Dangerous Intentions

by Anna Leigh Keaton

  She headed back into the therapy room just as Bethie came in.

  “Doctor Newman,” the nurse said, looking upset.

  “What’s wrong? Is it one of the kids?”

  The nurse nodded. “We got a call from child services this morning, and this is the first chance I’ve had to come see you. A bed opened up in a state facility. They’re going to move Neil on Thursday.”

  Shelly staggered back into the wall, feeling as if she’d been slugged in the gut. She swallowed hard. “Where?”

  “Green Bay.”

  She fought the tears, but it was a losing battle. Green Bay was a three-hour drive from Cooper Valley. It’d be nearly impossible to visit him but maybe once or twice a month.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor Newman,” she said. “I know how much those kids mean to you.” She sniffled and swiped her own tear away. “We did know this day was coming sometime, though.”

  Shelly nodded, unable to speak.

  “I have to get back up there.”

  Shelly nodded again, but as soon as the nurse left the room, she turned around to face the wall, unable to keep the sob inside. She was losing one of her babies. To a state-run hospital.

  “Shell?”

  “I’m okay,” she said to Dex around her tight throat.

  “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

  She turned around and looked at Dex sitting in his chair wearing his Marine Corps T-shirt and gray sweatpants, his big blue eyes filled with worry and caring, and she totally lost it. It was all just too much. All he had to do was hold out his arms, and she was in them just like Friday night. Snuggled up on his lap, her face against his neck, his arms around her while she let it out.

  “Neil’s going to a state facility,” she wailed. “They’re taking him away.”

  “Ahh, sweetie,” he whispered, rubbing her back.

  “I can’t do this anymore. I have to get away from here. I’m so…I can’t leave the kids. Not now. Not that they’re losing Neil.”

  “Shh. Breathe, sweetheart. You’ve got to breathe.”

  She sucked in a few deep breaths, but the last broke on a sob. Never in her life had she experienced this much emotional turmoil. And never had she said, “Why me,” but those were the two words that kept circling in her mind.

  “Are you okay, Doctor Newman?”

  She jerked her head up to see Ricky Santana standing just inside the door of the therapy room. She jumped off of Dex’s lap and swiped her sleeve over her eyes. “Yeah, Ricky, I’m fine. Sorry.” She sniffled, trying to figure out why the deli delivery boy was here. She hadn’t ordered anything today. Food was the last thing on her mind. “Can I help you with something?”

  “I…I wanted to give you this.” He held out an ivory envelope with her name scrawled across the front in masculine handwriting. Recycled paper. And she’d bet her life that the brand name was embossed on the back.

  “Who gave you that?” she demanded, stepping forward and snatching it from him. She turned the envelope over, ready to slide her finger under the flap and open it.

  “No one gave it to me, Shelly.”

  She glanced up at him, and a sense of calm settled over her. Her tormentor, the man she’d been terrified of coming face-to-face with for weeks, was a sweet boy she’d known for three years. “Ricky, you’re the one who’s been leaving me notes all over the place?”

  He nodded. “But you betrayed me.” He looked toward Dex. “With him.” He pulled his other hand out of his jacket pocket and raised it, pointing a small handgun right at her chest. “How could you do that to me when you know how much I love you?”

  Chapter Twelve

  It was a very small .22 or .25 caliber six-shot revolver. Shelly knew weapons because she grew up with a dad who hunted and who had taught her firearms at a very young age. The good thing was that it was such a small caliber. The bad thing was, even little bullets made holes in bodies that could be deadly.

  “Ricky,” she said, her voice firm, even as she took a couple steps backward. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  He stepped farther into the room toward her. “You know she’ll do the same thing to you, don’t you?” he asked, glancing quickly at Dex then back at her. “She told me she cared about me, but I was too young then. So I waited. I turned eighteen three months ago, and I started courting her. What does she do? She sleeps with you. And you’re her patient! She told me nothing could happen because I was her patient, but I haven’t been her patient for three years. Now she’s doing you, even after all the love letters I wrote.”

