A Marriage To Fight For

by Raina Lynn

  The high-tech sterility of ICU screamed into vivid focus, and a buzzer wailed. Maggie whirled around, her delicate face pale with horror. The nurse launched herself off her chair and rammed her palm into a call button on the wall.

  “Code Blue in three! Code Blue in three!”

  A red light pulsed in the hall outside his door. A small army of people rushed in, crowding Maggie against the far wall.

  “Give me a rundown,” ordered a doctor.

  “Forty-two-year-old white male,” the nurse barked, then rattled off the long list of Garrett’s injuries and the details of his surgery, ending with, “This is his third cardiac arrest since midnight.”

  The doctor swore. “Give me the paddles. Let’s start him off low—fifty. This guy must have a tremendous will to live to have made it this far. I don’t want to do any more damage.”

  Garrett glanced at Maggie. Her fingers were clamped tightly over bloodless lips. Her pain washed through him as if it were his own. Oh, babe, he groaned. Is this what you went through when that clown shot me eight years ago? That had been the worst of his injuries while on duty.

  Garrett was only distantly aware of the ICU staff trying to get his heart started again. In the face of what he was learning about Maggie, their efforts didn’t seem particularly important. He’d always dismissed her reaction as overactive female hormones. I was a real idiot, wasn’t I, babe? With your childhood, how could I not have realized how badly you still needed security, stability? I thought my love fixed all that. I thought you were just using it as an excuse to get me to quit the force. I didn’t understand, babe. I swear I didn’t.

  A gently enticing pull distracted him from his self-recriminations, beckoning him to let go. Focusing on his body, he struggled to force himself back inside where he belonged, but the flesh and blood frame he’d occupied his entire life didn’t quite belong to him anymore.

  “Don’t go,” Maggie pleaded in an anguished whisper.

  I’m trying not to, babe, he muttered dryly. I’m a little out of my element here. Literally.

  “V tac, Doctor.”

  Garrett watched them all check the readouts, vicariously feeling their collective commitment to doing their jobs, their suppressed fear.

  “Lidocaine.”

  The pull on his soul intensified as they injected the powerful heart stimulant. Death held no fear for him. He’d made peace with God years ago, exactly six months to the day after he’d shot and killed a suspect. He didn’t mind dying, but he minded very much leaving Maggie and Rick. Somehow he had to fight back.

  “No good. V fib.”

  “Epinepherine.”

  He mentally turned away from Maggie and focused again on the abstract sense of shifting. Something, somehow conand he couldn’t see anymore. He was back in his body, not that he understood exactly how he’d gotten there. But back was good.

  “Now we’re getting someplace,” the doctor grumbled. “The cardiac waves are coarser.”

  Another burst of electricity surged through Garrett, and his body convulsed in response.

  “Don’t hurt him,” he heard Maggie sob softly.

  “Again.” They repeated the procedure.

  This time when his body convulsed, he felt Maggie cringe.

  “Sinus rhythm.”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Hughes,” the original nurse assured her a moment later. “What you saw looked pretty frightening, but he didn’t feel anything. He wasn’t at all aware of what happened just now.”

  Like hell! Garrett shot back, annoyed.

  Maggie shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. But I like to believe that co...coma patients are more aware of their surroundings than we know.”

  Garrett gave a wry mental grin. So I’ve learned.

  “Mrs. Hughes, go home and rest. We’ll call you if there’s any change.”

  Garrett tensed as he felt Maggie’s hesitation. He didn’t want her to leave. For the first time in his life, he suddenly felt as if he truly had a chance to understand the only woman he’d ever loved, and he didn’t want to lose that.

  “Not...just yet.”

  Garrett would have shouted for joy if he’d been able.

  “All right,” the nurse agreed dubiously, “but wearing yourself out won’t help him.” Standard hospital tripe and, as Maggie ignored her, pure elation rippled through him.

