Calling Kupid (Kupid's Cove Book 1) (24 page)

Kate

The sound of rustling around me was almost too much to bear, even though I suspected it was nothing more than clothes brushing as someone walked. I felt like every sense was tripled and my head was pounding with even the simplest noise. I opened one eye and saw a nurse bending over me.

“You’re awake,” she whispered softly.

“Where am I?” I croaked, my throat thick and sore.

She held a straw to my lips and I took a sip, the cool liquid making it easier to swallow.

“You’re in the hospital in Kahului. Do you have any pain?”

I closed my eyes and tried to sort out everything I was feeling, physically.

I rolled my head back and forth on the pillow. “What happened? Why am I here?”

“You had a heart arrhythmia when they brought you in. They had to do surgery. I don’t know all the specifics, but I will let the doctor know you’re awake. She will explain it all to you.”

I closed my eyes and nodded my head.

She patted my shoulder. “I’ll turn the lights down low and your friend will be right back.”

“My friend?” I asked, my heart trying to pound, but unable to beat faster than a normal rhythm.

“Yes, your friend. She’s tall with black hair.”

“Winifred is here?” I asked slowly. “How long have I been out?”

“It’s been almost two days since they brought you in. The doctors kept you sedated because you needed to heal a little before you woke up.”

“I’m so confused,” I cried. “Where’s Gideon.”

“He’ll be right back,” a familiar voice said.

I opened my eyes and my best friend stood in the doorway. I couldn’t help it. I started crying hot tears that ran down my face and into my ears.

The nurse walked past Winifred who was coming to my side of the bed.

“I’ll get something to sedate her,” she whispered.

I moaned. “I don’t want to be sedated. I want a hug from my best friend and I want someone to tell me what’s going on!” I hoped my voice would be forceful and commanding, but instead it was weak and weepy.

Winifred wiped my tears and tucked my hair back off my forehead before addressing the nurse. “She’ll be okay in a few minutes. I’ll explain things to her.”

The nurse paused, torn between getting the medication or letting me settle by myself. “Okay, but if you need me, push the button. I’ll try to find the doctor.”

“Thank you,” Winifred said, smiling at the young woman. She looked back to me and wiped my tears with a soft cloth.

“I’m sorry for crying,” I said, closing my eyes against the look on her face.

I felt her put her arms around me carefully and lay her cheek on mine. “You can cry as much as you’d like, Kate. You’re scared, disoriented, and in pain. I understand.”

I raised my left arm and hugged her.

“We have to stop meeting like this, sister,” Freddie joked. I laughed a little, thinking about the time she ended up in the hospital in Snowberry after nearly drowning in her car in Snowberry Lake. “If you wanted me to come to Hawaii, all you had to do was ask.”

“How about if this is the last time one of us is in the hospital, except for when you bring that little baby into the world.”

She leaned back and smiled, turning to the side. “You mean this baby?”

I reached out and touched her belly. It wasn’t big, but it was definitely protruding compared to the last time I saw her.

“I’ve been so worried about you. They wouldn’t let me call you and I was afraid you would go to my apartment. I didn’t want anything to happen to you or the baby.”

“We’re both fine. Sebastian kept me in the loop, so I knew where you were at all times. I had to trust that Gideon was going to take good care of you, and he did.”

“I know you don’t like him very much. You probably hate him now,” I sighed.

She shook her head. “I can’t hate him because he saved your life.”

She was holding my left hand and I tried to wipe my face with my right hand, but it wouldn’t move.  “What’s wrong with my right arm?” I asked, my voice going up an octave from fear.

“It needs to heal, so they have it strapped to your chest.”

“Why does it need to heal?” I asked, trying to remember. Trying to force my mind to grasp any memory that would explain why I was in the hospital.

“You don’t remember?”

I shook my head, another tear escaping. “No, I don’t remember. I was on the beach with Gideon and he asked me to marry him.”

I raised my left hand to look, but the ring was gone. “I dreamed it. I dreamed the whole thing.”

“Shhhh, no, you didn’t dream it. You don’t remember Graham coming down to the beach and threatening Gideon?”

I rolled my head back and forth on the pillow trying to concentrate, but my mind was swirling. I brought my hand up and felt my shoulder. There was a lumpy bandage and a burning pain.

