybe she should have let Alan take her in to have it X-rayed after they crashed into each other.

  “How did you do that, miss?” the guard asked.

  She shrugged, not wanting to go into the sordid details. “Accident. Long story, and not very interesting.”

  “He going to admit you?”

  “I certainly hope not.”

  The guard nodded and came to a decision. He took her in through a side entrance, skipping the admission office and triage. Alan saw her as they came through the double doors. He looked at her, and Phoebe saw an expression of relief wash over his face, and then he looked down at her leg and said, “Room one’s open. I’ll be right in.”

  The guard offered to help her onto the stretcher.

  “I’d rather stay in the chair — I don’t want to move it any more than I have to. I’m afraid the pins might be loose again.”

  Alan came in as the guard was leaving. He waited until the guard was gone, then closed the door and said, “I’ve been trying to call you for hours. You scared the shit out of me, Phoebe. What happened?”

  “That was you on the phone?” She cringed. “I’m sorry. I thought it was... Michael. I fell asleep on the couch, and slept for hours, and then— ” She considered telling him that Chick had woken her, but decided not to. “In my nightmare Michael was giving me a flower for my funeral, and when I woke, I found this on my chest.” She’d wrapped the dead rose in plastic. She pulled it out of her backpack and showed it to him. “I was afraid to answer the phone.”

  He stared at the rose, and she thought he paled a little, but it was hard to tell under the fluorescent lights. “Oh, God, Phoebe. I thought you were just busy taking calls.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t wake up until just before midnight. My call average is going to plummet if I don’t get some time in.” She grinned a little. “Not that I don’t have bigger things to worry about.”

  He took a deep breath, reached down, and gently palpated her knee. “You have some new swelling here and some heat over the joint. What happened?”

  “Nothing. I wanted an excuse to come in here that wouldn’t draw too much attention to me.”

  “Walking in would have worked.”

  Phoebe shook her head. “I meant, that wouldn’t draw too much attention from Mi— ... from the stalker. If he was watching me, I wanted to have a seemingly legitimate reason to be here.”

  “It looks like you have some fresh damage. More bruising and swelling since the last time I looked at it. Nothing huge, but I’m not happy about it.”

  Phoebe shrugged. “It’s the same as usual. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say it’s all right, but I don’t really want to do anything with it. I can’t afford the X-ray and the ER fees and everything else right now.” And I don’t dare let you out of my sight when Michael may be coming, she thought.

  Alan nodded. “An X-ray wouldn’t hurt, I don’t think, but if you’re sure you haven’t done anything new to it, we can let it go with Ace, ice, and elevate. You and I can do that as a private visit so we don’t have to do a chart on you. I’ll cover any costs.” He crouched beside the wheelchair. “You sound like you’ve finally decided the guy coming after you isn’t your ex.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because just now was the first time I heard you call him anything but Michael.” He smiled. “That’s good, Phoebe.”

  “Actually, I’m pretty sure the person coming after me is Michael. I called him my stalker for your benefit, but not because that’s what I believe.”

  Alan’s smile died. “Oh.” He sighed deeply. “He can’t be Michael.”

  Phoebe held up a hand. “How does Chick come to you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But she does — right? I mean, you know it’s her.”

  “Of course I know it’s her. She’s my daughter.”

  “He was my husband. He was my stalker. He was nearly my killer. I know him better than I know anyone on the planet except myself. I don’t know how he’s coming after me any more than you know how Chick has come back to you.” Phoebe leaned forward in the chair. “But I think the two things are related — Chick and Michael. I don’t know what form he’s in, but I think Chick knows about him. What I don’t know is why she got you involved with me. You would have been a million times better off if you’d never met me.”

  He stood utterly still for a long moment. Then he just shook his head. “No. That isn’t true.”

  “You would have. Your life is in danger now, and that’s because of me. Anyway, I’m just saying that these contacts with Michael aren’t necessarily taking place on the physical plane.”

  “Michael’s spirit is bringing you dead flowers?”

  “And moving my tea mug around. And, I don’t know... watching me all the time.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know how he’s doing it. But I know it’s him, the same way that you know Chick is really Chick.” She closed her eyes. “It feels like him.”

  “I thought knowing he was dead would be a comfort to you.”

  She smiled up at him. “I know. But right now it would be false comfort. That’s... no. We don’t want false comfort. We don’t want any sense of security that’s based on a lie, because that could get us killed. This is real comfort. The two of us in here — just being with you, knowing you’re safe.” She reached over and took his hand. “I know I don’t know you very well, Alan—”

  “You almost knew me a lot better.” He smiled at her, and she couldn’t help but laugh a little.

  “True. And I don’t want to make any assumptions and I don’t want to crowd you. But I feel better being here. Knowing that you’re safe, at least right this minute.”

  “You can make a few assumptions.” His sudden grin flashed wickedly, and his eyes lit with an unholy come-hither glow.