  Oh, good Lord. She’d completely forgotten about the conversation she’d had with him so long ago.

  “Ricky,” she said softly. “You’ll always be too young for me. I thought—”

  Ricky had moved past Dex, so he was slightly behind the boy, and he fiercely shook his head at her when she started with a scolding tone.

  “I thought you’d outgrown your…feelings for me.” She’d almost said crush, but this went a bit farther than an innocent crush, now didn’t it? He was still a boy, though, and she was sure she could talk that gun out of his hand. “Why don’t you give me the gun, and we can sit down and talk about this, okay?”

  He shook his head. “You cheated on me. You haven’t been with anyone for three years, and now that I’m finally old enough and have a job and have plans for college, you go and fuck someone else!” His voice rose. His hand holding the gun shook.

  He’d been following her for three years? How else would he know she’d lived like a nun until this past weekend? “I didn’t know it was you sending me the notes, Ricky. How could I know? You never signed them.”

  “I was trying to be romantic!” Spittle flew from his lips, and his face was red. “And you cheat on me with a cripple! He can’t even walk!”

  The sound of him pulling back the hammer on the revolver was loud and made her heart skip a beat.

  “Ricky, please, don’t. You love me, right? You don’t want to hurt me, do you?” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dex moving, scooting to the edge of his chair, but what could he do? Ricky was out of his reach. And this wasn’t just a threat. She could see the silver bullets from her side of the cylinder. The chambers were full. He was going to kill her. Or at least attempt to.

  “I’m sorry,” she said desperately. “I’m so sorry I hurt you. Please put the gun down so we can talk.”

  “You’re a slut just like my mom. I thought you were different, but you’re not. You didn’t even try to hide it! Right there on the couch in the middle of the day for everyone to see. You make me sick!”

  It was kind of like in the movies. She saw it all in slow motion and knew there was no way to move in time. His finger twitched, and it must have been a hair trigger. The shot was deafening. The muzzle flash was blinding. The pain that seared through her shoulder knocked her backward. She heard a shout and then a scream as she fell, but she didn’t think either sound came from her because she couldn’t breathe. The floor was hard as she hit it, knocking even more breath from her until she thought she’d pass out. Another gunshot echoed through the room. Her ears rang from the noise.

  “Dex,” she gasped, but when she tried to raise her head to see, pain zigzagged through her upper body, and she cringed.

  Reaching across her chest with her right hand, she found the wound on her left shoulder. She had to get pressure on it. Pressure on the wound. Holy shit! Pressure on wound hurt.

  “Help,” she tried to yell, but it came out as a whisper. She needed help. She didn’t know how badly she was wounded, but it hurt a lot! Like fire through her. And Dex. What if Ricky had shot Dex, too?

  “Shelly. Shelly. Oh, God.” She looked up to see him over her. Dex was there. He looked okay.

  “He shot me,” she said, still not quite believing he’d done it.

  “I know, sweetie. I know.” He moved her hand out of the way and pressed down.

  She screamed.

  “Shh, sweetheart. I know it hurts.”
/>   “Stop! Please, don’t,” she cried, squeezing her eyes shut. The pain became unbearable.

  “I’m so sorry. So sorry.”

  She looked up at him again through a haze of pain that blurred her vision. “Why are you crying? You don’t cry.”

  “I love you, Shelly. You’ll be fine.”

  “Then stop crying. I’m not dying. I’m not…”

  He turned his head up, away from her, and shouted for help.

  “Stop crying,” she begged as his tears dripped onto her. “I don’t want to die.” Her eyelids grew heavy, her breaths seemed so hard to drag in. “Don’t let me die…”

  * * * * *

  They’d given her morphine.

  Only morphine gave her this particular feeling of floating and flying and tingling fingers and toes. Hot and cold inside. Her shoulder hurt, and her mouth was dry, her lips chapped. What the hell had they done to her?

