Saint (38 page)

“First let’s establish there is a baby.”
Travis opened the chart in his hand a made a quick note. “Give me an hour and I
can give you an answer.”

“Can I see her?” Seth could tell the good
doctor wanted to say no, but the look he leveled on the young surgeon made him
think twice about refusing.

“It will be awhile before the anesthesia
wears off. Don’t upset her,” Travis warned.

Seth nodded curtly and let himself into the
room. For a long time he sat quietly in the chair by the bed, watching Maria
sleep. It was a miracle she was alive. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what
she’d done to prolong the inevitable until he found her. God knew he’d had to
reach deep down inside himself for the courage to walk into that torture
chamber a second time.

He’d tried to guard himself against her,
but it had done no good. He could feel again and that was the last thing he
wanted. The last thing he needed. It was so much easier when he could block
everything out. Because if he could feel, he could hurt. Not the ache that he’d
carried around all these years for Carolyn, but the kind of pain that came with
caring too much about another person.

Existing was easy. It was living again that
scared the hell out of him.

One hour later Doctor Travis, good as his
word, delivered the verdict. Then Seth delivered his own verdict to a less than
agreeable Dr. Travis.

* * * * *

When Maria opened her eyes she saw Seth
standing by the window with his back angled toward her, looking out. She drank
in the sight of him. He looked worn and tired. His normally short hair was
badly in need of a trim and he hadn’t shaved in several days, but he looked
like heaven to her.

He must have felt her eyes on him because
he turned toward her, relief etched in the lines of his face.

“Do I look as bad as I feel?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No.”

She gave him a watery smile as he moved to
stand next to the bed. “Liar. What’s the damage?”

“You’ll make a full recovery.”

“Have you been here all day?”

“All day,” he nodded. “Are you in pain?”

“With all these great drugs? No. Just a
little stiff.”

“Go back to sleep. You need the rest.”

Sleep. Didn’t he know she would never sleep
peacefully again? Yes, she saw by the look in his eyes he did know.

He reached for her hand and held it up.
Someone had placed her fingers around the call button. “See this button? It’s
relief. Use it.”

Correction, the drug button.

She pressed the button and felt the almost
immediate rush of morphine invade her body. That’s what the label said on the
machine to her right. Morphine. Relief.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” he
whispered, brushing warm lips against her temple.

Maria felt his hand on her cheek, and gave
herself up to the dark.

He was there the next morning and every
morning after that. Mostly he sat on the couch in the private room and watched
her sleep. It was almost like he was…hovering.

The morphine was taken away and replaced
with something less mind-altering. Her bruises started to fade, cuts and
abrasions began to heal. John from physical therapy helped her stand and begin
to walk with crutches. Dr. Travis was pleased with her progress.

Seth continued to watch her from the couch.

Lolita and Bethy and Gabe and Joan came to
visit. She did her best to smile, telling them she felt fine, that it looked
worse than it was. But she failed miserably. They never stayed very long.

Before leaving, Lolita whispered in her ear
that the first pregnancy test must have been a false positive. She’d done a
repeat, two in fact, before Mother Nature stepped in to lend complete
assurance.

Over her dinner tray one evening she
finally asked Seth the question that burned in her mind. “Why did Francis take
off his gear?”

He left the couch, sliding her table and
tray to the end of the bed so he could sit on the edge. “You didn’t kill
Francis. He went there to die. Even I couldn’t have stopped him.” Briefly, he
explained Francis’ reasoning.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were…him?”

“Him who?”

“The saint. I thought it was Will. All this
time I thought it was Will who called the four of you together and you came
because you owed him. But they came because of you.”

“You should know by now I’m no saint. Don’t
give me credit I don’t deserve.”

She focused her gaze on the blanket. “You
were right about Jimmy.”

He shifted, unwilling to rub salt in the
wound. “I found a copy of the magazine article you did. It wasn’t what I
expected. There wasn’t much about your brother.”

She picked at a lint ball on the blanket,
rolling it between her fingers. “I couldn’t…I couldn’t make Jimmy out to be
something he wasn’t.”

“What about the editors at the major
papers?”

“A bust. The people on the list did
vanishing acts. It’s hard to spotlight someone who isn’t there.” She paused for
a moment, then asked. “Are they all dead?”

“No. But they won’t come looking for
trouble.” He leaned forward so that she was forced to meet his eyes. “It wasn’t
a bust, Ria. The officials on Juarez’s payroll may not have ended up on
60 Minutes
, but Juarez’s drug ring is
no longer in service thanks to you. You did what you set out to do, just not in
court.”

But at what price?

“Do you want to talk about what happened
with Nina?” he asked.

Did she want to talk about it? Could she stand
it? Could he? “No.”

He didn’t know she knew the details of
Carolyn’s brutal death, the way his child was so brutally ripped from its
mother’s womb. He didn’t need to know. He had warned her, hadn’t he, that she
was heading to a place she didn’t want to be. That once she got there, there
was no getting back. She was in that place now. In limbo.

Everything seemed to be closing in on her
here. There were too many people. Too much confusion. It took too much effort
to interact with the constant flow of people in and out of her room. “When can
I leave here?”

“Soon.” He brushed back the curtain of hair
partially hiding her face and tucked it behind her ear.

Seth knew her pain. God, how he knew it. He
knew there would be months—years—of nightmares, body sweats, bouts of
depression, fits of anger and a general withdrawal from life until she learned
to lock down the memories deep inside. Maria had lost her innocence. She would
never look at the world the same way again.