  “I can’t. We can’t. We don’t dare. We’re in a tight spot right now — shared fear, shared strangeness — and that’s going to create a sense of false intimacy. We’re going to have to ignore it, because it isn’t real. You know this. You know how people act in traumatic situations.”

  Alan looked startled. Head cocked at an angle, he studied her. And smiled a warm, winning smile. “You mean like survivor sex?”

  Phoebe felt her cheeks get hot. “Yeah. Like that.”

  “And you think that we would be a bad idea? Us? You’re trying to talk me out of us?”

  Phoebe wanted nothing in the world less than that, but she said, “I just don’t want... um... either of us mistaking this for something it isn’t. Something more permanent.”

  She looked away from him. She didn’t want him to say something he didn’t mean. Something that he would regret when sanity returned and it was time to move on.

  Something like I love you.

  She wasn’t going to let herself say those three words, either.

  “When we get through this, things are going to look different. And I don’t want either
one of us getting hurt.”

  Alan took two steps towards her, so that he was close enough that she could feel the heat of his body and smell the lingering whisper of aftershave. “You can’t know what the future holds,” he said. “And in the meantime, I’m all in favor of survivor sex.”

  She got all warm and tingly, and a wicked little voice inside of her said, I’m all in favor of survivor sex, too. But she smiled a shaky smile and said, “Well, it’s not anything we have to worry about right now.”

  “Who’s worrying?” Alan asked and took the step that closed the gap between them. He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her up. “You’re sure the knee is okay?”

  “Um— ” Phoebe said, but didn’t get a chance to say anything else, because he was kissing her, his big hands cradling her buttocks, and she wrapped her legs around him, being very careful with the knee because there were some things she simply did not wish to explain to anyone — ever — and explaining how she’d dislocated her knee while jumping the bones of an on-duty ER doctor (in a trauma room, no less) while pretending to be a patient certainly ranked high on that list.

  Their lips crushed together, their tongues slid and thrust, their bodies tried to push through clothing to reach each other. The kiss — the kiss tossed Phoebe into a place of pure red unthinking haze, into boiling blood and howling images of him naked her naked them rising and falling, heaving, thrusting, and she wrapped hands around the back of his head and pulled him tighter, closer, wild with a desire so consuming that she would willingly have stripped him bare and thrown him to the cold linoleum floor and impaled herself on him and ridden him to screaming, shrieking climax right then and there.

  He broke free, looking dazed, and slid her onto the Stryker stretcher that filled the center of the room. He stepped back, and she felt suddenly like the sacrifice on a pagan altar.

  “Where have you been all my life?” he said, and his voice broke.

  “Where are we going to be ten minutes from now — that’s what I want to know,” she replied.

  “I’m here until seven a.m. We have two other doctors in the ER for this shift, but leaving early — no. It’s just not done.”

  “Time now?”

  “Almost three. Wow, time drags when you want to get moving.”

  “I’m going to explode before then.”

  Alan looked down at the tented fabric of his scrub pants and muttered, “Shit. Look— I’m going to put an Ace wrap on your knee, put you back in the wheelchair, and put you in the doctors’ lounge — we have a couple of bunk beds in there, and you can rest—”

  For a moment that sounded eminently reasonable to Phoebe. Then the whole reason she’d come to the ER in the ridiculous hours of the morning fought its way through the fog in her brain, and she said, “Could I just sit at the nurses’ station, out of the way? I promise to keep my hands to myself and not say anything that would embarrass you.”

  “Not going to do any tarot readings for the nurses, huh?”

  “I was a teacher,” Phoebe said. “I’m certified to teach biology, anatomy, and honors science all the way through twelfth grade. I can pretend to be normal.” She smiled a little. “I had lots of practice passing for normal as a kid.”

  “You could never pass for normal,” Alan told her. “Only for extraordinary.” He took an Ace bandage off a huge metal storage shelf and started wrapping her knee with it. His timing couldn’t have been better. A nurse knocked and popped her head in the door. “We have a two-car collision on the way in. CPR in progress on one that’s already tubed, two dead at the scene, two with big trauma, one baby in a car seat that sounds unscathed but is going to have to be checked out. You need me to finish up in here?”

  Alan said, “I’ve got this wrapped. She’ll need an ice pack. And let her wait at the nurses’ station; she shouldn’t have driven here with this, and she definitely doesn’t need to drive home on it.”

  “You want me to call a ride for you?” the nurse asked. Her tone was professional, but Phoebe could see curiosity in her eyes.

  “I’m going to drive her home,” Alan said.

  “My car...”

  “Morrie owes me a favor. He’ll bring it for you.”

  Phoebe smiled at the nurse and tried hard to look like someone who hadn’t just been kissed to within an inch of her sanity. She had the feeling the nurse wasn’t buying any of it — that behind that polite, curious face lay a mind saying, “Yeah, sure, I’ve got eyes, honey.”