“Oh God, I remember,” I said slowly. “Graham said he was Gideon’s brother. Winifred, did he shoot Gideon?”

I tried to sit up, but my arm was in an awkward position and I kept falling back to the bed. She put a hand on my belly and held me there.

“No, he didn’t shoot Gideon; he’s okay.”

I felt the last vestige of strength flow out of me as I sank into the mattress. “I was so scared because he knocked out Thaddeus. He had a gun and it went off, that’s the last thing I remember.”

She nodded. “That’s because you took the bullet meant for Gideon. You saved his life, Kate.”

“My shoulder?” I asked and she nodded.

“The bullet went right under your clavicle and came out your back. You needed surgery to clean up the wound, but the doctor says it will heal just fine.”

“Why? Why did Graham do this?” I asked, taking her hand again.

“That’s where Gideon is right now. He spent the night and when I got here, I sent him to find out what happened.”

“How did you get here so fast?” I asked. “Is Flynn with you?”

She chuckled and squeezed my hand. “I begged a pilot with a private plane at the Rochester airport to fly us out. He could take me as far as Seattle and then we got a nonstop to Maui. It only took about ten hours and yes, Flynn is with me. He wouldn’t let me come alone.”

I held my hand to my forehead. “God, I’m sorry, Freddie. You really didn’t have to come.”

She laid her head on my belly and looked up at me. “Yeah, I really did have to come. I had to see for myself that you were going to pull through this. Gideon called me and asked that I tell the doctors your medical history. There wasn’t a chance in hell I wasn’t getting on a plane after that phone call.”

I laughed softly, the burning in my chest getting worse with each passing moment. “My chest hurts.”

She handed me a little hose with a red button on the end. “Push that button and you’ll get some pain medication. That will help you sleep.”

“I don’t want to sleep! I want to see Gideon,” I moaned.

“Shhhh, he will be back soon. If you push that button, you can rest until he gets here.”

“What did they do? Why does my chest hurt?”

“Let’s wait for the doctor to explain everything, okay?” She started rubbing my leg and my eyelids were heavy. I pushed the button and waited for the medication to relieve the burning in the whole right side of my body.

“That’s good, just sleep, Kate. That’s the best thing you can do for your body right now,” Winifred encouraged.

“I want to see, Gideon,” I cried slowly, feeling myself slip into the darkness of sleep.

“Calling Katie Kupid,” a voice said in my ear. I turned my face towards the sound and felt lips on mine. I dragged my lids open to see Gideon staring into my eyes, his lips soft against my dry ones.

I put my arm around his neck and held him to me, tears falling, again. “I was so scared you were dead.”

“Katie, it’s okay. I’m just fine. Take a deep breath.”

I did as he ordered while he grabbed a tissue from the box and wiped my eyes.

“I want you to hold me,” I begged, but he shook his head no.

“I wish I could, but we need to give it another day or two before we jostle you around too much. The doctors don’t want you to use that right arm too much, lean on it, or in general move it for a week.”

“Why? No one will tell me why!” I exclaimed. The expenditure of breath made my chest scream in agony and I moaned aloud. “Oh God, what did they do to me?”

He rubbed my cheek and hushed me, the comfort of his hand on my face all I really needed to focus on him. “I have an ice pack from the nurse. I didn’t want to put it on your chest when you were sleeping and scare you.”

He picked it up and settled the gel pack over my gown. It was shaped much like the protective drapes they use in the x-ray department and one side came up to rest on my shoulder. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on keeping my breathing even while he rubbed my leg. I didn’t know what day it was, where I was, or what happened, but I was glad he was with me again.

“That helps more than the pain medication,” I said as the ice slowly numbed my skin. “There’s a burning in my chest I can’t alleviate. You have to tell me what happened.”

“What do you remember?” he asked, taking my hand and holding it to his mouth. He kissed my knuckles while he waited for me to answer.

“We were on the beach and Graham walked up with a gun. It went off and that was the last thing I remember until I woke up and found Winifred at my bedside.”

He smiled and kissed my hand again. “She was so frantic. Flynn said she almost came to blows with two pilots before one agreed to fly her to Seattle. I sent her to the hotel to rest with Flynn.”

