by Raina Lynn
Garrett’s grip weakened further. Whatever Blake shot him full of didn’t waste time.
“Not...till you say yes. Conscious...can refuse treatment.”
“Go ahead,” Blake butted in. “I’ll declare you incompetent. As a family member, I’m allowed.”
Garrett ignored him, focusing his rapidly fading consciousness on Maggie’s face. “I’d planned to propose...under more romantic circumstances.... Wanted to put the ring on your finger... myself. I’ll settle for... knowing you’re wearing it while they... put me back together.”
Maggie couldn’t handle looking at him anymore, but was helpless to look away. How can I say no, then send you off to a surgery you may never wake from? Her mouth took on a will of its own. “Yes, I’ll marry you.” She glowered at him. “But it won’t be until you’re out of here, and we’ve talked—extensively. Hospital rooms make lousy backdrops for wedding pictures.”
He puffed out his breath, probably the closest he could come to laughter. With trembling fingers, she dislodged the ring from its case and slipped it onto her left hand. Then she took his hand again, and he tried to give it one last squeeze.
“One more thing.” He could barely keep his eyes open, and his words were slurred almost beyond recognition. “My partner. Find him for me. See...if he made it...too.”
At first she was too stunned to react, too stunned to think, to feel. Then came the blistering rage. Your partner? You’re here on a case? What had you planned? Squeeze a wedding into your spare time?
She swallowed past the anger. “Okay.”
His expression eased into the placid gray of the dying. His eyes closed, and the trauma team rolled the gumey out the door and around the corner.
“What have I done? Even if he lives, he’ll never change,” she whispered, trying to ease the heartache. “He can’t. He doesn’t want to.” A sick despair crawled through her heart. You couldn’t live with it before, and you never will.
Taking one last longing look at the engagement ring, she pulled it from her finger, dropped it into a tunic pocket and went out to wait for her former in-laws.
The blue plastic, chrome-framed chair she found in the main corridor of the surgical floor was built for durability, not comfort. The corridor’s walls were gray, relieved only by periodic scuffs and gouges. All in all, the decor suited her mood. The bright, cheery colors of RPI—a subtle psychological touch to lift spirits—would only have increased her agitation. Maggie wrapped her arms around herself, her thoughts a numb collection of disconnected pieces of hell.
At the click of street shoes against the floor tiles, she looked up. Worry lined Laverne Hughes’s thin features as she searched for Maggie and kept one eye on her husband. Patrick, the Hughes patriarch, distinguished with his salt-and-pepper hair, seemed preoccupied with his hands today, turning them over and over, staring at them as if divining the secrets of some great mystery. He’d always been such a vibrant man. Seeing him this way hurt. First there had been the stroke. Then something nastier set in. It wasn’t Alzheimer’s, but no one knew exactly what it was. Whatever the name of his affliction, his periods of lucidity grew steadily shorter.
“Maggie, dear.” Laverne enveloped her in a warm hug loaded with genuine affection. Miraculously, she and Patrick hadn’t taken sides in the divorce.
Maggie turned to Patrick and projected her voice a bit to get his attention. “Hi, Dad.”
His head jerked up, and he apparently noticed his surroundings for the first time. “Maggie!” He turned to Laverne. “See, my love? Didn’t I tell you everything would be fine?”
Laverne patted his hand and returned his adoring gaze.
“Where are my sons?” Patrick demanded to the air in general.
Maggie took his arm and waited until his gaze swung back in her direction. “Garrett is in surgery. Blake is with him.”
Laverne’s jaw dropped, and Maggie cast her a quick glance. “Blake pulled in some real heavyweights,” she explained quietly. “Rollins, Tellerman and Kelly.”
“My boy’s the best surgeon in the country,” Patrick said. “His brother’s in good hands. He’ll come out just fine.”
An ugly lump formed in Maggie’s throat, and she was acutely aware of the engagement ring in her pocket. “Sure, Dad.”
He looked thoughtfully at his hands again, and she and Laverne spent a quick moment comparing notes.
