Truly, the guy should have lived long ago when gallantry was all the rage and maidens suffered fainting spells and begged to be swept off their feet. Again, her vision of him on horseback and in chain mail entered her mind and she giggled. She shook her head and answered, “You really don’t want to know,” when he looked at her in perplexed inquiry. Wow! The drugs were good, she thought giddily. Lombardi had given her Vicodin for the pain, and that was freakin’ fantastic!
Zack had held her hand through it all and, despite her initial worry, she’d had no wild mood swings, and she had worked hard to block any impressions she might receive from him. That effort alone had helped get through the pain and discomfort of everything. It’s hard to concentrate on pain when you’re working to block out other stuff, she’d learned in relief. It had all gone as well as anything like that can go.
She had a hairline fracture of a small carpal bone in her wrist. According to Lombardi it should heal cleanly within a few months. He’d given her a splint-brace to wear when she’d argued about him casting it. It had molded metal stays overlaid with a soft padded fabric that had Velcro to wrap around and support her hand and wrist. He’d finally agreed, after a prolonged argument and obtaining her promise that she would wear it full-time until she got the medical go-ahead to remove it. Of course, Zack had chimed in with his promise that he’d make sure she wore it. Men! What the hell would he do when he had to go back to the office, call and check in with Tom? Yes, she thought morosely, he probably would.
It began to occur to her that she had entirely too many nannies, Diane, Eric, Zack, and now, Tom. The thought of Tom dressed up like Mary Poppins in a high-necked blouse, long skirt and safety boots, carrying an umbrella, and leading her around the project site by the hand sprang up in her mind and she giggled again. This time Zack gave her an anxious look so she made the effort to sober up a little.
Her leg had required twelve stitches, and after the sharp sting of the local anesthetic she hadn’t felt anything but the tug and pull of the sutures. She’d have to keep it clean and dry and return in two weeks to get the stitches removed. Her mood turned sullen as she thought about having to travel back to the hospital again. It was about to get downright surly.
“I’m going to have to stop and fill these prescriptions while we’re here in town, Amanda.” Zack recalled her from a hazy, doze-like state.
“Hmm…? Okay, whatever,” she waved a careless hand at him and closed her eyes, leaning back against the soft leather interior.
“I’m filling all of the prescriptions,” Zack further informed her in a voice that would brook no argument.
This time she made the effort to sit up and pay attention.
“All of what?” she inquired, with a hard edge to her voice. She had a sinking feeling that Lombardi had dismissed her arguments that she hadn’t needed antidepressant or migraine medications. She was correct. In Zack’s hand he held three prescriptions.
She reached over. “Let me see.”
There was a narcotic for pain, one for her depression, and one for her migraines. Men, or maybe more specifically, doctors! They wrote the book on arrogance, and now it was two against one, ugh!
“Humph!” She took the pain prescription out and handed it back to Zack.
“When you fill this one, tell the pharmacist I only want four tablets, not the full prescription. After tomorrow, Tylenol will do the job.”
She retained the other two prescriptions. She was not going to take those, so she wasn’t going to pay to fill them. She made the attempt to tear them in half but the hand in the brace wouldn’t cooperate and Zack snatched them from her fumbling fingers, tucking them into his sun visor.
“Oh, no you don’t! You’re having them filled and that’s the end of the discussion,” he declared firmly.
He pulled out of the parking lot and headed further into town, seeking a pharmacy.
“Ogre!” Amanda grumbled at him. “Seriously, Zack! There’s no reason to fill those. I’m not taking them. I’m not going to waste my money on prescriptions that I don’t need. I’m not depressed, I just get sad sometimes. And the migraine meds make me nauseous so I don’t like to take them either.” Excuses, excuses. If he only really knew, she thought. There’s no way in the world he’d want to fill any of them.
