by Laurie Paige
"A week," Kate said, her voice soothing and firm as if she had everything under control. "The doctors put you in a coma to allow your body time to heal. You were very agitated after the … the incident."
Shannon tried to comprehend what the words meant, but it was hard to sort out. Struggling with an urge to fade back into the serene, foggy place she'd been for a week, she forced herself to concentrate. A scene popped into her mind. "The gas station," she said. "Did he get away?"
"Who?"
"The robber. I walked in on a robbery. I had to stop him. He was armed. He shot at me – oh!" Her hand went once more to the bandages. "He hit me?" she asked in a disbelieving voice. "In the head?"
"Shannon…"
The hesitancy in Kate's voice rasped across Shannon's nerves like a file. "What is it? What's wrong with me? Am I … am I … is it my eyes? Is something wrong with my eyes? Why are they bandaged?"
Kate gripped her hand again. "The bullet went through your temple, around the inside of your skull and out under your jaw. The bone wasn't shattered. You were lucky."
Lucky? Being shot in the head was lucky?
She almost laughed at the irony in that statement, but it hurt too much. She cautiously explored the gauze wrapping her head. "My eyes?"
"The doctors don't know," Megan said quickly. "One eye was affected, but the other—"
"Which one? Which eye?"
"The left one might be permanently injured. The bullet grazed it near the optic nerve."
"I can't lose my sight," she explained to them as reasonably as she possibly could. "I have plans. My degree, the future, everything."
There was the practice she intended to open when she got her Ph.D. in psychology. And what of her dream of helping families work through their problems?
"No," she protested, pulling at the covering over her eyes. "No. I've got to see. I've got to!"
She heard another voice in the room. "Keep her hands still," the new person said.
Little squeaky sounds accompanied the voice, as if the woman carried mice in her pockets. Shannon struggled with the hands that grasped hers.
"It'll be all right," she heard both her cousins say.
The words were a lie, meant only to soothe. "You don't understand," she told them. She was having trouble speaking, but she had to explain, to make them see…
Her mind went hazy. Sounds faded. She fought the darkness, then realized she'd been given a sedative.
"Don't," she said, her voice sounding far away. "I need to know, to find out… Oh, please, please, don't…"
She realized she was begging, just as she had when her father had packed and left. It hadn't done any good then, either. The tears came, helpless and despairing, then everything fell into darkness.
* * *
Shannon woke slowly, fighting her way through layer after layer of cloudy material. The room, which she somehow knew wasn't hers, smelled of antiseptic and flowers. An odd combination. She listened carefully, every nerve alert and tensed for trouble. However, the room felt empty.
The soft clink of metal against metal and the whir of a motor alarmed her, but then she recalled she was in the hospital. The floors were cleaned and polished during the wee hours of the morning. That was the sound she heard, coming from down the hall.
So it must be after midnight but before dawn.
She'd been dreaming – dark, restless dreams that still troubled her. In them, she faced the robber again and again, always experiencing the pain anew – quick, hot and blinding in its intensity.
Then someone – an ethereal being of coolness and light, such brilliant light she couldn't see his face – came to her, lifting her out of the hot pain and scary darkness, taking her to a secret haven, his arms strong, his embrace sweet, his scent fresh as the outdoors. She had instinctively known him. He was the one she'd been waiting for. He'd made her feel safe…
It was a foolish dream. No guardian angel had come to her rescue. An illusion, her mind's way of coping with the reality of being shot, was all it was.
Turning her head against the pillows, she gingerly examined the bandages covering her head and half her face. Pressing her left temple, she found that to be a sore spot. Also a place under her jaw.
It hurt to move her mouth, either to talk or eat. Swallowing the liquids they'd put her on was difficult. However, it wasn't as bad as yesterday, and tomorrow would be better than today.
Thus speaks the optimist, she mused, attempting a smile. That hurt, too.
