Brooding Angel

by Marie Ferrarella

  He stood regarding her in silence for a moment. Then, to her mild surprise, Mitch turned around and left. The pressed-wood door whooshed shut behind his departing figure. She was alone.

  He was doing just as she had asked. Nothing less. Why that would bring a sudden, fresh bout of tears to her eyes didn’t make sense to her. She had cried Mitch out of her system almost two years ago.

  But since she’d woken up here, tears had come very readily to her.

  Attempting to sink into oblivion, Clancy stared at the wall, too miserable to plan, too miserable to think. She’d do that tomorrow. If she were very lucky, tomorrow wouldn’t come.

  When the door opened again several minutes later, she thought that it was another nurse coming to poke at her and take another useless reading that testified that her body was still alive, even if the rest of her was dead.

  But it was Mitch.

  Confused, she stared at him. “What happened? Lose your way?”

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t going home.” He knew that was what she had thought. “I went to the nurse’s desk to get your doctor’s name.”

  Suspicion mounted in her eyes. It was the only spark of life he saw. “Why?”

  Clancy dug her fists into the mattress and managed to pull herself up. She hated the way it felt to drag the dead weight that had once been her legs into a sitting position but she had no choice.

  Annoyed, Mitch crossed the room to her side. “Don’t.” He laid a hand over her arm to stop her, his other hand on the metal pole beside her bed. It was tottering precariously. “You’ll rip out the IVs.”

  She batted at his hand, but he wouldn’t withdraw it. Her action felt like a fly trying to land on his arm, he thought.

  Clancy looked at him, frustration flaring in her eyes. “Maybe I want to. Maybe I don’t want their antibiotics and their glucose gumming up my veins.”

  Gently but firmly, he restrained her until the fight left her body. It didn’t take long. His eyes held hers. “That’s not like you, Clancy.”

  Damn, why wasn’t she dead? She felt dead. “Take another look, Mitch.” She raised her chin pugnaciously. “None of this is like me.”

  He understood where she was coming from. But agreeing wouldn’t help her now.

  “So you were hurt.” His voice was matter-of-fact and harsh. Pity would only make her crumble. “That doesn’t mean that you’re automatically out of the game.” His brows narrowed. “Or was everything you always espoused just a lie?”

  “It wasn’t a lie.” Defensiveness had her voice rising, and then she stopped. Clancy dragged a shaky hand through her hair. It was swept off her face in a style she had never worn before. The nurse, in an attempt to lift her spirits, had combed her hair. It had only made Clancy feel more useless, like a hollowed-out doll someone was playing dress-up with.

  She lowered her eyes. She wasn’t proud of accepting defeat. But there didn’t seem to be any other logical choice. That other Clancy, the one who had seen only the hopeful side of each situation, had been a fool. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “I usually am.” He paused, waiting for her to elaborate. She didn’t. “About what, specifically?”

  “In what you’re thinking.” She wet her lips. They seemed to dry instantly. “You think I’m feeling sorry for myself.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  His tone wasn’t judgmental, but she interpreted it that way. She felt as if the world had suddenly been cut in half. She was on one side and everyone else was on the other. “Wouldn’t you?”

  He’d never felt sorry for himself, even in the worst of times. There had never seemed to be a point to it. “No.” He said the word so firmly, her head jerked in his direction. “Feeling sorry for yourself is a colossal waste of time. Doing something about what’s bothering you is what counts.”

  Easy for him to say. Clancy stared down at her legs. All day long, even before the therapist had arrived, she had tried to will feeling into them, to make them move, even a fraction of an inch. She’d cried, pleaded, prayed.

  God had gone on vacation and heaven had a busy signal. Her toes had remained frozen, her legs immobile. All feeling ceased just below the upper portion of her thighs. They might as well have been cut off.

  “Doing something,” she repeated. “There’s nothing I can do.”

  The nurse at the desk had been rather maternal. She’d mistaken Mitch for Clancy’s fiancé and had given him the information he’d asked for. That and a bit of encouragement as well. “Your nurse said there was physical therapy available to you.”

  “Available” was a far cry from “effective.” “They don’t give physical therapy to tree stumps.”

  She was determined to drown in a sea of self-pity. He was just as determined that she wouldn’t. His mother had wasted completely away and given in to despair at the end. That wasn’t going to happen to Clancy. “They do to injured limbs.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Don’t you get it yet? They’re not injured, Mitch. They’re gone. That accident might as well have ripped me in half.” She balled up a fist and hit it against her leg. The limbs moved slightly from the impact. Not looking at them, she wasn’t aware that they had. She had no feeling. “See? Nothing.”

  “Now,” he agreed.

  “Ever,” she countered.

  A small part of her was searching for hope, but she knew what she felt, or didn’t feel. And Stuart’s words rang in her ears. She was nothing but a burden, an invalid. The doctor had only been trying to make it easier for himself when he’d given her better odds. No one liked to be the bearer of bad news.

  Mitch lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “I don’t know very much about medical conditions.” He moved the tray until it was centered before her. “I do know that if you have an empty tank, the car stops dead.”

  So now she was a car with a dead engine. “Nice choice of words.”

