WINDOW OF TIME

by DJ Erfert

  Rehearsing in his head what he might say to her, Johnny sped his way across the few miles between his home and her hotel. He hadn’t known just how deep his feelings were for Lucy until he’d found Monica in his bed. Seeing her lying there had repulsed him. And why she thought she could seduce him was beyond reason. They’d never reached that kind of relationship in the past, why she thought it would begin that morning—unless she’d found Lucy in his pajamas and assumed the rest.

  When he pulled into the hotel’s parking lot, Johnny saw her getting out of a yellow taxi parked under the valet’s awning. She didn’t look over when he honked his truck’s horn. He pulled into the closest parking space, but she’d disappeared by the time he reached the front doors. He saw her from across the lobby floor.

  “Lu, please wait!” She turned and looked at him, her eyes quickly squinting, her lips flattened. She took a step toward him with her head lowered and her hands balled into fists. In the next instant, a man dressed in a gray suit and sunglasses stepped out from behind a pillar and wrapped his arm around Lucy’s chest, clamping a white cloth over her nose and mouth. Before Johnny could shout, the other gray-clad foreign agent stepped in front of her.

  As Johnny ran forward, Lucy lifted up her foot and kicked the man in front of her in the chest, propelling him down onto the carpet. She wrenched one arm free and pinched the hand holding the cloth against her face, forcing him to drop it away. Two solid thrusts into his gut with her elbow loosened his hold around her body.

  Johnny saw the other guy get up. Lucy turned around and kneed her assailant in the groin. Before the second agent could grab her, Johnny tackled him away from the fight. The guy didn’t appreciate Johnny’s interference with whatever objective they had in mind with her, but Johnny didn’t think two men against one woman was necessarily fair.

  Johnny took a few hits, but he held his own, until the agent knocked him to the carpet and reached under his polyester jacket and pulled out a gun. Johnny lifted his arm in a futile effort to deflect the expected bullet.

  The shot that rang out didn’t hit Johnny. The man-in-gray dropped the gun and yelped in pain. Blood gushed from the wound in the agent’s hand as he bolted out the lobby doors.

  Johnny sat up and looked over at Lucy holding the gun she just fired, while her opponent lay on the floor in front of her in a heap of gray, moaning and holding his privates. A moment later, she stumbled backward, fell to her knees, and passed out.

  “Lucy!” Johnny yelled.

  “I called the cops,” Ken said from behind a long leather sofa. The desk clerk held the phone against his ear. “They’re on their way.”

  Johnny scrambled to his feet and ran around the bad guy. He grabbed her shoulders and turned her over onto her back. When he pushed enough of her hair from her face, he found her eyes closed. He felt her warm skin. She didn’t have a window. Lucy told him she couldn’t see herself in her windows. “Lucy!” he called with his face next to hers. He touched her throat and felt a slow pulse. Her labored breathing scared him. He touched the wet cloth lying next to her, and then sniffed his fingers. They smelled of chemical. “Chloroform.” Johnny cursed. “They knocked her out with chloroform.” He yelled at Ken holding the phone, “She needs an ambulance!” He shouted louder, “She needs the paramedics!”

  ~*~

  “I got here as soon as I could.” Dusty landed his big hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “Want to tell me what happened?”

  The first rescue unit showed up within three minutes of Johnny’s urgent call for help. The police got there and took the foreign agent into custody, telling Johnny they’d get his statement at the hospital. His guys supplied Lucy with oxygen and an IV and wrapped her up before transporting her to Pacific Hospital. He stood outside the exam room they’d taken her to. They wouldn’t let him go in. He wasn’t her husband.

  “What happened to your face?” Dusty lifted Johnny’s chin. “You look like you’ve been in a fight.”

  Johnny touched his swollen check. “I have. They came back.”

  “Who came back?”

  Johnny glanced around at the busy hospital hallway and lowered his voice. “Those two guys who chased us on the freeway last night jumped Lucy in her hotel lobby. They used chloroform on her. I think they were trying to abduct her.”

  “Who tried to abduct her?”