Zack reminded himself that Amanda was in pain and out of sorts, and bit back the retort he so badly wanted to offer. Sure you’re not depressed! You only often wish that your life hadn’t been saved! Tread lightly, Zack, he coached himself. You weren’t supposed to listen in on her conversation with her doctor, you know better! He also knew that Lombardi intended for him to hear her every word. He just wasn’t sure why the old coot would want that. He’d acted as a matchmaker but he didn’t know Zack at all, and knew Amanda all too well. Why would Lombardi try to set her up with someone who was a complete stranger to him? There was more to that story too, just like there was to Amanda’s.
Pulling his mind back to the discussion at hand he took a deep breath and gently told her “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Lots of people take antidepressants just to keep them on an even keel, until they’re more ready to manage stuff on their own. It helps them to handle their issues. You won’t take it forever. It could benefit you, Amanda.”
She turned her head away, looked out her window, and ignored him.
He pressed on. “The migraine meds you had before have expired. You needed a new script for those. You don’t need to brave through pain, it’s all right to take medication when it’s warranted. It’s not a weakness to rely on a prescription to help you through a bad spot.”
Now she turned her whole body away, firmly shutting him out by giving him her back. He grimaced. He didn’t need to read her feelings. Her body language said it all.
Amanda disagreed with Zack wholeheartedly. Relying on medications was weak, and taking them led to the possibility of addiction. And suicide, she reminded herself baldly. Remember, Amanda?
She’d caught herself before, relying on them following David’s death. She knew how it was, to use them as an escape. She knew how tempted she’d been. How close she’d come. How she’d stopped herself after she’d visited two differing doctors and pharmacies to get the scripts filled.
With even greater shame, she also remembered how she’d taken an entire bottle to her bedside with the intent of ending her life, one horrible night, a little more than a year ago, on what would have been their fourth wedding anniversary to be precise.
She clearly remembered the agony she’d felt from living, each day similar to what she imagined crawling over broken glass might feel like. She still felt the horror of what she’d been about to do, not caring if she wound up in hell. Every day already was hell. How she’d argued with herself that she was weak for not being able to get through each day much better than she did. And, the final humiliation, that she was too weak to actually commit to the act of suicide.
She’d dumped both bottles down the drain and made herself keep one of the empties as a reminder of that weakness. The moment had passed, but she’d never forgotten it, never would. Only David’s ghostly agonized plea of, “No! Amanda! Please don’t do this!” had stopped her, redeemed her.
At that point she’d put it down to her subconscious. Now, of course, she knew better. The past several weeks had been a giant learning curve. She hadn’t thought about that night again until this moment, hadn’t allowed herself to revisit that night since it had happened.
With great effort she pulled herself away from those memories. Once more disgusted with what she’d nearly done in a moment of weakness worse than any other. She found herself in Zack’s arms, on his lap, with no idea of how she’d gotten there. They were stopped in the parking lot of what looked like an abandoned shopping center. She felt his face pressed against her hair, felt his body shudder convulsively, and tried to pull away from him, only to find that she was locked in an iron grip.
What had she done? Had she really spoken those words aloud? God h
elp her, and God damn the painkillers the doctor had given her. She’d never told anyone about that night. Not even Diane knew how close she’d come.
She was afraid to, but she looked up at him, sure he would be sickened by her unintentionally shared thoughts. Then she immediately stopped worrying about herself as she felt his tears fall on her own face. His eyes held a world of pain, her pain, she suddenly realized. It was almost like he knew exactly what she’d felt that night. But how could that be?
As he cried for her, she found she was comforting him. For the first time she turned to him voluntarily. Wrapping her good arm around his neck, she held him tightly to her and stroked his thick black hair as he sobbed against her shoulder.
“Shh, Zack, it’s okay. I’m fine. It was just a bad time and it’s over now. It was a long time ago.”
She kept murmuring to him, trying to calm the depth of his emotion. She also allowed herself to read him, really read him, for the first time, and what she found amazed her.
* * * *
Zack had been prepared for a battle both in emergency, as Lombardi worked on Amanda, and then again in response to the prescriptions the good doctor had shoved into his hands, along with his business card with his home phone and cell numbers scrawled on the back.