  As the team filed out of the room, Maggie moved closer, and his inability to see aggravated him beyond all reason. I want to see your face again, babe. I need to tell you I love you. Inwardly, he groaned in frustration. Seeing meant leaving his body, and he’d courted death too much since he’d walked onto the airliner’s flight deck. When I wake up, am I even going to remember any of this?

  He felt her turbulent emotions rising and falling, the anger and guilt and confusion. When she finally spoke, her words came so softly, he doubted the nurse could hear them from her chair across the cramped room.

  “Garrett, you always did know how to shred my life.” She swallowed hard. “You can’t keep doing this to me. I can’t take it.” Her voice dropped even lower. “I love you too much.”

  Without warning, she moved away, and he felt her presence retreat down the hall.

  Maggie, come back here. My being this way doesn’t have anything to do with my job! Stop running!

  Within seconds she was out of reach. Without thinking, he rose to follow her, and the cardiac monitor’s alarm screamed in retaliation.

  Oh, hell.

  Maggie turned the key in the lock with the same white-knuckled intensity with which she’d gripped the steering wheel all the way home. Today, the normally welcoming creak of the old door sounded less like a friendly greeting and more like a lonely echo of her mangled emotions.

  “That you, Mom?” The voice coming from the dining room sounded much younger than its sixteen years.

  She sighed heavily. “Yeah.” The aroma of fresh brewed coffee floated in the air and, like an automaton, she walked into the dining room. Rick, a young version of his father, nearly Garrett’s height of six foot one and just beginning to fill out, sat at the table idly tapping a fingernail against the handle of a coffee mug.

  Desperate to lighten the mood, she quipped, “Why can’t you get your caffeine from tooth-rotting sodas like a normal kid?” The effort at humor fell flat.

  Rick shrugged but didn’t look up. The dark shadows under his eyes emphasized the downcast set to his features. He hadn’t slept last night either.

  “I made a whole pot of coffee if you want some,” he murmured as if unable to think of anything else to say.

  Maggie retrieved a steaming cup for herself and sat down. More than the expanse of the cherry-wood table separated them. “You want to talk about it?” she asked.

  Rick quit tapping his mug and pulled both hands into his lap in a defensive posture. She took a sip and waited him out.

  “I know you’re mad at me, Mom, but I just can’t go see him.”

  “Why not?”

  “When you divorced him, I guess he sorta divorced me.”

  Not flinching took all her willpower. If Rick realized how close she was to collapse, he’d clam up, and she’d never get to the bottom of this. “His move to Washington didn’t change his feelings for you. I know you’re hurting, but we’ve always been open and honest with each other. Hiding something this important isn’t like you. And it couldn’t have been an accident. What gives?”

  Rick shot her a bitter look. Then, with a willpower to match her own, he quelled it and returned to staring into his coffee. “Because I loved you both.” His voice wobbled, and he cleared his throat. “Admitting you were right was like choosing.”

  Maggie’s own throat clogged with tears she didn’t dare shed.

  He raised his eyes. “I never told you that I tried to call him six months ago.”

  She took a steadying sip. “You’ve called him a number of times since the divorce,. What’s special about that one?”

  “The phone company didn’t have a
listing.” Rick’s whole body trembled, and he hunched down in the chair. “All I had was the safe line number where I could leave a message.”

  Maggie ached for him. “He told us both he’d been assigned to a case that had gotten extremely complicated. After paying rent for a year on an apartment he never used, he let it go.”

  “That was two years ago!” The dry disbelief sounded so much like Garrett that Maggie shuddered. “Mom, he had to be living somewhere. If he cared about me, I’d have more than a message number.”

  “Then ask him about it.”

  Rick recoiled as if she’d suggested something vile. “Nice try, Mom, but no thanks.”

  Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have tolerated such an attitude. Then again, under normal circumstances Rick wouldn’t behave this way.

  “Sweetheart, don’t condemn him without giving him—”

  “A chance?” Rick shot to his feet. “You were right, Mom. All he cares about is busting drug dealers.”

  Maggie winced. “I never said that. Never.”

  “You didn’t have to. I knew how you felt!”

