“I don’t know if your life was ever at risk.”
“He meant to take me with him.”
“Well, I’m not sure what it means these days, but he was certainly no gentleman.”
She smiled. “There really are gentlemen these days, still. My husband was one. Steve, the man you met, is full of honor and caring and all kinds of great things. But there are men like the one you brought down, too.”
He stroked her cheek. “There always have been.”
There was a knock on the door. “Oh!” She said quickly, “Listen, I had to use my husband’s old insurance card to get you in here.”
“What?”
“Never mind, I’ll explain later. They only give you medical attention free these days if you’re actually killed, and then the coroner gets his shot at cutting up your body. That’s cynical, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Right, I know, and I don’t have time to explain. Just remember, when they question you, you need to say that your name is Brad Ahearn. Just while you’re here, all right?”
“What?”
“Brad Ahearn,” she repeated. The knocking was more insistent. What could have been an absolutely horrible incident had been averted. The awful man could have held a restaurant full of tourists hostage. Or worse. He could have started shooting. As it happened, Jason had managed to subdue it all. The police had been handed over a downed perpetrator, everyone else had gone away alive and well and unscathed—except for the terrified blond cashier, and she had been tranquilized right on the scene—and now Jason was even proving to be alive and barely scratched in the hospital.
The police surely wanted to close things up. All they had to do was get a statement from Jason now.
They wouldn’t knock politely much longer.
“What’s your name?” she hissed to him.
He shrugged, shaking his head. “Brad Ahearn? If that’s what you want.”
She started to walk away to open the door to his hospital room, then she hurried back to him. “And be careful, will you? We almost had a real problem. I went to school with Sam Dooley, and he’s a great guy and a great doctor, but he was also on the football team and if you call him ‘boy’ one more time, he just might come out swinging!”
Jason winced and grinned. “I had forgotten,” he said quickly. “The Yanks win, right? Slavery is abolished. Imagine! Well, you’re right, Vick. He seems like a darned good doctor, too. I’ll watch my words.”
She swung around quickly, reaching the door just as it opened. The two officers waiting impatiently there were from the county. She was relieved to see that she didn’t know either of them.
Officers Hewlett and Macy looked a bit like clones of one another, both about an even six feet, dark haired, lean faced and in county gray uniforms. They addressed Jason as Mr. Ahearn, and never questioned his name.
“You came in from the Staunton area for the battle, sir, is that right?”
Jason stared at Vickie, a brow arched, a smile curving his lips.
“Yes, that’s right. Darned right,” he said.
Officer Hewlett asked him to describe what had happened in the restaurant. Jason did. The officers took notes, but it appeared that everything was in perfect order.
“Well, sir, we’re mighty glad that you did come over for this one. You might have saved some lives tonight. The fellow holding up the place came out of a prison called Raiford, in Florida. He’s been making his way north over the bodies of a few unwary travelers. I don’t think he would have thought twice about killing a hostage in this situation. Not twice. You’ve done us quite a service.”
Jason shrugged. “Me, or someone else. The restaurant was crowded. Too many of us there for him to think he could just corral us all. Someone would have stopped him.”
The officers looked at each other. They definitely thought that Jason wasn’t quite all there. Sane men didn’t risk their lives.
“Well, I think that that’s all we need for now,” Macy said. He then added politely, “The doc said that you might be wanting to get a little sleep now. We’ll need to get hold of you again, of course, but I believe we’ve gotten your address—it’s the one you gave us downstairs, right, ma’am?”
Vickie nodded, swallowing quickly.
Hewlett and Macy started for the door. She walked along with them, ready to close it in their wake. Hewlett paused, looking back to Jason.
“That’s quite an incredible man you got there, Mrs. Ahearn.”
“He’s not my—” she started to say. She bit off the words. Well, Jason was supposed to be Mr. Ahearn here in the hospital. But that wasn’t what made her pause.