He was pleasantly surprised by Amanda’s submission to his touch, to his hand-holding of her while Lombardi sewed up her leg. She’d even gripped his back. This time he’d sent no emotional vibes her way at all, even though everything in him screamed that he needed to help lessen her pain. Listening to his gut for a change, or, rather, to Lombardi, had paid off. While he’d felt Amanda close off a bit of herself from him, and he’d wondered about that, she’d allowed him to be there to support her and that’s all he’d wanted.
He’d correctly assumed the heated battle in his truck over the filling of her prescriptions. But he hadn’t understood her reluctance and defiance. He’d taken them from her, intending to help her whether she wanted him to or not, again dominating, without comprehension of the real problem. When would he learn not to assume control? When would he actually hear what she tried to say? He’d learned a valuable lesson tonight. He might feel her feelings, but he had no idea of the depth, strength, and confusion of the emotions that drove her. Nor did he have the faintest idea of the motivation behind them.
He’d been pissed by her lack of cooperation, and focused on not ramming the idiot in front of him driving ten miles below the speed limit, when he’d heard her begin her whispered story. Indeed it had been the lack of volume that had caught his attention. He’d been waiting for her to yell at him, again. The soft words pouring from her mouth had seemed to come of their own volition, not guided by Amanda, who seemed very far away. The flat affect she’d presented had scared him shitless.
Not one full minute into her nightmarish tale he’d had to pull off the road. As he did, he’d allowed himself to sink into Amanda’s memories and what he’d felt scared him to death. He’d sat there, frozen from the absolute horror that her words generated in him. Her overwhelming sense of isolation and excruciating pain, of wanting it all to just end. The heartbreak and struggle of getting through each day. The desire to be with her closest friend and lover. Her feeling that she wasn’t a good enough person to live, but that she wasn’t worthy enough to be granted entrance to Heaven either. She hadn’t cared if she went to hell, for she was already living in a hell on earth anyway.
As she imparted her story she didn’t cry, her words came out flat, unemotional, which was even more frightening, but the feelings behind them! Oh God! He’d unbuckled them both and slid over to the middle and picked her up and held her, because he’d needed to be held. He didn’t even think she noticed when he did, she just continued on with her story. Telling him how weak she’d felt about wanting to kill herself, and weak at not being able to accomplish it. The part where her dead husband’s voice had pled with her had nearly crippled him with angst. He had begun to cry as he hadn’t since he’d been a small boy. He cried for her, for what she’d lost, for what she’d almost done to herself, and for what that action might have meant to him, too.
He was so caught up in her feelings that he missed when she rejoined him mentally. But he caught her sense of shock at their circumstances and her wonder at his tears for what had happened to her. She caught him by surprise, too, when she reached out to offer comfort to him.
She was comforting him.
Then he felt her drop that last shield, of whatever it was she’d been keeping separate from him, and he thanked God for the horrible moments that they’d both endured that finally allowed her to do so. For he now felt hope, but this time it was hers.
* * * *
“Would you please pull over?”
Amanda’s urgent voice yanked Zack from his train of thought. He hadn’t known she was awake. She’d fallen asleep as soon as her prescriptions had been filled at the pharmacy drive-thru window. To his amazement she’d curled right into his side as though she belonged there, and laid her head against his chest with his arm wrapped around her. Despite her fears he’d had all three scripts filled, ignoring her outraged expression and her hand extended with her credit card, paying for them with his own and telling her they’d discuss it tomorrow.
He didn’t feel she was a danger to herself any longer, and thought, if he could get through that thick head of hers, he’d be able to explain why. He also wondered if she’d be open to an alternative he was thinking about, should she decide not to take the antidepressant. But that would require him telling her about himself, and he wasn’t sure if he could do that either.
“Zack, please!”
He hurriedly glanced down at her, finding her extremely pale, sweaty, and with one hand clamped over her mouth.
“Now! Zack, right now!”