  He wasn’t going to stand here, wasting his breath. “Eat, Clancy.”

  She pressed her lips together, her eyes challenging him. “Why?”

  He filled the fork with broccoli and offered it to her; actually, it was more of a direct command than an offer. “Because I said so.”

  Maybe at a different time, she would have thought he was bullying her because he cared. But she knew better now. If he was motivated at all, it was guilt pushing him.

  “I’m not a rookie cop you can intimidate.”

  He wasn’t attempting to intimidate her. He just wanted her to do the right thing. For her own sake. “No, you’re not. You’re an intelligent woman who knows better than to argue with someone who makes sense.”

  She sighed. She couldn’t even get him out of her room. She’d lost control over every part of her life. “Does this somehow assuage your conscience?”

  He chafed slightly. It wasn’t his conscience, but his code that was at work here. Still, her words had struck a chord. “My conscience has nothing to do with this.” He put the fork into her hand. “Now, eat, Clancy. I’m not leaving until you do.”

  “Since you’ve given me a goal...” She sighed and looked down at the fork. “I always hated broccoli.”

  He continued watching her, waiting for her to comply. “It’s good for you.”

  With an exasperated breath, she ate the first forkful. “Now you’re a nutritionist?” she grumbled after swallowing.

  “A realist.” He prompted her until she filled her fork and took another bite. “And I’ve always been that.” He frowned when she set down her fork. “Use that or I will.”

  She wondered just how far he was going to carry this charade. “You’d feed me?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Like a baby.”

  The laugh was small, hollow, without an accompanying smile. “You don’t seem like the nurturing type.”

  “I’m not.” His eyes told her to eat even as he refrained from repeating the order.

  Clancy swallowed another forkful. Nothing had any taste; the bile in her mouth neutralized everything. She began to lay d
own the utensil again. The next instant, Mitch’s hand was reaching for it.

  “I’m not hungry,” she protested.

  It wasn’t an acceptable excuse. “This doesn’t have anything to do with your appetite,” he reminded her. “If you want to walk, you have to get your strength back.”

  He made it sound so simple; insert tab A into slot B. But she knew it didn’t work that way. Slot B was torn. This was far too much a taste of reality than she had ever wanted.

  Mitch had grabbed her fork and shoved more food onto it than she would have. With a sigh, she took it from him and continued eating. She saw no point in it, but he obviously wasn’t going to be satisfied until she made a dent in the meal. She knew him.

  She hadn’t lied when she had said her appetite was gone. It was. Everything was gone. Her verve for life, her desire to conquer obstacles. The accident had killed her spirit and replaced it with something liquid and limp.

  She just wanted to curl up into a ball and make the world go away.

  But Mitch stood there, a stark reminder that the world wouldn’t go away, no matter how much she wanted it to. Eating, trying to push the lump out of her throat, she looked up at him and wondered why he was here. Wondered why he had returned after yesterday. He wasn’t the kind of man to be bound by sentiment.

  So what was he doing here, standing over her like a mute sentinel guarding the princess, waiting for her to finish her meal?

  Not that she could.

  “That’s it.” Clancy pushed the tray aside. She didn’t care what he wanted. She just couldn’t swallow another bite. “I can’t eat any more. If you force me, you’re going to be sorry.”

  Mitch accepted her refusal. He moved the tray aside. “It’s a start.”

  A start, she thought dully, implied that things were going to run some course and end. She already had her ending.

  Bitterness twisted her generous mouth as she looked down at her still legs beneath the white blanket. “There is no start, Mitch.”

  Frustration threatened to sever the slender thread of Mitch’s patience. “Why are you so ready to accept defeat?”

  Was he blind as well as deaf? “Why are you so ready not to?”

  The smile, though small, was genuine. “Maybe a little of you rubbed off on me.”

  There was a time she would have sold her soul to have believed that. Now she believed in nothing. Clancy only shook her head.

  “Too late, Mitch.”

  Chapter Five

  Clancy stirred. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes as sleep slipped away from her. For one short moment she thought it had all been a horrible dream. The accident, the injury to her spine, Mitch—all just a dream.

  The slender thread broke almost instantly as her surroundings penetrated the fog that hung about her mind. She was in the same room where she had lain yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that. It began to feel as if she had never had a life beyond this room, as if she’d only imagined her other existence. Perhaps all the rest of it had been a dream...her happiness, her plans.

  Clancy ran her hands over her face. The swelling was down, the bandages gone—all but the one right above her eye. They’d taken the IVs out yesterday morning. Unable to walk, she was still just as tethered to the bed now as she had been then.

  Her eyes felt gritty. There was nothing to do but sleep now. She had no interest in the television set that loomed above her on a platform attached to the wall. The TV had remained silent since she had been brought here over a week ago. Her favorite programs didn’t matter anymore. Nothing did.

  The only time she managed to rouse herself was when her friends came to see her. It was difficult, but she put on an act and pretended that everything was going to work out. She pretended and her friends pretended. Neither knew what to do with pity. So they smiled at her and then quickly left, wishing her well and telling her to hurry back.

  As if she could.