“Yes, I do have an incredible man there,” she assured Hewlett, smiling. Truly, you don’t know the half of it! He’s quite incredible, she wanted to add.
She closed the door behind the officers firmly, and turned back to Jason. He was watching her, smiling. He slipped from the bed, then seemed to realize that the back of his nightgown was open all the way down. He tried to draw it together as he approached her. He couldn’t quite grasp the sides of it.
“Oh, the hell with it!” he murmured, taking her into his arms. His lips touched hers. “That’s awful language to use around a lady.”
She smiled up at him. “I’ve heard it before. I’ve used it rather frequently, I’m afraid.”
He smiled, and kissed her again. “I have to get out of here,” he told her then softly.
She shook her head. “You might have suffered a concussion. They don’t want to let you out.”
He arched a brow, frowning. “I’ve gone back into battle with just a bandage around broken ribs. And they want me to stay in here because of a cut on my forehead? Vickie, you know I’ve got to get out.”
She pressed him back toward the bed. “Jason, you can’t just go waltzing out of here. And it’s still the middle of the night. You have to wait until morning. Doctors make their rounds very early. I’m sure they’ll release you right after sunrise.”
The door opened then, without a knock sounding. A nurse was walking in with a tray. There was a syringe on it and a little white paper cup of pills.
Jason stared at her, remembered his open hospital gown, and started grabbing for edges again, backing toward the bed. He stared at Vickie reproachfully, with warning eyes, as if she had allowed someone entry here when he was so ridiculously vulnerable.
She smiled. She couldn’t help it.
The nurse, a slim, attractive brunette of about thirty, looked from Jason to Vickie with a little sigh that seemed to say, “Guys! Great big he-men types, but you show them a little needle and they just go to pieces.”
“Hello, Mrs. Ahearn, Mr. Ahearn. My name is Sheila. Dr. Dooley has ordered a tetanus shot for you since you didn’t seem to know when you last had one. He hasn’t had one recently, has he, Mrs. Ahearn?”
Vickie smiled at Jason. “Not recently. I’m sure he needs one. I’m absolutely sure of it.”
Jason’s eyes narrowed her way.
“Come now, Mr. Ahearn, you need the shot,” Sheila told him cheerfully. She walked around the bed, setting her tray down on his nightstand and flicking the needle carefully. She stared at Jason. “You need to roll over please, Mr. Ahearn.”
“I need to what?” he demanded.
“Roll over, Mr. Ahearn. A tetanus shot is very important—you must know that, Mr. Ahearn. It protects you from infection.”
“You need the shot, you need to roll over,” Vickie stated.
“If I need the shot, you had best find another place to deliver it!” Jason insisted. “I’m not rolling over for any female nurse—”
“Mr. Ahearn!” Sheila protested, her eyes wide. “If you can’t behave, I’m going to have to call for the doctor—”
“I’m not rolling over—”
“Yes, you are!” Vickie insisted. She caught his hands. He stared at her. Hard. As if he was going to really strangle her the minute he could get his hands
on her. She smiled sweetly. “It’s necessary. It’s very customary. Brad, it keeps you from getting an infection. It’s good. It lasts a long time!”
“He doesn’t know about a tetanus shot?” Sheila said curiously.
“You know men,” Vickie said, staring hard at Jason. She reached for his hand. His fingers curled hard around hers.
“It’s not going to hurt.”
“It’s not pain that I mind.”
He gritted his teeth. He returned her stare with a hard violence in his eyes.
“Mrs. Ahearn, really, can you give me a hand with your husband? I have to have some cooperation! If not—”
“Brad, shift over. Please, my love!”
He shifted. Still holding her hand. Still staring at her.
“That’s good, I can get you from there!” Sheila assured him. She bathed a spot of flesh with an alcohol swab and quickly gave him the shot. Jason didn’t blink. He kept staring at Vickie.
Sheila made a tsking sound. “It’s a good thing God didn’t decide to let them have the babies.”