That morning – no, this was a new day, so it was Tuesday, the first day of the New Year, she realized. The day before, when the nurse had come in, her mind had been clear for the first time as the heavy drugs left her body. Every sound had made a sharp impression.
During the day, she had listened to footsteps and tried to guess who the person was. She had known when Kate or Megan arrived before they spoke. And the hefty nurse who was always so cheerful. Her shoes made squeaky noises on the floor when she stopped or turned.
No mice in her pockets. Shannon had liked that image.
She had opened her Christmas presents yesterday, which seemed pointless, while her cousins described them to her. She'd pretended to be delighted so they wouldn't worry about her state of mind.
Still not quite able to believe what had happened, she'd tried to check her eyes during the night to make sure they were open, but she'd encountered the bandages. Maybe she'd hoped she was waking from a bad dream and that only the night was black, but it wasn't to be.
Everything was black to her. Day, night, it made no difference in her encapsulated world.
And never would.
Fear rolled over her in waves of nausea. She fought for control. The ophthalmologist called in on her case had been optimistic, but he had cautioned her that sometimes, when one eye was injured, the other, although medically okay, would sometimes act as if it, too, had been wounded.
Sympathetic ophthalmalia, it was called. There was a fifty-fifty possibility she would be blind, not just in the injured eye, but in both eyes.
Panic swept through her, pushing at her self-control like a log carried on a flash flood. She took deep breaths and willed it away.
The doctor had also said her right eye could be as good as ever. Or there could be a period of blindness, then the gradual regaining of her sight and that it could happen in both eyes.
So, there was nothing to fear but fear itself. Someone great had said that. President Roosevelt?
Relief eased the fear. She could remember things. People's names. Stuff she'd learned in school. Incidents from the past. She'd pestered Megan and Kate on their visits, making them test her so that she would know her mind was functioning normally.
A mind is a terrible thing to lose.
A slogan for an anti-drug campaign, she recalled. They didn't know the half of it. Brain damage. It was a thought that frightened her even more than blindness. However, her mind appeared okay.
It had been a week and two days since the shoot-out. If she really did lose her sight… She tried to imagine it, to see herself coping, tapping her way through life with a white cane. The blackness seemed to darken more. She would be a burden, dependent on others the rest of her life.
But it was too early to think like that, the doctor had assured her. There was a chance. Fifty-fifty. Not bad odds for a person who'd been shot in the head.
Tears filled her eyes and spilled into the bandages. She willed them away. Crying did no good whatsoever.
* * *
Hearing a man's voice in the hall, she wondered where Brad was. He hadn't visited, or even called.
What man in his right mind would tie himself to someone who might be blind for life? a cynical part of her asked.
The man who loved her, came the answer from her never-say-die counterpart.
A hopeless romantic, she had always believed a couple could make it through any tragedy, but it took strength and dedication from both of them. If she and Brad had married, would they have m
ade it through this crisis?
Maybe. If he had loved her. If she had loved him. Love was the key. She had thought that was a possibility with Brad, but now…
The expectation faded into mist, like dreams barely recalled when dawn came. She felt the loss deep within, a nostalgia for what might have been, rather than what actually was. She had longed for a great love. Without it, life would be lonely.
Inhaling carefully, as if the slightest movement might cause her to shatter, she thought of her guardian angel, the one who had comforted her and eased the fear with his cool touch. He hadn't been real, but that didn't stop her from clinging to the memory or the dream of him or whatever it had been. Maybe she would meet a man like that.
Riding that small raft of comfort in the troubled sea of darkness that was now her future, she drifted toward sleep once more.
* * *
Rory stood outside the door of room 212. He glanced at the pot of poinsettias he'd brought. They seemed pointless now, after he'd spoken with Shannon's cousin in the parking lot. Shannon wouldn't be able to see them. Both her eyes were bandaged. The doctors didn't know the outcome yet. She might be blind.