I smirked a little, picturing Freddie bringing someone around to her way of thinking. She always was outspoken and refused to take no for an answer.

“Tell me what they did to my arm.”

He rubbed my leg to keep me calm. “They had to go in and perform some surgery on it. By the grace of God, the bullet missed absolutely everything, but soft tissue. It literally slid between a space less than an inch thick. It nicked your rotator cuff and chipped off a piece of bone, but the orthopedic doc was able to clean it all out, smooth out the cuff, and confirm the bones were all in good shape. They have a pressure dressing on it to keep it from bleeding because of your blood thinners. That’s why they don’t want it moved for a few days. You have to give it time to heal so you don’t start bleeding again.”

“How did they do surgery when I’m on Coumadin?” I asked completely confused.

“They switched you over to a different drug, something you inject twice a day.”

I nodded, “Oh that makes sense. I’ve used that before. But my blood had to be way too thin to do surgery.”

“It was, but they didn’t have a choice. They had to take you into surgery so they gave you a large dose of vitamin K and then countered it with a short acting blood thinner, at least that’s what I understood. You were in the best hands in, well, the whole world, Katie. There were seven cardiologists here consulting on your case, including Dr. Sawyer.”

“What?” I asked even more confused. “Dr. Sawyer is here?” I shook my left hand in front of me. “Wait, why did I need a cardiologist?”

“Apparently this was the week that cardiologists from all over the world flew into Maui for a convention. They’ve been seeing patients with unique cases here at the hospital that would benefit from the expertise of other doctors in the field. Dr. Sawyer was here representing Mayo along with several of her colleagues. You had a pediatric cardiologist, an electrophysiologist, Dr. Sawyer, a specialist in Tetralogy of Fallot and several more I can’t even remember. Together they were able to fix the rhythm problem in your heart.”

I rolled my head to face him. “Did I go into a tachycardia again?”

He stood and sat on the edge of the bed, his hand coming to my face, stroking it up and down. There were tears in his eyes and I captured his hand to my cheek. “Tell me, Gideon.”

“When the bullet hit, your heart went haywire. It kept going into a rhythm where it didn’t beat, it just quivered.”

I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to look into his. “That’s not good.”

He bent forward and kissed my lips. “No, it really wasn’t good. You flat-lined once and they had to use the defibrillator to finally break the fibrillation. They rolled you into surgery immediately after that.”

“Did they have to open me up again?” I asked, trying to feel my chest under the ice pack.

He shook his head and smiled encouragingly. “No, they didn’t. Dr. Bloomfield, the specialist in the Tetralogy of Fallot, along with Dr. Sawyer, found several small holes in your heart on ultrasound. They went in through a vein in your arm and placed little mesh occluders. They said your tissue would grow over them and they would become part of your heart.”

“Listen to you using all these fancy words,” I teased a little and he bent forward to kiss my lips again.

“I got a major crash course in your anatomy when the docs finished with you. They wanted me to understand what they did and what that would mean in the future.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, looking discreetly at my hand, which was missing the ring he had put on at the beach. Maybe he decided he didn’t want to be married to someone with the problems I have. I had warned him about that, but he wouldn’t listen. Now my heart was going to suffer all kinds of atrocities when he left.

He wiped away a tear and slipped his hand under my waist. “Katie, don’t cry. You’re going to be okay. I know it’s overwhelming, but you’re here because this is exactly where you had to be.”

I bit my lip and nodded, but I didn’t believe him for one second. His words were to placate me and my heart didn’t want to be placated.

“After they fixed the holes they had to address the rhythm problems you’ve been having. I told Dr. Sawyer how you couldn’t even run for a few feet without developing a problem and that concerned her and Dr. Landsmith, who is a famous electrophysiologist from Australia.”

I shook my head and snickered a little through my tears. “I feel like I’m on an episode of the Twilight Zone.”

“More like Star Trek maybe, because you are a bit of a bionic woman now.”

“Why?”

“The doctors tried to eliminate the electrical impulses that were causing the tachycardia with an ablation, but it was too close to other parts of your heart. I didn’t understand it all, but I trusted that they knew what they were doing.”

“So what did they do then?”

He pulled my gown down a little and took my left hand, pressing the fingers on my chest just below the bandage from the bullet wound. “Do you feel that?”

I nodded, “It feels hard. What is that?”