  The question came from behind him. Johnny swung around and saw a tall woman dressed in a white doctor’s jacket, her blonde hair pulled into a ponytail. Standing behind her were two men dressed in dark blue hospital scrubs, and each of their faces were trained on Johnny. He shrugged his shoulders, not wanting to talk to another stranger about Lucy, but he felt like he’d fallen into thick, sticky mud up to his hips and couldn’t get out.

  “I asked you a question, Mr. Cartwright, and I need an answer.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve already talked to the doctor.”

  The woman pulled out a small wallet from her pants’ front pocket and discretely opened it to show Johnny her CIA identification.

  “I’m Dr. Penelope Pettigrew. I’m Agent James’ physician. And I need you to tell me everything you know.”

  “Her doctor is inside with her now.” Johnny motioned toward the closed door.

  Dr. Pettigrew huffed. “Really? Well, we’ll see about that.” She turned on her heel and disappeared behind the exam room door.

  Dusty asked quietly, “Where can I join up?”

  Johnny glanced over his shoulder at his large friend with the lopsided smile. “Remember where we are.”

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “Dusty—”

  The door burst open and a nurse came rushing out, followed by a ticked off older male doctor, who passed a clipboard to Dr. Pettigrew before he went into another exam room.

  Pettigrew curled a finger at Johnny. “Come in.”

  Johnny and Dusty followed the two nurses inside the room where Lucy lay on a narrow exam bed dressed in a thin blue gown. The oxygen mask covered her nose and mouth, and her IV solution hung on an electronically monitored pump.

  “She’s still not conscious, Sunny,” one of the guys in blue scrubs said.

  “Sunny?” Johnny looked from the nurse holding Lucy’s chart, to the doctor. “I thought you said your name was Penelope Pettigrew?”

  “It’s my nickname,” Sunny said, addressing Johnny. “And yes, Sergio, I noticed she’s unconscious. Now tell me something I don’t know.” The doctor gingerly lifted Lucy’s eyelid and flicked a bright light in it. She did the same to the other. “Why does my patient have a concussion, Mr. Cartwright?”

  “I bet you don’t know about the knot on the back of her head,” Sergio said, reading her chart. “And that she was knocked out with chloroform.”

  Sunny put her penlight away in her jacket pocket, and then ran her fingers along the back of Lucy’s head. “That’s quite a bump.” She leaned against the bed with her fists and looked at the other nurse. “Give me her vitals, Cliff.”

  “Her pulse is sixty, and her respiratory is shallow at 10.”

  “Give her more oxygen,” Dusty said as he studied the monitor above Lucy’s bed.

  “Thank you for the advice.” Sunny stared at Dusty and asked, “Mr. Cartwright, should this, uh, gentleman be in here?”

  Johnny knocked Dusty in the side with a firmly placed elbow. “He knows about Lucy’s occupation.” He then added, “He also knows how she got her concussion, and about the chloroform.”

  “Oh.” Sunny glanced between the two men. “Are you ready to fill me in?”

  “Can you tell me how Lucy is, Dr. Pettigrew?” Johnny asked.

  “Just call me Sunny.” She placed her hand on Lucy’s forehead. “I don’t know why she isn’t responding to the oxygen. Chloroform just isn’t that strong of a sedative to keep her unconscious for this long. There isn’t a good reason why she isn’t awake. But with a head injury combined with the Chloroform …” Sunny shook her head. “I can’t predict what kind of reaction she may hav
e or how long it will take for her to come out of it.”

  “Why don’t you give her Adderall?” Dusty asked. “Stimulate her.”

  Sunny blew out a sharp breath. “What would that do to her blood pressure, Doctor?”

  Dusty straightened his back. “I’m not a doctor.”

  “That’s right, you’re not! Because a doctor wouldn’t give a patient with a head injury something that would increase the pressure in her brain and increase any potential bleeding she might have.”

  Sunny caught Johnny’s stare. “I’ll order a CT brain scan, and then we’ll need to keep a close watch on her and hope she comes out of this on her own. Until then, I’ll keep her safe.”

  ~*~

  Johnny and Dusty leaned against either side of the CT scan room door, waiting while Lucy had her exam.

