by Raina Lynn
He cocked his head expectantly, and she wondered if he had a clue that he’d shut down her nervous system. It took an embarrassingly long time to make it work again. “I’m Maggie Jean Kincaid.”
“The Smiths’s new foster kid?” Blake asked.
Maggie barely heard him she was so locked into Garrett’s mesmerizing presence. Why was she out here washing the car, wearing grubby clothes? Why couldn’t she have met him when she had her hair combed and makeup on? Or better yet, wearing a swimsuit? Instead, she looked like a refugee from a thrift shop.
Maggie stared helplessly, unable to think. As if he couldn’t help himself, Garrett reached out and brushed a strand of long auburn hair from her cheek. His touch warmed her like a fire on a foggy winter night.
“Are you going to be living here a while?” Garrett gave her a tenderly hopeful smile that she still treasured after twenty years.
“Earth calling Hughes. Come in, space cadet.” Blake’s amused voice and his knuckles rapping loudly on a table interrupted her reverie.
Maggie blushed and chuckled at herself.
“Where did you go?” Weary merriment danced in his eyes.
“Just remembering the day we all met.” Feeling strangely shy, she picked a mushroom off her pizza. “I sort of melted into a little puddle at his feet that day. It’s a wonder you two didn’t laugh your heads off.”
“Big brother made a bigger puddle than you did. It took two weeks of reciting ‘jailbait’ like a divine mantra before he was human again.” Blake took a generous bite and worked it to one side of his mouth to talk. “Oh, by the way, don’t ever heckle a college senior about love at first sight, especially one who’s there on a football scholarship. It can get painful.”
Tension melted away. She couldn’t find the right words, but she smiled at him in gratitude. Garrett had always been her love, but Blake had always been the brother she could turn to.
“Think about what I said, Mag,” he whispered. “Rejecting people first has hurt you as long as I’ve known you. I know you’re aware you do that, but seeing a problem and confronting it aren’t the.same.”
“Eat your pizza, Doctor.”
Maggie walked into Garrett’s room and checked the monitors before she could bring herself to look at his motionless form lying in the steel-framed bed. Better. Not great. But better. Only after she studied his chart, too, and assured herself that he wasn’t in any immediate danger of dying, did she settle into the chair beside his bed.
You’re a coward, Hughes, she chastised herself silently. Wiiat would you have done if he’d been worse when you walked in? Run? Desert him before he could desert you? She didn’t realize she was crying until a fat tear dropped onto the back of her hand. Fishing in her pocket for a tissue, she sniffed loudly.
The sound jolted Garrett into awareness. Maggie? He searched with his mind, found it sluggish to respond. He knew Maggie was in the room, but he couldn’t quite locate her, nor could he sense her emotions. The unnatural ability had unsettled him, but losing it was even worse, especially since he still couldn’t feel his body. Does this mean I’m getting better? Or worse?
She took his hand. And he felt it! Sort of. It was more like a numb pressure. But it was something. Sheepishly, he imagined her rubbing it between her own like she used to while they’d nuzzled on the couch watching a movie and he’d fed her popcorn.
“Garrett, it’s me.”
Her voice was heaven. He’d spent too many hours alone in the solitude of his mind. Worry over Rick and his father had taken some imaginative and vicious turns. His mother had come alone that morning, and she was tired, more so than he could believe.
“Blake and I had lunch today. In case you’re interested, that man can still pack away more junk food than any human being I know. A doctor should know better.”
He took a mental breath. No trivia, babe. Where are Dad and Rick? Did Dad have another stroke?
She explained the massage technique she used on his arm to keep the tendons from becoming atrophied until Dr. Kelly could get him back into surgery. The physical sensation wasn’t strong enough to call pain, more of a vague discomfort, but he had the sneaking suspicion that if he were fully conscious it would send him through the roof.
My arm’s not important now, babe. Tell me what’s going on with the family.
“Do you remember my eighteenth birthday?”
