by Julie Wetzel
Vicky waved as the doctor left. “Thank you.”
Vanessa poked her head in a few seconds later. “Vicky!” she squealed as Beth and Maggie followed her into the room.
Beth held a large vase of flowers.
“I took the liberty of calling your friends to tell them what happened,” Darien said softly.
“Thank you.” Vicky smiled at him. “For everything.”
He smiled warmly and stood up. “I’ll leave you ladies be.” As he nodded his head at the three new arrivals, they parted so he could pass between them.
Vicky’s friends watched him go before swarming her bed.
Maggie giggled. “He is so amazing!”
“You have no idea,” Vicky muttered under her breath.
“Oh, Vicky!” Vanessa nearly bawled as she dropped into the chair Darien had just left. “I nearly died when your boss called to say you were in the hospital. What happened?” She looked over the bandages wrapped around her friend.
Vicky shrugged and sat up a little more. “There was an explosion and a fire in my apartment.” Her friends helped her shift around so she was more comfortable. “I’m okay,” she reassured them.
“Okay!” Beth snapped as she deposited the flowers on the bedside table. “You look like hell, trussed up in those bandages like a mummy.”
Vicky looked down at her hands and arms. “The doctor said they were mainly second-degree burns and should be fine in a week or two,” she reassured her friends. “You know how hospitals can be.” Vicky shrugged.
“How are you?” Maggie asked from where she sat on the edge of the bed.
Vicky still didn’t know what the proper response should be. Darien had pushed all the pain out of her during that kiss. “Not bad.” She shrugged as she came up with a good answer. “I’ve had some really good painkillers.” Amusement curled to corner of her mouth.
“Do they have you on morphine?” Beth asked as she looked up at the IV line running through the blue machine on the pole.
“I don’t know,” Vicky answered. “Whatever it is, it really works.” She wasn’t about to tell her friends that her painkiller had just walked out of the room.
“Are you really feeling all right?” Maggie asked.
Vicky nodded her head.
“So tell us what happened last night,” Beth prompted as she retrieved the other chair from the shadow of the privacy curtain. She hauled it over to the bedside and sat down.
“I told you, there was an explosion—” Vicky started.
“No, with Elliot,” Beth interrupted.
Vicky gaped at her friend.
“Didn’t he take you home?”
“I saw him walk you out, and he didn’t come back,” Maggie added.
“It’s rare that you take a guy home.” Vanessa grinned. “Details, girl, details!”
Vicky closed her mouth as her friends pressed her for information. “It’s true he walked me home, but that was it,” she protested.
“Really?” Maggie giggled.
“Yes,” Vicky insisted. “He dropped me at the door and left.” She thought hard. “I don’t think he could have gotten very far when the explosion happened.”
Her friends listened intently as she told her story.
“I think I remember Elliot in the alleyway after I got out.”
“What caused the explosion?” Maggie asked.
“I don’t know.” Vicky pressed her memory for more information and shivered when a malevolent laugh filled her mind. The palm of her left hand stung under the bandage. She hissed in pain, and her friends looked on in concern as she gripped the hurting hand with the other one.
Vanessa sat poised on the edge of her chair. “Should we call the nurse?”
Vicky rubbed her hand. “No.” The pain started to subside as she rubbed the bandages with her thumb. “I think it’s okay.” She didn’t want the nurse to take off the bandages in front of her friends; she was worried to see how bad the damage actually was.
“Are you sure?” Vanessa asked.
Vicky worked her hand and rubbed her bandaged palms together. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
“So, he was in the alleyway when you got out of the apartment?” Beth turned the conversation back to the blond who had taken Vicky home. “He didn’t go in and try to get you out?” She sounded disappointed.
“The explosion knocked me out, but I woke up to someone banging on my door.” Vicky worked to remember what had happened in the apartment. “But the flames were too high at that point for me to get to it.”
Vanessa gasped in horror. “How did you get out?”
“I crawled into the bedroom and busted out the window,” Vicky told them.
“Oh my,” Maggie breathed, nearly in tears at hearing the scary story.
“And what is tall, dark, and handsome doing here?” Beth asked as she turned back to look at the door where Darien had left.
“I assume Elliot called him.” Vicky blushed just slightly. “He was here when I woke up.”
“Oh, Vicky!” Vanessa giggled. “I think he likes you!”
The color creped across Vicky’s cheeks as her heart skipped a little. Her blush deepened when the monitor tracking her pulse sped up its beeping.
Beth giggled. “I think she likes him,” she teased, adding to Vicky’s embarrassment.
“He’s my boss,” Vicky protested.
“There’s nothing wrong with a little romance at work,” Vanessa teased again. “A lot can be done in a closed office with a big desk.”
Vicky gasped her indignation at her giggling friends. “Vanessa!”
“It’s about time you found yourself a good guy.” Beth grinned. “That last one was weird.”
“Tim was really nice,” Vicky said, defending her choice of boyfriends.
“Then why did you break up with him?” Beth pressed.
“Well, he got really distant towards the end,” Vicky answered sadly. “It was like he no longer had any time for me.” She remembered their heart-wrenching break up. Loving him had gotten hard when he’d become so distant and cold.