This time it was choked out, and he saw her throat working as she began to gag.
He swore under his breath and swerved. Quickly easing the truck onto the shoulder, he jumped out and raced around to the passenger side of the vehicle. The instant he pulled her out and set her feet on the ground, she turned her back to him, leaned over, and decorated the side of the roadway. He groaned internally.
“Amanda, when did you eat last?”
Great! he thought sarcastically. She’d taken pain killers without any food in her system. Just wonderful! He should have known, should have asked!
He grabbed tissues and a bottle of water from the cab. Uncapping the water he handed it to her, waiting while she swished it around her mouth and spat it back out. After she rinsed her mouth he ordered “take a few small sips and swallow it, don’t chug, it’ll just come right back up.”
He sat her down on the running board because he could see her legs were shaking, and squatted down in front of her, tucking her hair behind an ear so he could see her face. She was still very pale and clammy. Pulling a few tissues, he mopped up her sweaty brow, and runny eyes and nose.
He was relieved that she was finally allowing him to touch her, no flinching, no cringing, just acceptance, and even enjoyment of his caretaking. He still didn’t know what caused the change but he’d take it. Well, part of him knew what caused the change. He’d stopped trying to influence her moods. Was she aware of that, he wondered? Had Lombardi’s words clued her in?
When she could speak she said, “Oh gosh! I’m sorry!” and grimaced. “Why is it that you always need to be the one to witness the most humiliating experiences in my life?”
This time, though, he could tell she was joking, kind of, and while she was certainly disgusted by having thrown up in front of him, she didn’t really mind his presence.
“Babe, you should have told me and Doctor Lombardi, before you took the painkiller, that you hadn’t eaten yet!” he admonished her. “You could have avoided all this.” He gestured to the disgusting array of splotches that lay around them.
“When did you eat last?” he asked again. He wasn’t even sure she’d heard him the first time in the midst of her heaves.
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Amanda tried to count back, and then realized she didn’t even know what time it was. “Um…dinner? Last night, around seven-ish?”
At his disgruntled look she automatically began defending herself. “I know! I know! I promised I would eat regularly, and generally I have been. This morning got off to a rocky start when a shipment didn’t arrive and I ended up on the phone with the supplier, then the rest of the morning was taken up with other various issues. I was going to get something for lunch but then you arrived and…”
She trailed off, rolling her hand to indicate etcetera and so on. That basically, everything had gone to hell. She closed her eyes and bent herself in half, clamping her mouth shut and swallowing convulsively in an effort to not vomit again, resting her forehead on her knees.
Zack took the water bottle away from her. “No more. I think you’ve had all you can take right now.”
He stood and then walked a short distance away, telling her to “hold on for a minute.” With her head on her knees, she turned it just enough to see what he was doing.
He dug around in the truck bed and came up with a thick quilted blanket. Looking closer she saw it was uh…well a…thick quilted work mat? The kind you lay under a car when you’re working on it. It was stained here and there with grease and dirt, but not too bad.
She watched curiously as he carried it to a small meadow that lay just over the hill from where he’d pulled over for her puke-fest. He snapped it open, spreading it out. Apparently, he was planning to hang out here for while. That was just fine with her. She really didn’t want to get back in the truck and sit through another ten miles of twisty, winding mountain roads. In fact she’d be willing to walk, even with a bum leg, as long as she didn’t have to ride in any vehicle.
As he completed the climb up the slight incline of the hill toward the truck he stopped a few feet from her and held out his arms, waiting to see what she would do. From now on, no pressure. He’d have to wait and see what she was willing to give him. Now that he knew he had a chance with her, and knew they were headed in the right direction, he would back off a little. Something tight inside him had slowly eased and he suddenly realized it was her feelings that had had him in a knot. Now that she was more relaxed, so was he. He was going to have to be careful not to act on the strength of what she felt, to make sure of whose feelings he was actually responding to.
Amanda's Touch [D.A.R.E.ing Women] (Siren Publishing Allure) Page 17