Annoyance over her choice of subject flashed through him, but he took a deep mental breath and accepted it. Maggie had no intentions of telling him anything she deemed unpleasant, and he was just going to have to live with it. For now.
“Mom gave me the most incredible party.”
Despite himself, he smiled inside. How could I not remember? I’d been counting the days until you’d be legal I nearly proposed that night but I hadn’t been accepted to the academy yet, and I wanted to wait until I knew I had a job.
“I’d loved you for so long, and I really expected you to propose. When you didn’t, I stupidly cried myself to sleep.” She laughed. “I sure had some growing up to do.”
He chuckled. You were worth waiting for. Love swept through him, and he envisioned himself wrapping her into an inescapable embrace. I never told you I’d already bought the engagement ring. I couldn’t afford much, and the size of that microscopic diamond chip embarrassed me for years. Why didn’t you ever want a larger stone? He paused. Well, babe, you’ve got a respectable rock now. Maybe this one will still stay on your finger.
“I love you, Garrett. More now than I did then.” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat self-consciously. “You need to get well. One-sided conversations leave much to be desired.”
I noticed.
“Rick, he’s your father.” Maggie had bolstered herself the entire trip home for this confrontation. Now they faced each other, invisible battle lines drawn on the living room carpet.
The sixteen-year-old’s arms hung boardlike at his sides, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, and his jaw tilted in implacable defiance. Maggie tasted failure but plugged on.
“What do you want me to do, Mom? Walk in there, wave and say ‘Hi’? ‘Let me introduce myself? ’I’m the son you forgot’?”
Maggie died a little inside. How could she have lived every day with him and not seen this? “If he lives, you two can argue all you want. But if he doesn’t, twenty years from now you’ll feel differently than you do today. I don’t want you to live with that kind of regret.”
“Not damn likely.”
“Watch your mouth!”
His lips pursed together, and he turned toward the stairs. “I’ve got studying to do.” He reached for the banister.
Maggie latched onto his arm and levered him back around. Young muscles bunched rock-hard beneath her fingers. “Running solves nothing.” Inside, she winced, condemned by her own words. “Tomorrow morning, you and I are going to the hospital—together.” The wheels turned behind his eyes, and his mutinous expression slowly transformed into one of cold reason.
“I have school, and my boss needs me right after.”
“Your family is more important than school or your job.”
“Really?” Beneath the sarcasm, she heard the hurt of a little boy’s hidden wounds. “I’m just following in my old man’s footsteps. He’d be proud.”
Rendered speechless, Maggie’s hold on his arm slackened, and she stood helplessly as he strode upstairs. How could she condemn her son for running away from the pain when that was exactly what she’d done? Condemn, no. Understand, yes. And getting him to deal with this before it hardened into a permanent scar was critical. With a heavy sigh, she trudged up after him.
A total stranger would have known which of the two upstairs bedrooms was Rick‘s—the one with the closed door. She raised her hand to knock, but a muffled sob from inside stopped her. It was followed by the sound of something breakable shattering against a wall. She listened intently as he raged against his pain in a garbled, tear-filled whisper. Parental instin
cts screamed that she needed to charge into that room and comfort her child, but hard-won wisdom held the impulse in check.
In some ways, boys were more vulnerable than girls. Despite twenty years of Alan Alda’s influence, society still dictated that real men didn’t cry, and a teenage boy would rather die than seek solace in his mother’s arms.
Her heart broke, and she leaned against the door, caressing the wood. Another splintering crash punctuated the sobs, but a tenuous hope rose within her. As long as Rick’s emotions were this raw, he hadn’t written his father off completely.
“Dear Lord,” she whispered so softly that no one but God could hear, “Garrett’s got to live. Our son needs him.”
What little time Maggie spent at work the next day was hell. Two new patients arrived at Rutherford-Petrie, one of whom was combative and had to be placed in restraints. The other had a load of self-pity that would have choked an ox. The day’s only saving grace was her success at lining up people to cover the most important of her responsibilities.