She needed time. Time to heal physically before
starting to heal emotionally. But she had something he’d never had during that
dark period. She had a lifeline. She had him. He knew the way out now—because
she had given him the key.

“Go home to your mountain, Seth.”

“You know I can’t do that, Ria.”

“You want to. I want you to go. I can do
this on my own.”

“Don’t tell me what I want,” he argued. “You
can’t do this by yourself. All the years of military training and months in the
field didn’t prepare me for it. I lost six years of my life to that void. You
may not think so now, but you will feel again. I’ll drag you through every
emotion known to humankind, and then some, before I’ll let you give up. If you
give up, you die inside.” He took her face in his hands, his voice softening as
he added, “You felt something for me once. I want you to feel it again. I need
you to feel it again.”

Where was the escape of morphine when she
needed it? One push of the button and she wouldn’t have to listen. Wouldn’t see
the need in his eyes. He would impose his will on her and try to make her live,
when all she wanted to do was hide away.

Hatred and pain and fear were all knotted
together in her soul. Her mind was filled with horrible visions, her dreams
haunted by memories that would never go away. She wasn’t a person any longer,
she was a shell. In that underground cell she had seen the face of evil, been
inside Carolyn’s terrified mind and heard her screams echoing off the walls.

Live? Right now it was all she could do to
get through each day.

His voice dropped an octave when he spoke
again, his expression serious. “I didn’t take my ass all the way down to
Venezuela to bring back a corpse. I’ll get you through it, Ria. We’ll get
through it together. Besides,” he added ruefully, “I arranged to take that
rundown heap of clapboard Joan likes to call a mansion off his hands. It needs
a lot of work, but…”

Joan’s mansion. The one that reminded her
of Tara.

“There’s just one thing.” He thumbed her
lower lip, then sat back, giving her the distance he knew she needed. “Marry me.
There’s Bethy to consider. Gabe and his wife offered to keep her until we get
settled. Sort of like, er, daddy training.”

Bethy. Oh God, she couldn’t deal with that
on top of everything else. Not yet. Bethy was smart and intuitive, she would
see through the façade of fake smiles and excuses and know instantly something
was very wrong. Marry him? Was he out of his mind?

“What was Francis’ real name?”

“Could we stick to one subject at a time?”

“His real name,” she insisted, turning to
stare out the window at the overcast sky.

“His given name was Francis, but he went by
Frank. Frank Vaducci. He didn’t have any family. There was a little cantina in
Mexico he was partial to. Joan and Gabe flew down and spread his ashes over it.”

Maria knew she was jumping from one thing
to the next, but the erratic pattern kept any one thought from becoming too
developed. All her thoughts since that night seemed to lead back to one place.

“My head hurts. Could you ask the nurse to
bring me something for it?”

Seth left the room and stood leaning his
forehead against the wall next to her door to collect himself before going in
search of Dr. Travis. It was time to shake things up.

* * * * *

John Q. Sunny-disposition from Physical
Therapy sailed through the door the next morning on cue. “Hey, cutiepie. Ready
to walk on water?” He ducked just in time to avoid the water pitcher that
crashed against the wall behind him.

“My name,” Maria spoke in crisp tones, “is
Ms. Carvania. Use it.”

John angled a glance at Seth. He shrugged
indifferently. “She’s in a mood this morning. My advice would be to hide sharp
objects.”

“I-I’m sorry, Ms.—”

“I’m done with physical therapy, John. Tell
Dr. Travis I’m leaving. Today, with or without his permission.” Maria had had
about all the good cheer she could stand from the upbeat therapist.

“Sure thing,” John said, backing out of the
room warily.

She turned to Seth, demanding, “Take me out
of here.”

“I’d like to,” he answered, not the least
bit put off by her tone. “But there’s the small matter of where you’d be going.”

“I don’t care,” she whipped back the cover.
“Just get me out of this hospital.” She gingerly eased her legs over the edge
of the bed and reached for her crutches.

Seth was faster. He pulled them out of her
reach, resting his forearms on the pair casually.

“Give me my crutches.”

“Marry me.”

So, he was back to that again. “I’m no
longer your responsibility,” she replied coldly.

“Oh, you want to talk about responsibility.
You drag me off my mountain—from which I was perfectly content to hate the world—make
me feel again, then dump me. That’s pretty irresponsible, don’t you think?”

“You can’t force me to marry you.”

“But we both know I can outlast you. If you
don’t say yes now, you’ll say yes later. I’ll wear you down. You could go home,
to L.A.,” he mused aloud when she remained silent. “Lots of people in L.A.,
millions. Or you could stay here in Dallas. Not as many people, but still a
major city.”

“Stop it.” He was deliberately playing on
the raw fear that gripped her insides.

“This is the way out, Ria. I’m your buffer.
You need me.”

“I’d only be using you,” she said stonily.

“Use me, then. You won’t make it alone.”

Dr. Travis pushed open her door, a
concerned frown marring his features. “Ms. Carvainia, John says you want to
leave the hospital. I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

“The subject isn’t open for discussion,”
she snapped.

“Is there someone you can stay with? You
can’t get around by yourself or put too much stress on that thigh just yet. One
wrong move and I’ll be stitching the tendon back together again. I’d also like
you to consider talking with a psychiatrist. It isn’t unusual for a trauma like
this to…”

Maria didn’t hear the rest of
Doctor-do-gooder’s rambling. Psychiatrist. Someone who would want to pick
around inside her head. Her eyes flew to Seth’s, willing him to intervene. He
had the unmitigated gall to wink at her! Then to Dr. Travis he said, “Dr.
Travis, let’s pow-wow in the hall.”