“So, it had nothing to do with the chickens?” Vanessa asked.
Vicky sighed deeply. “I still don’t have any clue what you are talking about.”
“I swear I saw him buying a crate full of chickens one day,” Vanessa insisted. “I mean, who needs half a dozen chickens in a box?”
Vicky waved her friend’s imagination away. “I think you were dreaming.”
“What about that other guy?” Maggie asked. “The one after Tim.”
“Yeah, um… Alex.” Beth pulled the name from her memory. “I forgot about him.”
“I was trying to forget about him.” Vicky shuttered at the memory. “One of the worst mistakes of my life. He wasn’t even that good in bed. In fact, he was kind of a creep.” She had never told her friends about all the problems she’d had with Alex after their one-night romance. A knock on the door interrupted the girls’ reminiscence.
“Pardon me, ladies.” A nurse walked in carrying a dinner tray for Vicky. “I have Miss Westernly’s dinner and medication.”
The three women pulled back so the nurse could set the tray on a little rolling table and maneuver it so Vicky could eat.
Vicky looked at the various cups and bowls on the tray. Of course the hospital would put her on a clear liquid diet until they knew she was out of shock.
Vanessa chuckled at the forlorn look on Vicky’s face.
“Do you need a hand?” Beth offered, looking at her friend’s bandaged hands.
Vicky picked up the straw on the tray and spun it in her fingers. “I think I can handle this.”
All three of her friends chuckled.
“Well, then, we should be leaving.” Maggie came over to give Vicky a gentle hug. “The doctor told us to keep our visit short.”
“I don’t see why we have to leave if your boyfriend stayed all day,” Beth grumped as she gave Vicky a hug too.
“He’s not my boyfriend,�
� Vicky protested. “He’s my boss.”
Beth pulled back to let Vanessa in. “Could have fooled me.”
“I’ll sneak you in some real food next time,” Vanessa said as she pulled away and looked at the tray.
“Thank you for visiting,” Vicky said as her friends prepared to leave.
“We’ll be back later.” Vanessa promised just before she shut the door behind her.
Vicky looked at the tray of broth, water, and Jell-O and sighed. Her tummy protested the lack of food, and she started on her meager meal.
***
Only three of the channels on the little TV attached to the wall came in clearly, and all of them had some form of news on. Vicky flipped through the rest of the snow-filled programs, trying to find something to entertain herself. Finding nothing interesting, she killed the TV and turned her head to look out the window.
The sun had started to head towards the horizon, and the long rays of light shone straight into her room. The nurse had brought in three more bouquets of flowers after Vicky’s friends had left. They now lined the sill of her window. The setting sun backlit the blooms so they looked as if they were on fire. It was a dazzling effect, but it made Vicky shudder a little. She turned her mind to the people who sent the flowers.
Each card was addressed to ‘My Lady’ or ‘Master Darien’s Lady’. This meant the flowers were sent for Darien’s sake, not hers. She sighed and turned her head to study the shadows of the flowers on the opposing wall.
The door to the room opened, pulling Vicky from her thoughts. She looked up and let out another sigh as the nurse walked in, carrying yet another basket of flowers. This one was larger than the last, with beautiful stalks of purple flowers sticking out of the top.
The nurse set these with the others and brought the card over to Vicky.
Slipping the card from the envelope, Vicky read the same words of well wishes that had been in all the others. She tossed the offending card onto the table with the rest and rolled over to try and get comfortable.
“Miss Westernly?”
Vicky looked up from the bed at the sound of the man calling her. She hadn’t noticed he had followed the orderly in. “May I help you?” she asked as she shifted in her bed.
The man stepped closer and held out his hand for Vicky to shake. “I’m Detective Brian Baily from the arson unit.” She held up her bandaged hands, and the man raised his hand to the back of his neck, slightly embarrassed. “I’m here to ask you some questions about the fire.”
“Sure.” Vicky waved to the chair next to her bed. “How can I help you, Detective Baily?”
The detective sat down and pulled out a pocket notebook. “We’re trying to determine how the fire started,” Detective Baily explained. “Can you tell me what happened?”
Vicky thought about it for a moment. “I really don’t remember much,” she said honestly. The fire had happened so quickly that it was all a blur.
“Anything would help,” Detective Baily pressed. “Something unusual or out of the ordinary?”
“Not that I can think of.” Vicky closed her eyes to concentrate. “Elliot dropped me at the door to the building. I went in and turned on the light.” She rifled through her brain, trying to reconstruct the fire. “There was an envelope on the floor, so I picked it up. Since there wasn’t enough light by the door, I took it over to the end table and turned on another lamp so I could read it. The next thing I remember is waking up against the wall, but the fire was already raging.”
“An envelope?” Detective Baily wrote something in his notebook. “What was in it?”
“A card. With trees on it.”
“Who was it from?” the detective asked.
“I’m not sure. There was no return address on it.”
“Was there anything in the card?”
“Um…” Vicky pressed her memory for the words written in the card, but they wouldn’t come to her. “I can’t remember.”