“We won’t know anything for twelve to fifteen hours,” Maggie explained. Unless, of course, he dies on the table first, “So we might as well go find some coffee.”
“Garrett’s going to be okay,” Laverne said, her face set in desperate determination. She urged Patrick to his feet.
Patrick was instantly alert, and he beamed down at Maggie. “Speaking of Garrett, how long have you two been married now?”
For a moment, she thought she might throw up right there in the corridor. Patrick’s memory came and went, and no one knew what he was likely to remember. One thing he’d never remembered, though, was the divorce. “Next week it’ll be seventeen years.”
He sighed rapturously. “I don’t mind telling you, I thought too many years separated you. Six is a lot for young people.” He patted her hand holding his arm. “Sure glad I was wrong.”
“Me, too, Dad.” Her stomach churned, and the lump that had been in her throat earlier came back, bringing three or four of its larger cousins with it. She could hardly breathe.
Garrett had proposed the first time the day he entered the police academy. They were married six months after he was accepted by the San Francisco Police Department and had a steady paycheck. Her personal Boy Scout wanted everything perfect.
“Where is that boy, anyway?” Patrick frowned. “Haven’t seen him in a long time.”
Maggie couldn’t answer.
“Patrick dear,” Laverne said, coming to the rescue. “He and Blake are busy. We’ll see them later.”
Patrick made an accepting noise in his throat. “Probably out playing basketball. I’ve never seen two grown men play such serious half-court in my life. You’d think it was the NBA playoffs or something.” He gazed fondly at Maggie. “Do you think when we get home, they’d be interested in a little threesome with their old man?”
Maggie forced herself to inhale. She’d heard Blake’s tone when he’d talked about the bone fragments pressing against Garrett’s spinal cord. Fourteen years’ experience in rehabilitative medicine left no illusions, and her mind traveled down all the ugly roads Garrett could take. If Garrett lived at all, there’d never be any more hard-fought matches between the two brothers, the loser having to wash and wax his sibling’s car.
Get a grip, Hughes, she told herself sternly. No one knows anything—yet. And the cord wasn’t severed. Anything can huppen.
“Did you know Garrett went to college on a football scholarship?” Patrick rambled on as they walked toward the cafeteria. “I really thought he might go pro, but he had his mind fixed on being a cop. Has had ever since he was knee-high to a hubcap.”
Maggie glanced at Laverne, hoping for another rescue, but the older woman seemed lost in her own dark reverie. “Dad, do you think we could talk about something else?”
“Sure,” he said cheerfully. “By the way, where do you suppose Blake and Garrett hightailed it off to?”
Chapter 2
“Mom! Where are you? rve been worried sick. Do you know what time it is? Two o’clock, Mom. In the morning!”
“I know the time,” Maggie answered low, fixing her gaze on the pay phone’s battered faceplate.
The sixteen-year-old had himself wound up in a real coil of righteous indignation. “The last time I wasn’t home when you expected and I didn’t leave a note, you grounded me for a week. It cost me a date with Sandy Walker!”
“Slow down, Ricky. There’s something I need to tell you.” Maggie steeled herself for what she had to say. Rick and Garrett had been so close before Garrett’s move to Washington. Garrett had spent hours teaching their son how to shoot bas
kets, pass a football and build the perfect doghouse. Maggie could barely stand the thought of Rick’s devastation. Please, God, watch over him. He’ll probably drive like a maniac to get here.
“We have a rule, Mom. We both leave notes so the other one knows where we are.” His voice dropped to a mocking sarcasm. “I checked every magnet on the fridge. No note. Not even a little one. Have we discovered invisible paper?”
Maggie winced at having her own words thrown back at her. She’d been so worried the night he strolled in after curfew, she had really popped off. No wonder he’d balked. “Point taken. I shouldn’t have said those things. I’m sorry.”
The apology seemed to take all the starch out of him, and he asked softly, “Are you okay, Mom? I’ve been really worried.”
“I’m at Community General, and—”
“Were you in a wreck?” His voice went up an octave.
“Slow down. No car accident. I’m fine.”
