Dreamscape (31 page)

Lanie came running into the room. Jason yelled, “Lanie, stay back, she’s got the gun!”

Bertha spun toward the door then looked back at Jason in abject misery. Yes, she saw for herself the love in his eyes for Lanie. With a cry of pain, she pulled the trigger and shot Jason square in the chest.

“No!” Lanie ran forward. Tearing at the white shirt blooming with red, she found the wound and pressed her hands there. Pink bubbles dribbled from his nose and mouth as he groaned. He looked up at her helplessly. “Please don’t die, oh God, Jason, please,
please
.” His life was pouring through her fingers. There was nothing she could do in this time.

“He never loved me,” Bertha said in a far off voice. “I’m as homely as sin. No man would come knocking. He knocked on our door. He came knocking. But it wasn’t for me.”

Lanie heard the click of the hammer being pulled back close to her ear. Bertha was going to shoot her, too.

Bertha’s voice crumbled into hiccupping sobs. “You’re not homely as sin are you? Men prefer a lovely woman. Richard preferred you. Papa would have, too. Jason did. No other man
I
love will prefer you to me.”

Lanie flinched, expecting to die. The sound of the gun firing was met by a sickening crunch and breaking glass as the bullet shattered the window. Her eyes opened and she saw Bertha on the floor with an opened skull. The poker dropped with a clang, and Addy fell to her knees at Jason’s side. “My boy, oh my
poor
boy.”

Smiling feebly, he closed his eyes for the last time and mouthed, “I love you both,” followed by, “Lanie?”

“I’m here. It’s me, Lanie’s here.” She shook him. “Jason, Jason, wake up.” He didn’t stir. The two women leaned into each other and cried.

Chapter 25

Lanie took the chart from the door and read the night nurse’s log. She no sooner finished when the floor nurse walked in on her morning rounds. She slid it back in the holder, knowing it would be needed. Following the nurse to the bed, she said genially, “Good morning, Julie. How’s our patient this morning?”

The nurse checked the IV and adjusted the flow a bit. He’d been like this for nearly a week since his accident, and every morning the Doctor asked the same hopeful question. Today she finally had something encouraging to say. “Good morning, Doctor. Dr. Bowen made a sound earlier. I wasn’t on yet, but Leticia said she heard him moan.” Eyeing her wristwatch, the nurse checked his pulse.

Lanie perked. “Oh, that’s wonderful! What time was that exactly?”

Julie smiled at once feeling the excited happiness that shined in the doctor’s blue eyes. “About 7:30. I’ll set him up for his bath…only be a sec.” With that, she wrote her findings on the chart and left the two alone.

Leticia the night nurse had put on the Jane Eyre CD, her obvious favorite,
again
. Lanie listened as crazy Bertha Rochester stabbed her brother Richard for the fourth time this week.

Smoothing Jason’s hair back, she kissed his unresponsive lips. “Good morning, baby. Don’t worry. I’m taking Jane Eyre with me so you won’t have to listen to it again. I’ll stop by the library and pick up new books this evening.”

Jason didn’t respond, but Lanie knew people in a comatose state could hear, and that being the case, she had the hospital nurses play CDs continually so he’d have something to listen to when she wasn’t here reading to him herself. Thank God for the library and their books on CD. He’d been through Steinbeck,
Brontë
, Wilde, and several selections from Oprah’s Book Club. She flipped through the stack. All of them had to go back to the library today. Ejecting the Jane Eyre CD, Lanie considered what to play after she left. Maybe he’d like to hear
Cape Fear
again instead of
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.
Jason knew the latter was her personal favorite, maybe he’d sense her thinking about him if he heard it again. She smiled inside, wondering what he’d say about her choices for his listening material. She tried to mix it up for him. Jason preferred Sherlock Holmes and Stephen King and thrillers like
Cape Fear
and
Timeline
. She preferred romances. Fortunately the library had a large selection. There was no telling how long he’d be in a coma.

Lanie sat on the bed beside him. It broke her heart to see him like this and missing him had her crying herself to sleep more than once over the past week. From the moment they met she loved him and she wanted nothing more than to feel his arms around her, to hold his hand, to make love with him. As his burned hands were still bandaged, she only rubbed his arm, her hands and heart aching for more. “Feel that, baby? I know you’ll come back to me in your own time. I’m just impatient and missing you.” She went on to tell him about the progress of the work being done. Ben’s family was busting their collective butts to ensure the clinic would open on schedule.

Digging for her cell phone, she went to the opened window for a signal then called her sister. Only eighteen months apart, her sister was her best friend and this was news worth sharing. “Lex, it’s me. I just got some good news.”

“He’s awake!” Lexie shrieked.

Lanie winced at the stab in her ear. “No, not yet. But he made a sound.”

The hopeful tone was contagious. “Well, that’s good news right? It means he’s coming around.”

“It might. Listen, would you do a favor for me today?”

“Sure, sweetie, anything.”

Lanie smiled. “Two things actually.”

Lexie laughed. “I don’t know about doing
two
things.”

Lanie laughed with her. Her sister was hysterical. “Give Mom and Dad a call and tell them Jason made a sound today. Mom made me promise I’d give her good news as soon as I had any.”

“Okay, what else?”

“Tell Dad they replaced the fuse box and laid cement in the cellar. No more hazardous wiring and damp dirt floor. No one else will get electrocuted.”

“He’ll be relieved. Dad’s been worried sick you’d go down there and get zapped yourself.”

Lanie shook her head. She understood her parents worried like all parents did, but for them to lose sleep over the idea she’d go touch the very fuse box that electrocuted her husband was ludicrous. “Also, would you stop by and tell Ben…”

“Oh,
three
favors now…”

“Mom and Dad constitute
one
favor.”

