“I’m right here, baby.”
It took effort, a painful amount, but she reached up and touched his wet cheek. “I love you, Robert Jackson Austin. More than anything in the world except my Ali Gator.
“Come,” she said. “Get into bed with me.”
He looked at all the machines, the IVs, the tubes and cords. “Oh, baby …” He leaned down and kissed her instead.
The sweet pressure of his lips felt so good. She closed her eyes, feeling herself sinking into the pillows. “Ali,” she whispered. “I need my baby—”
Pain exploded behind her right eye.
Beside her bed, an alarm went off.
There is no pain. No ache. She feels for the dry, itchy patch of skin on her head and feels long, beautiful hair instead.
She sits up. The tubes that connect her to the machines are gone. She wants to shout out that she is better, but there are people in her room. Too many of them, all dressed in white. They’re crowding her, talking all at once so she can’t understand.
She realizes suddenly that she is watching herself from above—in the air somewhere—watching the doctors work on her body. They’ve ripped open her gown and are ramming something on her chest.
“Clear!” one yells.
There is such relief in being here, above them, where there is no pain …
“Clear.”
Then she thinks of her daughter, her precious baby girl whom she didn’t hold one last time.
Her baby, who will have to be told that Mommy has gone away.
The doctor stepped back. “She’s gone.”
Meghann ran to the bed, screaming. “Don’t you do it, Claire. Come back. Come back, damn it.”
Someone tried to pull her away. She elbowed him hard. “I mean it, Claire. You come back. Alison is in the waiting room. You cannot run out on her this way. You haven’t told her good-bye. She deserves that, damn it. Come back.” She grabbed Claire’s shoulders, shook her hard. “Don’t you dare do this to Alison and me.”
“We have a heartbeat,” someone cried out.
Meghann was pushed aside. She stumbled back into the corner of the room, watching, praying, as they stabilized her sister.
Finally, the doctors left, dragging their crash cart with them. Except for the buzz and beep of machines, the room was quiet.
She stared at Claire’s chest, watching it rise and fall. It was a moment before she realized that she was breathing intently, trying to will her sister’s body to keep up the rhythm.
“I heard you, you know.”
At Claire’s voice, Meg pulled away from the wall and moved forward.
There was Claire, half bald, pale as parchment, smiling up at her. “I thought: Christ, I’m dead and she’s still yelling at me.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
Joe had tried to throw out the damn envelope at least a dozen times. The problem was, he couldn’t bring himself to touch it.
Coward.
He heard the word so clearly he looked up. The cabin was empty. He stared at Diana, who looked back at him from her place on the mantel.
He closed his eyes, wishing she’d come to him again, maybe sit down on the bed beside him and whisper, You break my heart, Joey, the way she used to.
But she hadn’t come to him in so long that he’d forgotten how those hallucinations felt. Although he didn’t need to conjure her image to know what her words would be right now.
She would be ashamed of him, as ashamed as he was of himself. She would remind him that he’d once taken an oath to help people.
And not just anyone, either. This was Claire Cavenaugh, the woman who’d sat by Diana’s bedside hour after hour when she was ill, playing dirty-word Scrabble and watching soap operas. Joe remembered one night in particular. He’d worked all day, then headed for Diana’s hospital room, exhausted by the prospect of another evening spent beside his dying wife. When he’d opened the door, Claire was there, wearing nothing but her bra and panties, dancing. Diana, who hadn’t smiled in weeks, was laughing so hard there were tears on her cheeks.
No way, Claire had laughed when he asked what was going on. We are not going to tell you what we were doing.
A girl has to have some secrets, Diana had said, even from the love of her life.
Now it was Claire in a bed like that, in a room that smelled of despair and looked out on graying skies even in the height of summer.
There was probably nothing he could do for her, but how could he live with himself if he didn’t try? Maybe this was God’s way of reminding him that a man couldn’t hold on to old fears if he wanted to start over.
If she were here right now, Diana would have told him that chances didn’t come any plainer than this. It was one thing to run away from nothing. It was quite another to turn your back on a set of films with a friend’s name in the corner.
You’re killing her, and this time no pretty word like euthanasia will fit.