  “Why did you make such a stupid suggestion?” Johnny asked.

  Dusty grinned. “I wanted to see if Sunny knew her stuff.”

  “Well, all you did was tick her off and give her the impression you were an incompetent paramedic.”

  “Maybe.” Dusty crossed his arms over his chest. “Did you see how her green eyes flared? They were beautiful. It was worth the chewing out she gave me.”

  “Dusty Rhodes, I didn’t know you were a masochist.”

  “I’m not.” He sighed as he pressed his hand on his chest. “I’m just in love.”

  “Now you’re crazy.” Johnny checked his watch. “If you’re so easily beguiled by a pretty face, then why haven’t you ever been married? You’re over thirty.”

  Dusty lost his smile, and his good humor it seemed. “When was the last time you met beauty, brains, and bravado wrapped up in the same package?”

  Johnny gazed at the closed door between him and Lucy and thought about the past eighteen hours. In his heart, her beauty eclipsed any other woman he knew. Her selfless bravery in saving all the people on the staircase, and again on the freeway, knowing she’d never receive any reward, or even acknowledgement for her heroism, put her in a category of courageous beyond any firefighter he’d ever known.

  “I met that woman yesterday.”

  Dusty glanced at the door. “Her doc sure seemed to take it all in when you told her how Lucy got the head injury, and about the attack in the lobby, and how she saved you from being shot,” he said, relaxing against the wall. “But she didn’t seem surprised.”

  “Why should she be? They have a dangerous career, and Lucy’s been well trained.” Johnny lifted his arm and read his watch again. “How much longer is this going to take?”

  “We’re done now,” Sunny said as she opened the door. She gazed at Dusty. “It’s amazing how voices carry in this hallway.” She pushed the door open wider and stepped aside while Sergio pushed Lucy’s gurney through the doorway. “We’re taking her up to the second floor. Why don’t you two go down to the cafeteria and grab something to eat while we get Lucy settled in her private room.”

  “Uh …” Johnny hesitated. “Don’t you need us to stay with you just in case you need protection from—you know?”

  Sunny gave Dusty a suspicious half smile as she took his hand and proceeded to place it on the small of her own back.

  “No, Johnny,” Dusty said quietly, staring heavily into her smiling green eyes. “The lady doctor is packing her own protection.” He leaned down closer to her face. “Would you really shoot someone?”

  Whispering just loud enough for them to hear, Sunny said, “If it meant saving an agent’s life? Absolutely, I would. It’s in my job description.”

  Dusty slowly ran his hand up her back before moving aside a step. “I think we’ll go get a snack downstairs in the cafeteria. Can I get you anything? A cup of coffee? A donut? Dinner and a movie?”

  Sunny smiled at him a moment before walking after Lucy’s gurney and helped to push her to the elevator.

  Dusty stood staring at the empty hallway after they had disappeared with his hand on his chest.

  “Oh, yeah, Romeo, she’s really into you,” Johnny told him.

  “Don’t sound so skeptical.” Dusty shoved Johnny in the shoulder. “She let me touch her gun, and she barely knows me.”

  Twelve

  The bottom of Lucy’s foot itched. She flexed her toes, but it didn’t do anything to still the feeling. Using the big toe of her other foot, she reached over and scratched the tender spot near the ball of her heel. “Mmmm,” she moaned as she relieved the painful itch on the surface of her skin.

  “Lucy?”

  “Hmm?” She turned over, tucking the pillow up under her head.

  “Are you awake?”

  “No.” She sighed. A warm kiss on her cheek preceded a substantial shake of her shoulder. “Stop it.” Lucy squirmed sideways.

  “Lucy, wake up or I’ll take you into a cold shower.”

  Johnny? A chilling memory of the drenching he gave her last night flooded her mind, and then she remembered her encounter with that woman. Resentment filled her heart. Lucy slapped at his arm and pushed him away as she sat up in bed. She was in bed?

  “Sergio, go get Sunny,” Johnny said in a rush.