“If you say so. Dad was talking about flying up there to stand guard at the cellar door so you wouldn’t go and hurt yourself.”

Laughing, Lanie said, “Seriously, Lex. Because Jason might very well wake up today, I’ll be staying here longer. I was supposed to go over the tile choices for the clinic with Zack at two o’clock. Just call Ben. He’ll let his brother know.”

“They’ll be glad to hear Jason’s coming around. You want me to tell them?”

Lanie thought a moment. Ben and Jason were best friends. He’d been fretting for days since the cellar cleanup and the accident. It was Ben’s quick thinking that knocked Jason away from the fuse box with the wooden rake handle. Held tight by the current, Jason would have died if he’d been zapped any longer. Then too if Ben hadn’t pushed her out of the way when she ran to Jason without thinking, she might have been electrocuted as well. “Yes, but play it down a bit. Okay?”

“But it’s
good
news.”

“It
is
good news, but I finally convinced him not to come to the hospital at night. I don’t want him knocking himself out to get here after working all day. He’s looking terrible, and Janice said he hasn’t slept a wink since Jason got hurt.”

“He still thinks it’s his fault?”

“Yeah, that’s what she said. I told her that’s crazy, but that’s Ben. He’s been Jason’s friend since they were boys. He told her he should have ordered gutters right off the bat. He thinks if he had, the dirt floor wouldn’t have gotten wet after that huge rain.”

“You’ve only been in the house two months, how could anyone know?

The bag of hot soapy washcloths arrived. Lanie nodded to the nurse. “Hey, I’m going to give Jason his bath now. Thanks for…”

“Oh! Wait,
gutters.
I didn’t tell you…”

“What?”

“They caught the serial rapist. It
was
the gutter man from WeatherAll Siding and Gutters. Jason was right.”

Lanie’s hand flew to her mouth. “You’re
kidding.
” After news of the second attack made the paper, Jason had jokingly suggested that the rapist was most likely Max Brady, an asshole he went to grade school with.

“Uh-huh. That tall creepy blond guy. Remember, we saw him at the home center and Jason and I started singing the
Doors’
song—
Riders on the Storm
? Killer on the road, brain squirmin’ like a toad…”

“Jason didn’t like him. Apparently even when they were kids, the guy was a real sick bully who liked to hurt people.”

“No shit. I read in the paper today that the creep would arrange to do the work at a house, then somehow fix a door or window so he could come back at night. Four single women in as many months. The last victim sprayed him in the eyes with a can of wasp killer…”

Lanie started, “
Wasp killer?
”

“Yeah the quick freeze kind with Freon. He’s blind now. That’s how he was caught. He couldn’t see to run.” The sisters were quiet a moment, unsettled by the fact Jason knew him and, joking or not, declared Max Brady the rapist before the police even suspected it was true.

Lexie said, “Okay, enough about him. You go wash your hubby. Give him a kiss from me, too. Hey, one more thing. Do you want Pete and me to stop by with dinner?”

“Nah, but thanks for the offer. My appetite is pretty nonexistent right now. I’ll call you later before I leave.”

“You have to eat, even an ice cream sandwich from the vending machine is better than nothing. Love you.”

“Okay. Love you, too.” She snapped her phone shut then, rolling up her sleeves, proceeded to open the steamed bags of soapy washcloths. Wringing one out, she gently wiped Jason’s face. “Jason. Jason, wake up.”

Unbelievably his eyes fluttered.

“I’m here. It’s me, Lanie’s here.” Taking another warm cloth, she followed the path of the first, then waited. Seeing no reaction, she washed his arms and legs, then opened another bag and wiped his face and neck and upper chest with a fresh soapy cloth.

He drew a deep breath and murmured, “Don’t cry, I’m already dead.”

Her heart stopped. “Jason? Jason, can you hear me?”

His eyes flickered open and searched her face.

Lanie started to cry.

He repeated, “Don’t cry. I’m already dead.”

Lanie shook her head. “No, baby, you’re not dead.”

Jason’s eyes flew to his chest. Then suddenly cognizant of waking from a nightmare in which he’d just been shot, he looked around him in confusion. “Where am I?”

“You’re in Edgewater Hospital. You had an accident and have been unconscious for a week.”

Jason went to touch her, but both hands were bandaged. Under the gauze his slightest movement of his right hand brought a painful twinge. He held both before his eyes. “
Accident?
What happened?”

“The fuse box electrocuted you.” She carefully lowered his arms. “You’ve third degree burns on your right, and second degree on your left.” Stretching out on the bed next to him, she wrapped her arm across his waist. “You’re going to be okay now.” She kissed his shoulder. Her eyes welled up. “You’re going to be okay.”

He weakly stretched his left arm around her and hugged her close. His muscles were tired but of course they’d feel that way after so many volts of electrical current ran through them. He felt odd, like he’d been somehow torn in two. There was also a vague recollection of time passing, large blocks of time. “Sweetheart?”

Lanie sat up. “What is it? Are you all right? Oh
what
am I doing? I haven’t called Rakeesh yet.”

He smiled and shook his head. “I’m hungry but that’s not...”

She cut in, “You can’t eat just yet, not until Rakeesh sees you.” Lanie pressed the call button. A moment later the nurse returned.

“Oh!” She said upon seeing Jason awake.

Lanie said, “Julie, please call Dr. Ganjoo and let him know his patient finally woke.”

Grinning from ear to ear, the nurse said, “Right away, Doctor.” Then to Jason she said, “Welcome back, Dr. Bowen.”

Jason smiled. “Thanks.”

The next hour was taken up with the Neurologist’s visit and by listening to his friend Rakeesh and his wife. Jason learned of the severity of the injury that put him in a coma. Tests would be done later that morning, but the general consensus was this preliminary prognosis was good. Jason would fully recover.