He pictured her in her police uniform, swinging across the street with a bouncy step. Her hat had sat at a jaunty angle on her head, and she'd been leading a group of children across the street. The Pied Piper of Wind River, he'd thought in amusement at the time. The later picture, the one of her shot and bleeding, didn't seem real.
A funny ache tapped behind his sternum as he went into the room. He wasn't, he saw, the only one who'd thought of flowers. Vases and baskets of them covered nearly every surface and overflowed onto the floor, filling the corners of the room with lush color that reminded him of spring.
The patient was asleep.
He set the flowerpot on the windowsill, then stood beside the bed and studied her face. Beneath the massive bandages covering her head like a turban, he could see bruises along her left cheek. The rest of her face was pale.
Except for her lips. They were pink and full.
Her mouth wasn't wide, but it had an appeal that made a man want to lean forward and experience for himself the taste of those dewy lips. For some reason he'd wanted to do the same thing at the parade that night.
Frowning, he drew back. He'd seen his share of attractive women… But there was something very appealing about this particular female – when she wasn't arguing the opposite side of an issue with him. Maybe it was because she was asleep. A man just naturally wanted to wake her with a kiss.
Cynically amused at his own thoughts – Prince Charming he wasn't – he stepped back from the bed and took in the whole array of medical equipment. The lady cop had been seriously wounded. If he'd been seconds later in arriving, the outcome could have been much different.
It certainly seemed to be an odd case, still of interest to the local news media, although the story hadn't made it to national broadcasts.
The other two victims had been released from the hospital. The store owner couldn't remember anything about the incident. The customer couldn't identify the robber, who, he said, wore surgical gloves and a stocking over his face. Walking in on the robbery, he had struggled over a gun after the crook had shot the officer and the store owner and gotten himself shot as a reward for his efforts.
No gun or identifiable fingerprints had been found at the crime scene. There had been no trace of the perpetrator at the shoot-out, as the media had dubbed the incident due to the number of shots fired. Six in all, four from the robber's gun, two from Shannon's. If she ended up blind, then she wouldn't be able to identify the perp, either, assuming the cops ever found the guy.
Rory didn't know how much of the story was true. All his information came from the local paper.
He paused in his ruminations when Shannon shifted restlessly. Her lips moved in a murmur. Although his practice didn't extend to the human animal, he checked her pulse anyway. It was fast. When she became more and more agitated in the grip of her nightmare, he debated ringing for the nurse and asking about a sedative.
As he hesitated, the sun emerged from a cloud. Its rays, streaming in through the window, caught in the strands of hair across the pillow. Fascinated, he stared at the luxuriant tangles. Her hair flowed from under the white gauze in long, curly tendrils. Where the sunlight hit it, the strands glinted in shades of tawny blond and auburn, like darkly burnished gold, a secret treasure waiting to be discovered.
He lifted a curl and watched it curve over his finger and cling, as if it had a mind of its own.
"Beautiful, isn't it? And the color is natural. You can tell by the roots." A nurse came in and checked various things – the patient's vital signs, the level of water in a pitcher on the bedside stand. "Miss Bannock? How do you feel today? You want to sit up?"
Rory stepped back to give the nurse some space. He saw Shannon's head turn toward the woman's voice and tried to recall the color of her eyes. He noticed the smallness of her hand resting on the sheet.
She was on the slender side, but tall, probably five-eight, like her cousin, Kate, who had been a grade ahead of him in school from the time he started kindergarten until they'd graduated from the same state university a year apart.
He'd had a terrible crush on the "older" woman in high school, something she'd never known. After college, he'd gone on to vet school and Kate had married someone else.
"You have company today, someone other than your cousins and the sheriff and detectives," the nurse reported to the patient in tones too cheerful to be real as she went to the other side of the bed, smoothing the covers as she did. "A handsome young man." She cast him a playful glance.
"Hi," he said, stepping up to the bed again. His voice came out as falsely cheerful as the nurse's. He cleared it self-consciously. "How're you feeling?"