  A young man with a grin on his face, dressed in hospital scrubs, pulled out a cell phone from his shirt pocket as he dashed out of the large room. Lucy lifted her right hand. An IV drip was taped onto the knuckle side and the line led up to a bag filled with clear liquid suspended above an electronic box on a pole next to her bed. Lucy lifted the neckline of her gown and saw round patches attached to her skin with wires coming out of them and leading up to that same box and beat in rhythm with her heart.

  “What happened to me?”

  Johnny sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. Lucy yanked it away. “Okay,” he said. “I can understand you might be a little angry with me—”

  “A little?” Lucy asked sharply, pushing at his shoulder. “You promised you wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “But I didn’t—”

  The door burst open, and an older nurse smiled as she swept into the room. “Agent James, I heard that you were awake. That’s very good.” She walked around the bed and turned off the IV machine. As it went dark, she went back around to the other side of the bed with her arms out wide. “Now that you are able to drink and eat, and most importantly, go to the bathroom unassisted, I will take out your Foley catheter.” The nurse took Johnny’s arm and began pulling him off the bed. “But we will need privacy. Please step outside.”

  Lucy noticed her directions weren’t requests, but orders. The nurse took control of her patients much like a captain of a ship to keep things organized. It bothered Lucy to no end for some reason. She hadn’t adjusted to being in the hospital yet, didn’t know why she was there, and then suddenly a woman dressed in pink scrubs was disconnecting her from all the monitors. As the nurse leaned over her, Lucy tried to clear her mind. Something wasn’t right about her caregiver.

  “Taking out the catheter will hurt, so first I will give you something for the pain.”

  The woman grasped the IV line, and as she took out a syringe from her pocket, Lucy remembered the nurse had called her Agent James. That would mean the nurse was an agent too, yet she hadn’t identified herself. Which would mean …

  “No way!” Lucy hit the syringe from the woman’s hand just before she was able to insert it. She threw herself off the other side of the bed and fell to the floor in a tangle of bed sheet and rubber catheter tubing, knocking over a portable IV stand in the process. As Lucy pulled the sheet from around her legs, the so-called nurse took a knife from her pocket. She flipped out a blade with a touch of a switch and started around the bed.

  Lucy knew there wouldn’t be any alarms sounding for her. The woman had turned the machines off when she first came in. Lucy was on her own. Standing unsteadily, she moved back a step and stumbled over the skinny metal IV pole in her attempt to put a little more distance between them.

  “Help!” Lucy’s voice sounded like an industrial-sized frog, croaking loudly.

  The
woman sneered and moved closer, just as Johnny opened the door. “Lucy?” His entrance distracted the woman long enough for Lucy to pick up the IV pole. She swung the bottom of it against the woman’s hand, hitting the knife out of her grip. It pinged loudly against the bathroom door before dropping to the floor. On the backswing, Lucy caught the woman’s face with a sharp metal edge and sent her backward, making her shriek in pain. Johnny rushed further inside the room, and the woman charged him, shoving him against the wall before she fled out the door.

  “Lucy!” Johnny ran around the bed. He caught her as she slumped to the floor. “Did she hurt you?”

  The surge of adrenaline that had assisted in her self-defense had drained her muscles of any strength, leaving her arms and legs feeling like little more than wimpy rubber. Lucy trembled uncontrollably against Johnny’s chest.

  “What happened in here?” A woman wearing a doctor’s white jacket burst into the room, the man in scrubs came in behind her along with a big man in a firefighter uniform.

  “Sunny, Lucy was just attacked by a woman dressed all in pink. She had short black hair.” Johnny pointed to the left. “She took off that way.”

  Sunny jabbed the firefighter in the chest with the point of her finger. “Dusty, stay here!” She dashed out the door with the other man rushing behind her.

  Dusty closed the door and leaned against it. “Is she all right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sergio said she woke up.”

  “I’m definitely awake now,” Lucy said, trying to control her shakes. “But I would have preferred the cold shower.”

  Johnny held her tightly. “I guess she wasn’t really a nurse, was she?”

  Lucy shook her head, and if she’d had the strength, she would have pushed him away. But she didn’t, even if her heart reminded her how he misled her.