  She didn’t have enough energy to pretend around the hospital personnel. From them, she withdrew into a small shell where there was no time, no pain, no frustration.

  They were all being so nice to her. From the doctor to the woman who came each morning to empty the waste baskets, they all maintained that cheerful facade that seemed to be a prerequisite for entering her room.

  Their manner only reinforced Clancy’s feelings that she was never going to walk again.

  The physical therapist came twice a day, just before ten and then again at two. At first Clancy had refused to see her, but the woman ignored her protests. Melody, a short, strong woman, came day in, day out, full of bright, nonthreatening chatter.

  Eternally hopeful, she talked endlessly as she massaged muscles that didn’t respond to the fingers that kneaded them and worked at legs that might as well have belonged to someone else.

  And all the while, Melody would smile. The way the nurses did. The way her friends did when they came to visit her.

  Everything, they all swore, was going to be “just fine.”

  Clancy felt that if she saw another smiling face walk through the door, she was going to scream.

  The only one who hadn’t come in sporting a Cheshire-cat smile was Mitch. But then, Mitch’s expression had been chiseled in rock on the day of his birth.

  She still hadn’t figured out why Mitch continued to show up, why he was bothering. It made no sense to Clancy.

  Once, there had been a glimmer in his eyes, something that had given her hope when they were first going out. It was something, she had flattered herself, that she had brought out in him. She had had all the intentions in the world of nurturing that something until it bore fruit. At one point, she’d even thought that it had.

  But all that had been a long time ago. She was completely devoid of any form of hope now.

  She would have allowed hope to take seed, if only there was something to water it, to make it germinate. But there wasn’t even a faint flutter of feeling in her legs. Not when Melody worked them, not when she pinched or pounded on them herself. If her legs were going to regain their mobility, Clancy knew she would have felt something by now.

  But there was nothing.

  A nothing so stark it threatened to consume her completely.

  Like the therapist, Dr. Kleinschen came to see her regularly, but he made rounds only once a day. He came to talk to her, to review her files and look compassionately at her from behind his rimless glasses. His explanation that “sometimes these things take time” gave Clancy less than nothing to hang on to. She knew the words were no more than meaningless pap. What else could he say?

  She felt tired. Shifting, she let her eyes drift shut. Melody had already come for her second session, and most of her friends had already stopped by this week, paying their obligatory visits. Clancy felt herself slipping away into the arms of a merciful, drugging sleep.

  * * *

  The report had taken him longer than he had anticipated. Consequently, Mitch didn’t even bother to change out of his uniform. He wanted to get to the hospital as soon as possible. Maybe today Clancy would have felt something. Maybe today his overwhelming feeling of guilt would abate.

  He pushed open the door and saw her lying in bed. Some of her color was returning and the blues and greens from her bruises were fading. Even in this state she was a beautiful woman, he thought. There was too much for her to look forward to. And he would see to it that she would.

  “How’s it going?”

  Unwillingly, hoping she’d only imagined the voice, Clancy opened her eyes. But she hadn’t imagined it. It was Mitch. He’d returned. Just as he’d said he would yesterday. Just as he had every day.

  Why wouldn’t he just leave her alone? Didn’t he have a home to go to?

  Clancy shrugged in answer to his question. “The same.”

  Every time he walked into this room, he hoped something would have changed. Maybe hope wasn’t the right word. He and hope had barely a nodding acquaintance. He’d anticipate that something had changed.

/>   Though he had always walked on the darker side of life, he just couldn’t accept the fact that Clancy wasn’t going to recover. Maybe, he thought, what he really couldn’t accept was that something he had done was ultimately responsible for her being here.

  He crossed to the side of her bed. “The doctor have anything new to tell you?”

  What could the man say? Kleinschen went through basically the same routine every time. He would check the nurse’s notations, ask Clancy how she was feeling and run that damned scalpel over each instep. The scalpel she couldn’t feel.

  “There isn’t anything new to say,” Clancy answered flatly.

  There was no meal tray in her room. He usually arrived before they took it away. “Did you eat?”

  She resented his treating her like a child, resented his daily intrusion into her life. Her eyes darkened, but she didn’t answer.

  He took that for a negative response. “Are we back to square one?”

  She felt as if all the skeins of her life had mixed together and she couldn’t find the ends so that she could straighten them out. Couldn’t get hold of even that much.

  “There isn’t even a square one to go to.”

  He stood there, looking as if he were waiting for a confession. This was probably the way he interrogated a suspect.

  She pressed her lips together. “Yes, I ate. Satisfied?”

  She’d forced the food down, although she didn’t see the point in it. Didn’t see the point in anything. She wanted to feel like herself again, wanted that happy surge that had always accompanied the beginning of each day. But it was gone. Just like her legs.

  His expression didn’t change. “I’ll be satisfied when I see you walk.”

  The small laugh that escaped her lips was completely mirthless. “Well, that’ll make two of us.”

  He still hadn’t gotten accustomed to the change in her personality. Other people might succumb to depression, but not Clancy. She had always maintained such an optimistic, open view. Bubbly, cheerful, she’d seemed like the personification of hope.

  Now, getting information from her was like pulling teeth. “So, did that woman—”