An audible sigh of relief came through the phone.
“Rick, did you hear about the plane crash this afternoon?”
“Yeah. Almost two hundred people died. That psycho only told them about the bomb in the cockpit, not the one set to blow the wing off.”
Two bombs? So that explained it. She’d been so absorbed with Garrett, she hadn’t thought about the details of the crash.
“Every cop in the world must be after that guy.”
Maggie took a deep breath, held it, then let part of it out very, very slowly.
“So you’re there for that? Weird. I thought rehab was the cleanup crew. Sort of like the guy who picks up the trash in the bleachers after a big game.” He chuckled at his own joke.
“Honey, sit down.” Maggie paused to give him a moment to prepare himself. “Your dad was on that plane.” Tears crowded her throat. She inhaled and held it. I absolutely won’t break down. Rick needs my support, not hysterics. She needed to tell him that Garrett was still alive, but her vocal cords seized up.
“Is he dead?” The frozen lack of emotion shocked her.
“No,” she wheezed. “He’s in—”
“Too bad.” A short pause. “When are you coming home?”
Maggie flinched as if hit by a powerful electric jolt. The receiver fell from her hand and swung inanely by its cord. Adolescent rebellion was one thing, but this was an entirely different, and vastly uglier animal. What had happened? Rick had worshiped Garrett.
As if having fallen into a nightmare, she picked up the receiver and put it back against her ear.
“Mom? Are you there?”
“Richard, he’s your father,” she cried. “He’s badly hurt.”
“My father,” Rick mimicked sarcastically. “Well, why don’t you remind him of that. You’ve gotten your child support checks—thanks to some setup at the bank—and his accountant never forgot my birthday or Christmas. But he usually did. He didn’t have to be here, but a phone call on the right day would have been nice.” The secret pain Rick had borne alone leaked out like droplets from a crack in a dam.
“How often has he come to see me? Five times in four years. The first time he came mostly because Grandpa had that stroke.” The droplets of pain quickened into a stream. “Did my father ever send for me so I could spend the summer with him? No! Stupid me, I settled for a few days here and there.” The stream rushed into a river, and Rick’s voice cracked under the force.
“He told me he was going under for a while, on a case. That was okay. But he hardly ever called, and when I left a message, sometimes it was a week before he’d call back. Even then, it wasn’t really him. It was his voice, but it was like talking to a stranger.” The sixteen-year-old openly wept now, and the anger she heard was directed as much at himself as his father.
“Ricky, very often police officers have to become different people to work complex undercover operations. It’s like acting, but they have to live it twenty-four hours a day for weeks at a time. That other person is impossible to shed just for a phone call home. I imagine it’s worse for a DEA agent because they can stay under indefinitely, no time restrictions.”
Angry sobbing was all she heard.
“Oh, Ricky,” she groaned. How could I not have noticed how hurt you were?
“And my name’s not Ricky. It’s Rick!”
“Right.” Raising a teenager was like tiptoeing through a minefield, and in her own turmoil, she’d stumbled on a forgotten land mine. Without his saying another word, she could feel her son retreating. She had a better chance of sprouting wings than accomplishing anything meaningful with him tonight. “Okay, honey. Your dad will be in surgery for hours yet.”
“So? I’m not coming down there if that’s what you’re getting at”
Maggie swallowed the urge to snap at him. “I don’t know when I’ll be home. Get some sleep. We’ll talk when we’re both rested.”
He mumbled some sort of noncommittal reply, then hung up.
Maggie stared blankly at the old, beat-up pay phone. This morning she had awakened blissfully unaware that her ex-husband was plotting a reconciliation—possibly getting himself killed in the process—and that her son hated him so much that he refused to come to the hospital. What other comfortable illusion would be shattered before her head hit the pillow next?