  So Phoebe sat tucked away in a corner of the nurses’ station, her backpack on her lap, her hand on top of the flap, watching the doctors and the nurses hurrying between patients, and watching cops and paramedics and EMTs pouring into the open spaces, bringing patients on stretchers, and watching techs running in and out of the department. And all the darkness of the past two years filled her again. She had been in places like this, surrounded by doctors and nurses and cops like these, and her scars were still fresh and she was not yet free. She watched Alan, listened to him taking charge, making things better, saving people’s lives, and everything he did just pounded home to her the reality that all she was doing for him was bringing him trouble and danger and the threat of his own death.

  And for what? On her part, she didn’t know. On his, though — for a psychic connection with his dead daughter? He could replace her with someone else who could do the same thing better; by a real medium, not a sideline tarot reader. Someone who wouldn’t risk his life simply by being there. For a passing sexual attraction born of shared fear and danger and strangeness? Phoebe could see the female members of the ER staff all around her — nurses, a doctor, lab and X-ray techs. Most of them were young, all of them were strong and healthy, and many of them were very pretty. They had everything in the world in common with Alan — shared goals and shared careers, a common philosophy, understandings that came of fighting together for something worthwhile. And futures.

  She could see the dead rose lying on her chest, as clearly as if it had been branded there.

  She didn’t have a future.

  So she and Alan shared a transient connection to his dead child’s ghost and to her reportedly dead psychopath of an ex. Well, that and a sexual chemistry so explosive it hurt. It was going to be agony when Alan moved on with his life, leaving her with memories of the best thing she’d ever experienced — and the knowledge that it hadn’t even been real. That was...

  That was pathetic.

  Once she’d found a way to protect Alan from Michael, she could just get in her car and drive away. Save face, protect her feelings. Until then, she could avoid any more kisses, or touches, or curling up in bed together.

  She watched him, and thought, Yeah, I could protect myself and my feelings later, and miss out on everything now. But I’ve never had great sex. Hell, I’ve never even had great chemistry. All I need is once. Just one time with him, in bed or anywhere, all the way, just to know what it’s like. What it could have been for me with someone better than Michael. Then I’ll step gracefully out of his way and live with reality. At least that way I’ll have an amazing memory — for however long I have left. And if I’m out of time, I haven’t thrown away my last opportunity for something wonderful because I was afraid to take a chance.

  She stared at her right leg. She figured she could take hurt feelings — or even a broken heart — standing on her head. She’d been through a lot worse.

  Here and now, he wants me. It doesn’t have to be forever, it doesn’t have to be real. I’m an adult. I just have to make sure I don’t let myself fall in love with him. That I remember who I am and who he is.

  That I remember that no one gets to keep every wonderful thing that moves through her life, and I’m no exception.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Alan had always been good at keeping his mind on his work, even when his personal life was a shambles. And he didn’t make any fatal errors or get sidetracked from what he was doing. But he couldn’t make himself forget that Phoebe was in the ER, just a
few feet away, watching him. He couldn’t make himself forget the taste of her lips, the scent of her hair, or the feel of her tight, lean body wrapped around his.

  The way she’d tried to talk him out of the two of them. No way she would have done that if she were trying to con him. The heightened emotions surrounding the bizarreness they were both dealing with would have been like the... the golden ticket to a con artist.

  Which meant she was on the level.

  Which meant he could allow himself to feel what he was feeling for her. She wasn’t Janet. He could let himself trust her — at least enough to pursue the real stirrings between them, to see where those emotions led.

  Alan got through the trauma code, got the patient stabilized and shipped upstairs — but the whole time he was working, he was feeling his hands on Phoebe’s skin and seeing her smile, and imagining the look he would see in her eyes when he plunged into her for the first time.

  He did his charting standing up, leaning against the counter, not daring to move. The hard-on was persistent, obvious, and annoying. Annoying only because he and Phoebe weren’t someplace where they could put it to good use.

  She looked sad and tense sitting over there, he thought — like she’d lost her best friend, or maybe like he had and she was the one who was going to have to tell him about it. Pretty — God, she was beautiful. His parents would love her. And his brothers. When he introduced her to his brothers, he’d have to club them once, just to make sure they knew not to try poaching.

  He wanted to see her smile. Wanted to hear her laugh again — she had a wonderful, rich, throaty laugh, but he had the feeling she only took it out of mothballs on blue moons. And that just wasn’t right. She deserved to be the happiest woman on the planet. She deserved to be free of all the horrors haunting her, all the pain that chased after her, and definitely free of that psychopath who was scaring her, whoever he was.

  Brig would be by later and would start straightening things out for her. Meanwhile, she was where Alan could see her and make sure that the phone freak didn’t turn into an in-person freak.