  Maggie took a couple of rapid breaths and fought for her words. “He loves you. But there’s a part of him that demands he try to make the world a little safer, a little more decent. Good cops aren’t just logging in hours at a job. It’s who they are.”

  Rick gave her a scornful look. “Like I said. Dad’s only interested in his work.”

  “Sweetheart, you’re not listening.” Garrett might not have been with them physically, but the emotional desertion Rick claimed simply hadn’t happened. Deep inside, Rick had to know it, too, but the volatile emotions of the teenage years weren’t letting him see it.

  “What about you, Mom? Does he love you, too?”

  The answer sat on her finger, all two carats of it. Thankfully Rick hadn’t noticed. “More than you know.” Maggie sighed. Her shoulders sagged a little under the weight.

  Rick crossed his arms defensively across his chest. “He wrote us off. That’s not love.”

  Rick’s accusation clawed its way through her conscience. Hadn’t she been guilty of writing off Garrett when she heard the code blue as she was leaving? Hadn’t she refused to be there when he really needed her? She took a shuddering breath. Time to change the subject and give them both breathing room. “Were there any phone calls after I talked to you?”

  He gave her a sharp, penetrating look. “Like who?”

  “The hospital.” She took her half-empty coffee mug to the kitchen and poured the contents into the sink.

  Rick growled something unpleasant under his breath. “I’m going to the arcade for a while.” The chair legs scraped against the hardwood floor as he scooted his chair back.

  She didn’t attempt to stop him, and listened morosely to the agitated tread of his footsteps on the living room carpet. When the front door slammed, she jumped, then wrapped her arms around herself, longing to wake up from the nightmare.

  Garrett discovered that, although he didn’t sleep per se, he could drift in and out of awareness. Passionately, he wanted to somehow communicate, but whenever he tried to move, his heart stopped. It was a real nuisance. Grudgingly, he allowed that his body needed time to heal. Patience was a skill he had learned early on in police work, but that didn’t mean he liked it. The largest hurdle—surviving the plane crash—had been overcome. Before long, he’d walk out of here, then he could concentrate on getting his family back.

  Since the divorce, Blake had kept him posted. Maggie rarely dated, and that pleased him immensely. He wouldn’t have to worry about destroying any romantic entanglements she might have.

  A warning voice told him his cold-bloodedness was a leftover from Gary Reeves, the identity he’d assumed three years ago. Reeves wouldn’t have let a simple thing like morality interfere with whatever he’d wanted.

  “Good morning, Garrett.”

  Maggie! He had been lost in thought, and she’d sneaked up on him. He soaked up the emotions she radiated—hurt, confusion and resentment, all hidden beneath forced cheerfulness. Someday soon, babe. I don’t know how, but somehow I’ll make it right between us.

  The memory from when he’d accidentally left his body the day before had a crystalline clarity. Her soft features had grown more beautiful over the years, and her hair still hung to her shoulders in a soft, fluffy, auburn cloud. He wanted to reach out and stroke her satin skin, run his fingers through her hair, but he contented himself with reaching for her the only way he could, with his mind. What he touched stopped him cold. Guilt?

  “The nurse said you’ve been more...stable since I left.”

  Oh, so that’s it. Babe, staying here wouldn’t have helped My heart itopped because I don’t have a handle on this yet.

  Maggie cleared her throat. “The tendons in your arm are damaged, and I need to massage them. That will help until you’re strong enough for more surgery.” There was a long pause as she worked, struggling to find something neutral to say. “Do you remember that cabin we almost bought? Good thing we didn’t. A fire wiped out that whole area last summer.”

  Garrett mentally shook his head. Babe, I know you’re upset, but don’t hide in trivia. Tell me what’s eating you.

  She skipped from one subject to the next. By the time she began sharing anecdotes about Blake’s girls, he realized something odd. In her wandering monologue, she never once mentioned their son. Where’s Rick?

  “I’m putting in a new flower bed in the backyard.” Beneath the calm voice, she was a wreck, hiding behind trivia to keep from falling apart.