Fourteen hours and thirty-two minutes after the surgical team wheeled Garrett into surgery, Blake trudged into the waiting room. Maggie leaped to her feet The morning sun shone through the window, giving a stark clarity to the mottled gray of his face and the haggard lines carved by exhaustion. But it was Blake’s eyes she needed to see. When he looked up, what would she find? Grief? Joy? Maggie’s pulse pounded at the base of her throat and in her ears, blocking out all other sound. Blake pulled the slump from his shoulders and took in his surroundings as if dragging himself from far away. Desperate for a tenuous lifeline to hope, she reached into her pocket and slipped the heavy diamond and gold ring onto her finger.
“Oh, please, God,” Laverne prayed under her breath.
Blake wrapped his arms around their shoulders. “By all rights he should be dead. His heart stopped twice while we were closing. The second time was real touch and go.”
“But he’s alive?” Maggie backed off enough to see his face.
Blake nodded. “His condition is extremely grave. He’s in recovery, and the ICU team is with him now, orienting themselves to his case. A nurse will be at his side constantly for the next twelve hours at least.”
Maggie swallowed. Put simply, you’re measuring his life in minutes. “Can we see him?”
Laverne was laughing and crying and blessing her son’s face with a shower of kisses that he accepted almost numbly.
Blake nodded wearily. His bloodshot gaze locked onto Maggie’s face. “Mag, he’s alive for one reason. He wants to be. I just hope to God he’s not ready to give up.”
It was nearly noon before ICU had Garrett settled. Maggie took her turn to see him after his parents were through. When she first looked at the man in the chrome-framed bed, it took her several moments to believe it was really Garrett. He was swathed in bandaging and braces to keep him absolutely immobile. IVs and monitor wires stuck out of him like weird vines. Because he was too weak to breathe on his own, a respirator breathed for him. And he was so still, so frightfully still. If not for the beeps of the monitors and the rasps and clicks of the respirator, she would have thought he’d died.
Hesitantly, she grasped his square, powerful hand. The skin was warmer than before. His core temperature was coming up, a small straw to cling to, but the only one she had. Jumbled emotions, hot and bittersweet, coursed through her veins.
“Garrett, I’m here.” Her voice broke up so badly that the words were unintelligible, and she cleared her throat. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him how much she loved him, but she couldn’t. “I love you” was too close to “I surrender.”
Squeezing his hand, she tried again. “Garrett, why is your life never simple?” Better! Be strong. Be yourself. “
The worst is over, I think.” Sure it is. She looked up at the monitors. The readouts weren’t good. Between his injuries and the two heart attacks caused by fourteen hours of anesthesia, he wasn’t merely unconscious; he was in a deep coma. Prudently, she looked away. “When you’re out of here, we’ve got a lot of talking to do.”
Despite what the monitors said, Maggie half expected him to open his eyes, to fix her with that penetrating blue gaze of his, then grumble, “No, babe, we’re going to talk about it now.” But he didn’t.
Maggie fought a surge of love and regret, hope and fear. She gazed down at him, and deep in her chest, her heart slowly bled. “I don’t want to love you.”
Garrett heard Maggie’s pain with a clarity he didn’t understand. It was as if a new sense had awakened, one that allowed him to feel her turmoil as clearly as if it were his own. Moreover, it wasn’t only Maggie’s emotions he sensed. Across the room, a nurse sat reading a medical journal, her disgust at whatever she read as clear to him as if she’d complained out loud. Yet he had no physical sensations. It was as if his mind and spirit were fused together, but without the rest of him. He sensed the presence of his body, but felt no personal connection with it. A ribbon of disquiet sliced through him.
Is this some sort of weird, near-death experience that crackpots talk about? Or is this what everyone goes through when the body shuts down?
He thought about that for a while, but without concrete data, he couldn’t form any conclusions. Then a new thought struck him. Pain. For the first time since the crash, there was a merciful lack of it. That he could handle.
He sensed Maggie’s withdrawal, but he couldn’t open his eyes or squeeze her hand to let her know he wanted her to stay.
“I’m going home for some sleep, I’ll be back later.”
Don’t go, Maggie. Not yet. I need you.
She patted his arm, then moved toward the door. Garrett couldn’t let her leave. Focusing his mind on trying to move— a concept that for some reason seemed strangely abstract—he shifted.