“It’s a combination pacemaker and internal defibrillator. The pacemaker will keep your heart from beating too slow or too fast. If something were to go haywire the internal defibrillator would give your heart a shock to put it back into normal rhythm.”

“You’re kidding me?” I asked in disbelief, but he shook his head. “Will I feel the shock?”

“Dr. Sawyer said you only feel the shock if there’s a major event. They will both come in tomorrow when you’re not so groggy and go over everything with you. You won’t have to take as many medications now that you have it.”

“That’s good news, right?” I asked, holding out hope that maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed.

“It’s great news. They fixed your heart so you can live a long, healthy, beautiful life with me, just like He promised.”

“Who promised?” I asked, fatigue sapping my strength.

“God.”

“God promised that?”

He caressed my face again and nodded. “There’s a reason we are here, Katie. There’s a reason why we came to Maui and not Honolulu. There’s a reason for everything. He told me that my job was to fix your heart emotionally and if I did that, He would take care of the rest.”

“You still want to have a life with me?” I asked, my words choppy as I tried to fight through the tears.

He knelt next to the bed and took my hand in his, kissing it repeatedly. “I’ve never wanted anything more, Katie. When I sat in the waiting room worried to death I was going to lose you, I prayed to Him. He told me I was being a doubting Thomas because I wasn’t trusting He would hold up His end of the bargain. Then the nurse came over and told me about the convention in town. I’ve never experienced validation, faith, joy, peace, and hope all in one moment the way I did then. I knew it wasn’t ‘if’ you pulled through; you were going to pull through. You were going to walk out of here and we were going to have a life together as each other’s heart and soul.”

“When I asked you to marry me on the sands of Kahului Bay, I didn’t think love got much stronger than that, but how wrong I was. Holding your hand after surgery, and watching you sleep peacefully, oblivious to everything in the world, I loved you more. Knowing you took a bullet for me, so I didn’t have to experience that pain, I loved you more. Seeing your eyes just now when they opened from sleep, and the deep love in them for me, made me love you more. In a few days I’m going to take you away from this hospital and we are going to start our lives together, and each day I will love you more.”

I reached over and slid my hand across his face, wiping away a tear that slid down it and into his three-day-old beard.

“I love you so much,” I cried, my own tears falling and he kissed my palm. “I want to go home so you can hold me in bed and never let me go.”

“I promise as soon as the doctors say it’s safe that’s the first thing I’m going to do.”

I lifted my hand from his face and looked at my finger. “You didn’t change your mind?”

“Oh no, honey, I didn’t change my mind. If anyone should change their mind, it should be you.”

I held up my hand. “But I woke up and my ring was gone. Where’s my ring?”

He dug in his pocket and pulled it out, holding it up for me to see. “It’s safe. The doctors said you couldn’t wear it into surgery because of everything they had to do. When I tried to put it on afterwards, your hand was swollen from the IV. I’ll keep it safe.”

My chin trembled and I nodded, trying to cover up my anguish of thinking he was leaving me. “I’m sorry I’m so emotional. I’m still kind of scared and out of sorts.”

He stood up and kissed my lips softly then moved his lips to my eyes, kissing away the tears.

“You don’t have to apologize, Katie. They have you on a lot of medication and you’ve been asleep for more than a day. I want you to push that button so you can get some pain relief and rest. When you wake up Dr. Sawyer should be here to talk to you.”

I shook my head, “I want my ring back, please.”

“It won’t fit, honey. Let me keep it so it doesn’t get lost.”

“Please,” I begged, “just try it.”

He took my hand and slid the ring down my finger and over the knuckle. It nestled there the same way it did the first time he put it on.

He smiled and laughed a little. “All your other fingers are twice their normal size. You truly are a medical miracle, Katie.”

I held my hand to my chest and twisted the ring with my thumb, the cool wood sliding around easily on my finger.

“With patience, bearing with one another in love,” I recited softly.

“Ephesians,” he smiled, kissing the ring with his lips. “You are a special child of His, Katie. My whole life has been manipulated right down to the moment we met. Regardless of how that first meeting ended, He knew we were destined to be each other’s patience and love.”

“Soul mates,” I whispered, my lips heavy as I tried to speak.

“Forever,” he whispered.