For the next two days, she carried photo albums to Garrett’s room in ICU, described the family snapshots and added her own commentary. Seeing those ghosts from the past tore her heart out, but she kept her voice light and nostalgic for his sake. He needed the stimulus of the human voice, an anchor for his mind to hang on to. When she ran out of albums, she read magazines.
No amount of coaxing could get Rick into the hospital. Out of desperation, she nearly had Laverne try, but it seemed more than a little underhanded to set the kid’s grandmother after him. Rationally, she knew Rick had to work through this himself, and as long as Garrett remained in a coma, he had time.
Five days after the crash the doctors upgraded Garrett’s condition from critical to guarded and weaned him off the respirator.
“Rick’s going through a tough time right now,” she murmured, “and you’re the only one who can help him.” She couldn’t believe what just slipped out. Drained, she closed her eyes and rested her head on the mattress. How much longer, Lord?
Garrett’s fingers trembled. Maggie’s eyes flew open, and she stared at their joined hands, watching in joyous fascination as his fingers curled weakly around her own. She leaped to her feet, her gaze desperately seeking his face.
“Garrett?” she wheezed, unable to get air past the sudden constriction in her throat. “Garrett, can you hear me?”
She bent close, drawing his hand with her. As if by supreme effort, his eyes fluttered open. His gaze was unfocused, but he was definitely conscious.
With a glad cry, she scattered teary kisses across his cheeks and mouth. He didn’t kiss her back, but that didn’t matter. Tears flowed freely, and she laughed a bit hysterically.
“You always told me you were tough to kill. I should have believed you.”
Blake’s solid footsteps sounded behind her. “Maggie?”
Casting a euphoric grin over her shoulder she pronounced, “He’s awake.”
Blake’s eyes rounded in terrible hope as he made long strides to the bed. But as Maggie turned back, Garrett’s eyelids drifted closed.
“No! Don’t you dare fade out on me.” She knew she wasn’t being rational, but she didn’t care.
Blake leaned over his brother, his voice rasping and unnaturally loud. “Come on, bro. You’ve come this far. Let’s see those eyes again.”
Garrett’s stillness was all the more frightening because of the hope preceding it. Maggie clenched her jaws and swallowed back a fresh wave of hysteria.
“It’s okay,” Blake assured her softly, laying a hand on her shoulder. “Only people in movies come out of a coma brighteyed and demanding cheeseburgers.”
She knew consciousness usually returned in stages, but she badly needed to hear the words anyway. Still clinging to Garrett’s hand, she hugged the only brother she’d ever had.
Pain.
It hit Garrett during the night, starting hazy and shadowlike. Doggedly it grew into a blinding inferno, dragging him from a surreal world that he couldn’t quite believe in to a no-man’s-land of hell’s own torment. Fractured ribs screamed with every breath. His right arm pulsed fire from elbow to fingertips, and the agony in his lower back defied description.
Think, man.
Pain.
Endless throbbing fire.
The pull of death’s call flooded back, tempting him to reach for it, embrace it totally. Anything to escape the flames. But what little coherent thought wasn’t pain-blurred fought back.
My son’s in trouble. Maggie needs me.
His eyelids felt as if they belonged to someone else. Nothing worked. Maggie clutched his hand with both of hers. He focused on the long-denied sensation of skin against skin, a lifeline to keep the mind-numbing fire from burning him to ash.
Mentally clawing his way toward Maggie and consciousness, he closed his fingers around hers. Her glad shriek settled into his ears like a soothing balm. Summoning his meager strength, he dragged his eyes open. Light! And Maggie leaning over him, kissing his face.
He wanted to smile, tell her out loud he loved her, but a thick fog closed around him, smothering the white-hot fire under a blanket of peaceful oblivion.
The next time Maggie entered ICU her step was distinctly lighter. Rick had taken the news with a silent trembling and a falsely nonchalant nod, another cause for hope.
She tiptoed with inexplicable shyness toward Garrett’s bed. “Are you awake?”