  Her eyelids weighed a ton, but she finally got them open a crack. She was in a hospital room, which she’d figured. When she tried to lift her right hand to pull the oxygen tubing from her nose, it was weighted down. She tugged harder.

  A head popped up into her view, but through her blurry eyes and the darkened room, she wasn’t sure who she was seeing.

  “Hey, sweetheart.”

  “Dex?” she muttered, but her throat hurt. Had they tubed her, too? “What the hell…”

  “Shh… You’re okay,” Dex said softly.

  “Need a drink, honey?” She turned her head slightly at the other voice. Even that slight movement hurt. But her mom was there at the other side of the bed. Then her dad appeared next to her mom.

  “Yeah.” She couldn’t hold her eyes open. A straw touched her lips, and she drank. The cold water felt good coating her mouth and trickling down her throat. “My feet,” she muttered.

  “What about your feet?” her dad asked.

  “Stuck. Move the blankets.” She swallowed hard. Her throat still hurt. “Untuck…”

  Just before she fell back into the blackness, she felt the covers being tugged and her feet freed, and a voice she thought sounded like Celeste’s asking if she needed anything else.

  Why was everyone standing around her? Was she really dying?

  * * * * *

  The next time she woke up, she was more alert, and in way more pain. She groaned as she opened her eyes. Dex was there again—or still—in his wheelchair right next to the bed. The room was dark, but there was plenty of light flowing in through the open door.

  “Hey.”

  “The morphine wore off,” she informed him in a croaky voice.

  “You want me to call the nurse?”

  “In a minute. Could I have some more water, please?”

  He held the plastic cup with the bendy straw to her lips. She drank it all. Her throat burned a bit, but didn’t ache as bad as before. When he pulled the cup away, she asked, “Did they tube me?”

  “Yeah. You were in surgery for a couple of hours.”

  She frowned and tried to adjust herself since her butt felt numb, but the slight movement made her gasp in pain.

  “The bullet lodged behind your shoulder blade. They had to go in and get it.”

  “Shit. How much damage?”

  “Not much, really. I’m sure the surgeon will be able to explain better, but he didn’t think your recovery time would be too long.”

  “What happened to Ricky?”

  “He’s been arrested.”

  She looked at Dex, remembering what he’d said as he’d cried over her. “What time is it?”

  “About two in the morning.”

  “Why are you still here?”

  He smiled at her and reached up to push her hair away from her face. “Because there was no way in hell I was letting you wake up in the hospital alone.”

  “Because you love me?”

  He glanced away and cleared his throat. “Do you want me to call the nurse?”

  So did he love her, or had he spoken in the heat of the moment while worried she was dying? “Yeah.”

  He pushed the call button then said, “Celeste, Paul, and your parents were here until about an hour ago. Your mom and dad are staying with them tonight. The doctor told the nurse to back off on the painkillers to get you to wake up, but it took longer than expected.”

  Her eyes were getting heavy again. Ricky was in jail. Dex was by her side. She could relax and go back to sleep. She was safe now. “I don’t drink or take painkillers most of the time. I’m a lightweight. But I need something now.”

  “Hey, Shelly,” the nurse said as she came into the room. “Finally awake?”

  Elaine, Shelly thought her name was. “Kind of. It really hurts.”

  “Got it right here,” the nurse said, holding up a syringe. “Doc wanted you to wake up before you got another dose.”

  The nurse put the morphine into the IV bag then took Shelly’s blood pressure. By the time the nurse took off the blood pressure cuff, the morphine was working its way into Shelly’s veins.

  “Go home, Dex. Get some sleep.” She yawned.

  “I’m not going anywhere. I won’t leave you alone.”

  She closed her eyes, unable to hold them open a moment longer. “I’m a big girl… Been alone…long time.”

  * * * * *

  The scent of food brought Shelly awake. Sunlight streamed in the window and warmed her body under the blankets. Her feet stuck out of the bottom of the covers, and she frowned before pulling them in to warm them.