Vickie quickly lowered her eyes. Jason’s fingers squeezed hers, but Nurse Sheila was moving around between the two of them with the little paper cup of pills in her hands. “These will help you sleep.”
“They’ll what?” Jason said suspiciously.
“Honestly!” she said, shaking her head to Vickie once again. “You’ve had a rather hectic evening, Mr. Ahearn. Just in case you have difficulty, these will help you sleep. Come on now, Mr. Ahearn.”
Vickie thought that he took the pills. He crumpled the little paper cup in his hands and accepted the glass of water Sheila poured for him.
“All down now,” Sheila said, flashing them a bright smile. “Mrs. Ahearn, that chair stretches out into a cot, if you want to stay with your husband. If you need anything, just hit the nurses’ call button. Anything at all.” She hesitated a minute. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Ahearn. That was quite a brave thing you did.”
“Anyone would have done it,” Jason said flatly. He felt Vickie’s gaze. “But thank you,” he added quickly.
Vickie smiled and followed Sheila to the door. “Don’t forget, just press the call button if you need anything. Oh, my—I almost forgot. Your grandfather is still waiting downstairs, Mrs. Ahearn. We’ve assured him, of course, that Mr. Ahearn is going to be just fine. But he’s waiting to have a few words with you, whenever you get a chance.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
“Good night, Mrs. Ahearn. Call if you need me.”
“Thank you. I will. Good night.”
She closed the door, and started to walk slowly back to Jason. He seemed to be staring straight ahead of himself. He didn’t even seem to realize that she was coming near.
Then he started suddenly and turned back to her. She remembered the way that he had stared at her when he’d gotten his shot, and she hesitated.
“Come here!” he growled.
“Not when you talk to me like that!” she protested.
“All right,” he drawled broadly, stretching out sideways on the bed, supported by an elbow, “Come here, my love, my dear little wife!”
“Did you want to get into the hospital or not?” she demanded. “And you were terribly rude to the nurse. Now I know that you had women nurses in your hospitals, even if the idea of women acting in such a capacity was rather new!”
“She was walking around just as if she owned the place. As if she had the right to tell me what to do!”
“Nurses rather do in a hospital. Most of the time, they’re nice and polite because their patients act like adults.”
He made a snorting sound. “Women all over,” he muttered. “Next thing you know, they’ll have the vote!”
Vickie smiled knowingly, deciding that she would enlighten him when he wasn’t so riled up.
“An educated black man for a doctor!” he mused.
Vickie took a step closer to him. “Do you own slaves?” she asked him softly.
He looked at her for a moment without speaking. Then he nodded. “But I’m going to free them when I go home,” he told her softly. “Not because I know now that the war is lost. But because I’ve met you.”
“Not to mention Dr. Dooley,” she reminded him softly.
“Who seems a very fine man.”
Vickie smiled. He leaned forward on his elbow, moving closer to where she was standing and, as she bent down, his lips brushed hers very tenderly. Well, at least he wasn’t going anywhere tonight. And maybe the tetanus shot he’d had here would help him when he—when he went home.
She didn’t have much longer with him, she thought, and the pain seemed to tear into her. Just tonight. And he was in a hospital bed, doped out, ready to sleep.
It didn’t matter. She’d stay with him. At his side.
“This whole place is pretty amazing,” he told her. “So very clean. So quiet, so well organized. The machines—the shots. Medicine has come an incredibly long way.”
She inhaled and exhaled slowly. “Yes, that’s true. But we’ve new diseases, too. Killer diseases. We’ve managed to do away with the old, but we’ve been deviled by the new.”
“Imagine, though. A tetanus shot. Something that protects against infection.” He rolled over suddenly, reaching out to her. “That’s what John needs. That—and a clean sponge, like your grandfather was saying. If I could just get him one of these shots, I could keep him from getting gangrene.”