His eyes opened immediately. They were clear, focused but dark with pain. He seemed to devour her, and she framed his face in her hands and planted a kiss squarely on his mouth. His lips moved in response. Although she couldn’t call it a proper kiss, it affirmed life, and that made it all the sweeter.
“Can you talk?” she whispered, unable to break the contact between her palm and his beard-stubbled cheek.
She watched, fascinated, as he swallowed laboriously. “Yeah.” His voice was hoarse from disuse.
“Is this where I ask how you feel?”
“You don’t...want to know.” His brows lowered in puzzled contentment. “You really stayed.”
Self-reproach washed through her. After the divorce, she’d given him ample reason to believe she wouldn’t be here for him.
“I’ve become sort of a fixture at this place lately.”
He swallowed again, a little more easily this time. Tension lines bracketed his eyes. “Where are Rick and Dad?”
The question hit her like a blow to the stomach. How to answer? She refused to tell him the truth, not with him this weak. “Well,” she hedged, “Rick’s at school, and Dad doesn’t get around like he did before his stroke.”
Garrett’s expression became anguished, confused, accusatory. “Why the games, babe? What’s...going on?”
Maggie nearly swore. Even in his fragile condition, he’d seen through her lame attempt at avoiding the subject. For the first time in her life, she wished she’d cultivated a talent for lying. “What makes you think anything’s wrong?”
Anger flashed across his square features.
His body may be a mess, she thought, chagrined, but his brain works just fine.
“Don’t.” His voice, still hoarse, took on a faintly demanding note. “You said he... needed me.... Didn’t sound minor.”
Her breath hissed in between her teeth.
“Why does... Dad need... watching?”
Choking on her panic, Maggie whispered, “You heard what we all said?”
Garrett nodded, his gaze an agitated plea for answers. “I don’t... understand what I went through.... And I don’t know... if I remember everything.... But what I do remember...” His expression softened heartbreakingly. “Talk to me.”
Stunned, Maggie could only stare at him. She’d always believed that coma patients were aware, but was there more to it than she suspected? Then a miserable—and admittedly selfish—thought descended on her. Does he remember when I told him I still loved him?
Her abrupt uneasiness was foolish, she knew, but
Garrett was awake, and that meant she was the vulnerable one now. And she’d had a week of being by his side to erode her resolve not to get drawn back into his life.
He tightened his grip on her hand, rubbing her fingers between his own as if to reacquaint himself with touch.
Think Hughes. You’ve got to distract him. “Do you remember the...ah...accident?”
A slow frown creased his brow. “What’d I do? Get plowed into by a drunk driver?”
Amnesia is normal, she told herself. You know that. Then she realized she had stumbled onto the perfect subject change. “No, you really put your special touch on this one.”
His attentive expression told her he’d picked up on her wry tone. He should, it’s genuine enough. She then told him the details as she knew them.
“Suspects?”
“Spoken like a true cop,” she muttered sadly.
He suddenly started thrashing in bed, his breath ragged gasps. “That case I was on... My cover got blown... but I didn’t think the cartel...learned who I was.... Oh, God...you and Rick! Call—”
Maggie shut him up the most effective way she could think of, by clamping her hand over his mouth. “It’s okay. The bomber was a disgruntled employee, a basic psycho. It’s been all over the news. The investigator asked the plane crew to keep quiet about you, considering your undercover work, and Blake has kept everything quiet from the hospital’s end. You should almost be glad you missed the first excitement.”
The tension melted from his body, and he closed his eyes.
“Apparently, he wanted everyone dealing with the bomb to think they were safe once they disarmed the first one. He didn’t tell anyone about the second one. He just let it go off on its own. When the FBI closed in on him, he committed suicide.”
Garrett nodded in acceptance. “Anything else?”
“Your partner survived, too.”
His eyes widened. “What was Tom doing... with me?”
“He said you two were on vacation and simply flew out on the same plane. You can ask him more when you’re a little stronger. Right now he’s in a burn ward across town, and they’re getting ready to transfer him to a hospital back east near his sister.”