  “Hey there. You hungry?” An orderly was putting two food trays on her bed table.

  “Starving. But I don’t think I need two.” She fumbled her right hand around until she got a hold of the remote to raise the back of her bed.

  The orderly grinned. “One’s for him.” He pointed toward the other side of the room.

  As the bed rose, she saw what he’d pointed at before leaving. One of the “daddy chairs” had been moved into the room, and Dex was asleep in it. They were very comfortable recliners in the two maternity rooms in the hospital. The doctors sometimes used them for taking naps when the maternity rooms were empty.

  She smiled to herself and thought of the brief memories she had of last night. He’d been by her side when she awoke, and she wondered how long into the night he’d sat by her bed before going to the recliner. Then she wondered how he’d been allowed to stay since he wasn’t staff or family. Celeste and Paul must have had something to do with it.

  Her brain seemed sharper than she thought it should be, but she wasn’t going to complain about that. Most of the patients she’d worked with had little or sometimes no memory of serious traumatic injury. She was fairly sure she could remember everything that had happened up until the time she lost consciousness from the pain.

  When she was upright enough, she reached over, tugged the bed table closer, and lifted the lid on one of the trays. The IV needle tape pulled at the back of her hand, and she made a face at it, then at the food. Scrambled eggs that looked rubbery, a slice of ham, and a small bowl of unflavored oatmeal. She reached for the cup of coffee and wrestled off the plastic lid with one hand.

  Her left shoulder was bandaged with thick padding, and her arm was in a sling. She was not even going to attempt to move it until she talked to the surgeon.

  “Hey there!”

  She looked over the rim of the plastic mug after a sip of tepid coffee to see Celeste and Paul coming into the room. Celeste carried a huge bouquet of lilies and carnations. Paul held a big travel mug and a plastic bag.

  “Please say that’s coffee for me,” she said.

  Paul and Celeste laughed.

  “Told you so,” Celeste said as she set the flowers on the window ledge. It was then she noticed the five other vases of flowers. Who the heck had brought those, and when? “Give the poor lady her coffee. And Paul made his potato bake for breakfast.”

  Paul set the mug in front of her, and she snatched it up and took a long drink of scalding black coffee. �
��Ohh, I love you guys,” she said with feeling. Paul moved one of the hospital trays off the table then pulled a container from the plastic bag and removed the lid before putting it in front of her.

  “We love you, too,” Celeste said with a grin. “How are you feeling?”

  She used the fork from the hospital tray and took a bite of potatoes, bacon and cheese. “Wonderful, now. Where are my parents?”

  “They’ll be coming later. We called and checked on you, and since you were out of the woods, they decided to get a couple more hours of sleep before they came in.”

  “Dad’s got a blood pressure problem. Did he look okay?” She took another bite.

  Celeste nodded. “He’s okay. Much better after finding out you’d be fine.”

  Dex lowered the footrest on the recliner and reached for his wheelchair. “Hey, guys.”

  They shared greetings while Shelly ate.

  “We brought some breakfast so you’re not stuck with hospital food,” Paul said, handing Dex another plasticware container once he was settled in his wheelchair.

  “Thank you. Though I can’t believe it’d be any worse than GI breakfast.”

  “It is,” Celeste and Shelly said in unison, then they both laughed, but Shelly’s ended on a groan.

  “You look better this morning,” Dex said as he wheeled over toward her. “How are you feeling?”

  She swallowed a bite of potato and rolled her eyes. “I was shot. It hurts like hell. Please stop asking me that.”

  Dex smiled and winked. “Okay.”

  “Are you up for giving a statement?” Paul asked. “I didn’t come just to feed you.”

  Shelly nodded then took another sip of coffee. “I’m ready.”

  “I have to get to the ER,” Celeste said before touching Shelly’s shin. “I’ll come up and have lunch with you, bring you something from the cafeteria.”