“And the last thing you remember before waking up on the floor was turning on the light,” the detective clarified.
“I turned on the light and looked at the card,” Vicky confirmed.
“And how did you get out?” the man went on.
“I crawled to the bedroom and broke out the window.”
“Broke out?” He wrote in his book again. “Why not open it?”
“It was stuck closed.” Vicky shrugged. “It took a lot to break it out, too.”
The man wrote something more in his book. “Do you know of anyone who would want you dead?” Detective Baily looked up from his book to judge Vicky’s reaction.
Vicky raised her eyebrows in surprise. She couldn’t think of anyone that would want to hurt her. “No,” she answered after dragging her mind across the question. There were several people that would go out of their way to make sure she was safe, if only to keep a certain master vampire happy, but this wasn’t something she felt she needed to tell the police.
Detective Baily folded his notebook up and stuck it back into his pocket. He pulled out a card and handed it to Vicky. “Thank you for your time, Miss Westernly.” She took the card from him as he spoke. Detective Baily stood up to leave. “If you can think of anything else, please give me a call.” Vicky assured him that she would, and he turned to go. “Have a good evening.”
The detective’s exit was foiled when the evening nurse brought in yet another flower arrangement and set it on the windowsill. She pulled the card out and handed it to Vicky.
“It looks like you have a lot of people worried about you,” the detective said, eyeing the five arrangements. Vicky looked up at the man as she took the new card.
“Most of them are acquaintances of my boss,” Vicky answered as she popped the seal on the new envelope and pulled the card out.
“They’re still very pretty,” Detective Baily added and showed himself out.
Vicky waved to him before flipping the card open and smiling at the words there. They were the same caring words from the other bouquets, but this one was addressed to ‘Darling’. Vicky rubbed her fingers over the signatures of her new friends from Clara’s household. Wiggling back down into her bed, she read over the words from people she knew. She laid the card on the bed next to her and rolled over, so she could study the flowers as she tried her best to find the sleep she felt she needed.
“It’s time to wake up.” The nurse patted Vicky from her sleep.
Vicky groaned and nodded so the nurse would know she was awake and go away. She had lost count of how many times someone had been in to disturb her. Vicky rolled over to try to reclaim her dreams and winced when the burn on her neck hit the pillow. Opening her eyes to readjust her pillow, she froze when she caught sight of the silent figure sitting in the chair next to her bed.
“Good morning,” Darien said as he marked his place in his book. “How are you feeling?”
Vicky shifted around so her pillow was no longer offending the burn on her neck before answering. “Tired,” she admitted.
Darien laughed lightly at her response.
“And hungry.” Her last meal hadn’t been very satisfying.
Darien’s face softened as he reached for a bag on the floor by his chair. “Here.” He held out something wrapped in a napkin.
She wiggled up in the bed so she could take the offered package. Opening it revealed two golden, triangular cakes. “But the hospital has me on a liquid diet.” Vicky really wanted to eat the scrumptious-looking treats, but she didn’t want to go against what the doctors would allow.
Darien waved her concern away. “They also think you are more injured then you are. You need the extra calories to heal properly. You’ve probably already lost a few pounds.”
Urged on by her boss’s words, Vicky picked up one of the cakes and broke it in half. A rich aroma of herbs and honey wafted up to her nose. “You think so?” she asked before lifting the food to her lips and taking a bite.
“It wouldn’t have been so bad if I could’ve healed you str
aight out.” Darien fiddled with the corner of his book as he talked. “But I had to speed up your metabolism, which is going to cause you to burn more calories. Those should help.”
“These are really good,” Vicky mumbled around the cake in her mouth.
“Good.” A satisfied expression slipped across Darien’s face. “It’s been a long time since I had to make those.”
Vicky looked at the other half of the honeyed cake in her hand. “You made these?” she asked as soon as her mouth was clear again.
“Just because I don’t have to eat doesn’t mean I can’t cook,” Darien chided her lightly.
Vicky cast around for something to change the subject as she nibbled on the second half of her treat. “How long have you been here?”
“A while,” Darien answered vaguely. He had been alternating between watching Vicky sleep and trying to read his book for much of the night. The fire had given him too much to think about to get any real reading done. “But, I should get going soon.” Darien looked up at the clock on the wall reading a quarter to six. “Some of us still have to work today,” he teased.
“Um… Do I need to call in or something?” Vicky asked, slightly embarrassed.
Darien chuckled as he ruffled the pages of his book again. “I think your boss knows where you are. I’m sure he can get by for a day or two without you.” He looked at the simulated blood spatters on the cover of the book before dropping it into a bag next to him.
Picking up the black backpack, he set it on the side table where Vicky could easily reach it. “I brought you some things I thought you might like. There’s more of those cakes and a few personal items. The book is good, but completely fictional. The vampires aren’t too bad, but I can guarantee that president never had any experience with them.” She looked at the backpack as she started into the second cake.
Darien stood up and retrieved the satchel that had been her constant companion. “I’ll see what I can do about this.” He raised the damaged bag up so Vicky could see the two ends of the broken strap. “I’ll have it back to you in a few days.”