  It unnerved him. What’s wrong with Rick, babe?

  “I’m redoing a whole section of sprinkler pipe. It’s kind of fun. Working in the yard, I can see something accomplished when I’m through. And unlike housework, it stays done.”

  Talk to me! Frustration and worry gathered like storm clouds, and the cardiac monitor’s bleeps came faster, keeping time with his agitation.

  “Well—” she cleared her throat again “—I suppose I’d better get to work.”

  Don’t go, he pleaded. There must be a way I can cammunicate with you. Give me a chance to figure it out. He felt her ease away from the bed.

  “Mom’s coming back as soon as she gets someone to watch Dad.”

  Watch Dad? Garrett suffered a bout of mental whiplash. Why does Dad need watching?

  “Blake will be by later. He needed some sleep. Between you and another crash victim, he hasn’t had much sleep lately.”

  Fear congealed into anger. I don’t want to talk about my brotiaer’s insane work schedule. He’s been doing that for years. Maggie, what’s wrong with Dad, and where’s our son!

  “I’ll come back as soon as I’ve got work covered.”

  Agitation boiled unchecked. Quite unintentionally, he moved—not his body, just him. An obnoxious buzzer sounded.

  Maggie gasped. Garrett froze. The buzzer went silent.

  Within seconds, a team of nurses and their assorted cronies surrounded him, checking readouts and poking at him.

  “Just a little cardiac flutter, Mrs. Hughes,” one of them assured her compassionately. “Actually, we’ve upgraded his condition from grave to critical.”

  He felt Maggie gratefully take in the dubious good news.

  Didn’t mean to scare you, babe. The need to wrap his arms around her became overwhelming. His family needed him, and he couldn’t even open his eyes. How in the hell does one revive a comatose body?

  Chapter 3

  Blake set the large pepperoni pizza on the table between himself and Maggie, and they took a seat. “Mag, the problem is that you’re fighting all the old issues that tore up the marriage the first time.”

  “Tell me about it.” Maggie took a large bite of too-hot pizza and chewed slowly as if in thought.

  Blake leaned back in the padded booth, his lips pressed together in a flat line. “My point is that it’s not just his being a cop. If he’d been an accountant or a pharmaceutical salesman, you
’d still have climbed the walls every time he walked out the door.”

  Her hackles went up. “I’m not a clinging vine.”

  “No, but you’re so convinced that those who love you will desert you in the long run that you reject us first.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” He skewered her with a look that said she’d hear him out even if he had to tie her up with surgical gauze. “Then why, after the divorce, did it practically take an act of Congress to get you to rejoin the family?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were so convinced that blood was thicker than the heart that you assumed we’d written you off.”

  Uncomfortable with the memories of the Hughes clan arriving on her doorstep with a picnic basket and announcing it was past time for a family dinner, she looked away.

  During the ten years of her childhood that she’d been a ward of the state, she’d been in so many foster homes she’d quit counting. Each new address meant nothing more than the label of the next place she would live for a while. Sort of like the brand on a loaf of bread, only important if you were looking for a specific one. Until the last one when she was sixteen—right next door to Patrick and Laverne Hughes and their two sons.

  Her new foster parents paid everyone an allowance for certain chores. Her first week there, she’d been scrubbing dead bugs off a car windshield when two boys pulled up next door in a beat-up truck that probably had been red at one time. Now, it was mostly rust, primer and a lot of good intentions.

  The older of the pair was more man than boy and handsome in an inflexible sort of way. He maneuvered a football helmet and assorted sports gear from one arm to the other and crossed the lawn to where she stood. His sapphire-blue gaze raked over her with lightning speed, and softened in surprised approval. A solid strength radiated from him. His stance labeled him as a rock, someone his friends could always count on.

  “I’m Garrett.” His seductive, smooth voice shot straight to her heart. He tossed a glance over his shoulder at the other boy, a teenager about her age and impossibly good-looking. “That’s Blake.”

  Thunderstruck by Garrett, she barely noticed.