Now that was a brilliant question to ask someone who'd been shot in the head. Disgusted, he tried to think of something to add, but his mind went blank. So much for social skills.
"Fine," she said politely. "Uh, do you mind telling me who you are? I'm not good with voices yet. Except for Kate and Megan."
"Rory Daniels. Sorry, I should have mentioned it."
"That's okay. Rory," she repeated as if testing the name against some memory.
For a second, she seemed disappointed, then she smiled. Her lips tipped up at the corners and dimples appeared in her cheeks. Even with that just-begging-for-a-kiss mouth, the dimples made her look young and vulnerable beneath the pile of bandages.
"How nice of you to stop by," she continued in a polite manner that set his teeth on edge. "Oh, and Happy New Year."
As if they were at a tea party or some damn thing. It made his chest ache in that odd way.
The nurse pushed a button and the bed slowly rose, bringing the patient to a full sitting position.
When the bed stopped, Shannon turned toward him as if she could see. "It seems I have you to thank for saving my life. The paramedic said you called for help, then controlled the bleeding until they arrived. A very good Samaritan indeed."
She stopped speaking. The alluring smile disappeared. The soft-looking lips trembled, then firmed as she smiled once more. He added self-control to her list of attributes.
"It was nothing. Don't think about it if the memory bothers you," he quickly said.
"No, I want to remember. Would you help by telling me everything you saw?"
He mulled over the scene at the mini-mart while the nurse brought a robe from the closet, deftly slipped it on the patient, then bent to put on slippers. "Why don't you escort her down to the sunroom? The patient is tired of these four walls," she said without checking with Shannon.
"Sure."
Rory took hold of Shannon's arm and steadied her as she got out of bed. The nurse, beaming with goodwill, saw them on their way, then bustled about straightening the room, her shoes making curious little noises on the tiles.
"This is the first time I've been out of the room since I got here. I'm sort of ne
rvous," Shannon admitted as they walked slowly down the broad corridor.
"So am I."
"You? Why?"
"I want to kiss you."
She stopped abruptly. Her head whipped around toward him, then she groaned and put a hand to her temple.
"Sorry," he murmured, resisting an urge to put his arm around her waist and pull her closer. "I didn't mean to startle you. I should have guarded my tongue."
The smile fluttered over her lips. "Well, now that you have my attention, what did you really want to say?"
He laughed, relieved at her humor and sassiness. "Here we are. Turn right," he directed.
They went into the pleasant, window-lined room.
The winter sun played hide-and-seek through a thin covering of clouds. "Do you recall what the room looks like?" he asked.
"Not really. Windows and plants, I think."
He described the potted trees and plants, the way the snow lay upon the rolling grounds of the hospital and on the peaks outlining the sky, the gleam of the sun shining on the red Mexican tiles.
"I brought you a poinsettia," he added. "You have about a thousand baskets of flowers in your room. We should have brought some down here."
"Good idea. I'll tell the nurse." She took a seat in the cane-backed rocker he directed her toward. "Now. Tell me what you saw when you went in the gas station. First, what kind of vehicles were outside?"
"That's what Kate's husband asked," Rory told her. "He wanted every detail I could recall."
Kate's first marriage had ended in tragedy a few years ago. She'd recently married a cop. The man had a son, and the couple was adopting a little girl. When he saw them in town, they were the picture of a happy family.
For an instant, he felt the strangest emotion, then realized what it was – envy.
Not that he was still mooning over Kate, but sometimes a man felt the emptiness in his life. Like at Christmas.
Shannon nodded. "Jess is in charge of investigations for the department. He's grilled me, too. Between him and the sheriff, I began to wonder if I had robbed the place and shot myself to cover up the crime."
He chuckled at her wry grimace, which caused the dimples to flash in and out. "Let's see, there was your SUV at the gas pump in front of my truck," Rory said, picturing the gas station, its lights hazy in the falling snow. "A pickup was parked at the side of the building, where the air and water hoses are located. I think there was another one at the curb near the door. That was all I saw."