Vickie nodded. “Maybe,” she murmured. He didn’t seem to notice that she was there again for a moment. “Well, we can talk about it in the morning. Those pills you took will make you drowsy very soon,” she told him. “I’m not going anywhere, though. I’ll be here with you. Gramps is still downstairs. I just want to say good-night to him so that he’ll go on home, okay?”
Jason nodded. “Tell him thank you for me, will you?”
“You’ll see him again.”
He nodded. His answer took a minute to come. “Tell him thank you for me, anyway.”
“I’ll be right back,” Vickie promised.
She hurried down in the elevator. Gramps was standing in the waiting room. Her heart surged out to him. Of all the strange things she had done to him over the years, this had to be the strangest!
Bringing home a time traveler, and expecting him to cope!
But Gramps did. Magnificently. Gramps always did.
“Gramps?”
He turned, tall and straight for all his great age, his blue eyes sharp.
“He’s really all right?”
“Just fine. Ornery as all hell, but just fine!” Vickie assured him with a grin. “They’ll probably release him in the morning. Can you bring us both some new clothes? These things have blood all over them.”
“Sure thing. You’re going to stay with him here, I take it?”
Vickie nodded. “Do you mind?”
He lifted her chin. “Victoria, I wouldn’t expect any less from you, granddaughter. That’s one of the reasons I love you so much.”
“Gramps…”
“The other is that, of course, you look like me. Well, not now, but when I was young and good-looking.”
She grinned. “Go home and get some sleep.”
He nodded, but he still paused. “It’s a shame, Vickie. A darned shame. Hold him a little bit longer. Then you’re going to have to let him go. You know that.”
“I know that.”
Gramps left and she went back up in the elevator, wondering if Jason might have fallen asleep already.
But he was awake, sitting up in bed, flicking the channels on the television. He stared at the screen, then shook his head at her.
“There are so many amazing things!”
“I imagine,” she said softly.
He patted the bed beside him. She hesitated, and then came over. His arm came around her, his lips brushed her forehead.
“Good movie?” she asked him.
“I don’t know, but I’d like to see it w
ith you. I’d like to do so many things with you.”
She smiled. “Making love in a bed would be nice.”
“The nicest.”
“I’m going to get into the chair so that you can sleep—”
“I don’t need to sleep.”
“But the pills—”
“These?” He lifted the paper cup, crumpled up with the pills still inside it.
“Yes, those!” she said with flat reproach.
“I may need them later,” he said softly.
“Nurse Sheila could come back.”
“Let her,” he said softly. “I just need…to hold you. That’s all.”
She eased her head down on his shoulder. She needed to be held. To feel his arms around her. To know the tenderness, and the caring. It was all such a wonderful feeling.
The comfort and security were so sweet that her eyes began to close. She nudged against him more closely.
“I love you, Vickie,” she heard.
She tried to open her eyes. I love you, Vickie.
They were such wonderful words.
Her lips curled into a slow and wistful smile. “I love you, too, Jason. So very much.”
“I will love you forever,” he told her. “Forever.”
His fingers smoothed over her hair.
It was the last thing she remembered. She slept deeply, dreamlessly, surrounded, encompassed, by feelings of comfort and warmth and tenderness….
But then she was curiously cold.
“Mrs. Ahearn?”
She awoke to find a nurse staring at her. Another nurse. A heavyset, buxom woman who looked very confused.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Ahearn, but I understand your husband is the patient. Isn’t he supposed to be in the bed?”
Vickie jumped up. She stared at the bed. She had grown cold, of course, because she had been alone.
Jason was gone.
The bathroom!
She tore into it. Jason wasn’t there. He was gone.
“Mrs. Ahearn?” the nurse said, concerned.
Vickie spun around. He was gone. Really gone.
She looked out the window. It was first light.
And then she knew.
Yes, he was gone. Really gone. He hadn’t wanted to say goodbye, but he had headed for the mountain.
“Mrs. Ahearn?” the nurse said again.
The Last Cavalier Page 13