Falling From Grace (20 page)

“I am kind of hungry.
 
I haven’t eaten since breakfast,” I told him, remembering my last meal.

Dad looked over at Robert, “Would you like something, too?”

“A coke sounds good,” he answered.
 
Dad nodded, and looked back at me.
  
“How about I get you a burger and fries from the cafeteria?”

I grinned and my stomach growled at the mere mention of greasy fries.
 
“That sounds great, Dad.
 
Ooh, and get me a coke, too.
 
Please!”
 
 

“Two cokes and food.
 
Coming up,” he agreed.
 
He hesitated a bit, looking between Robert and be before finally turning around and leaving.
 
Watching how slowly he moved, how his shoulders slouched down, I couldn’t help but worry about him.

Robert waited until the door had closed, then started laughing again.
 
“Kelpie?
 
Do I look a horse to you?”

I turned my head to look at him and blushed, my thoughts brought back to our little discussion.
 
“You know, it’s not like I said merman or something.
 
You said it wasn’t a fictional character that I had read about, but I’d bet that you thought I wasn’t that well read.”

He laughed again.
 
“I know you’re intelligent, Grace.
 
I was expecting merman, vampire, even Frankenstein.
 
But Kelpie threw me off.
 
Not many people know about them.
 
That and I think I should be insulted.”

I shrugged.
  
“So not Kelpie, not werewolf, not vampire, not merman, and not Frankenstein, right?
 
At least that narrows down the list.
 
There’s still X-Men, swamp thing, and my personal favorite, David Copperfield.
 
He’s not human either.”

His eyes were watering, he was laughing so much.
 
“I can assure you that David Copperfield is very much human, albeit in a loose sense of the term.
 
And while the X-Men idea would be interesting, I’m much cooler than Wolverine and Cyclops combined.
 
Oh, and the swamp thing?
 
Do I look that messy?
 
That’s just as bad as the Kelpie!”

His laughter was infectious, and I began to laugh with him.
 
He looked at me, his smile bright and full, and
—
there really was no other word in the dictionary to describe it
—
perfect, and what I saw was so stunning, so brilliant, I gasped.
 
His face seemed to radiate light; it fanned around him like a halo, bright and warm and promising, a corona of light that turned his features ethereal and divine.
 
Not a Kelpie.
 
Not a vampire.
 
Not a mutant comic book character or some human magician.
 
What he was, in that very moment, what he’d been in every moment since I had first laid eyes on him, was an angel.

He stopped laughing then, hearing my thoughts, knowing what conclusion I had come to, hearing what he was in my eyes, in my heart.
 
His silence, coupled with the look on his face scared me for one endless second.
 
Is that what you are, Robert?
 
Are you an angel?
 

Slowly, so slow I nearly doubted the movement, he brought his hand to my face again, caressing it gently, and stared deeply into my eyes.
 
It was his way of warning me.
 
He was about to share something very intimate with me.
 
It would border on the impossible, the improbable, and the irrational.

I knew I would never be the same person after all that had happened in just these few, short weeks, but what he was about to share with me was going to be completely life altering and wholly unbelievable.
 
I could see it in his eyes.

He leaned in to press his forehead against mine, my mind ready and willing to accept whatever it was he wanted to fill it with.
 
I did not expect what came.

There were no visions of past events, horrifically fascinating, terrifyingly intriguing, or otherwise.
 
There were no frightening memories of blood and broken bones, of death and dying.

Instead, I saw my face as he saw it, as it was in that moment.
 
Trusting, and…happy.
 
The purple bruises that covered my face were not enough to disguise the blush in my cheek as
—
still with my eyes closed
—
I saw him lift his hand away from the side of my face to brush my lips with the back of his fingers.

I could see my lips part as I drew in a breath, saw my exhalation as the sigh came when he touched my bottom lip with the pad of his thumb.
 
I could see myself bring my bottom lip inwards, to taste the spot that he had touched, letting it fall back out in yet another sigh when I realized that I could almost imagine what it would feel like with his lips on mine.

Impossible, improbable, irrational.

Kind of like everything that’s happened so far.
 
When he lifted his face to kiss my forehead, I counted…counted the seconds, counted the minutes, counted the heartbeats until his lips left my skin.
 
And then I counted how long it took before I stopped feeling their burn.
 
I gave up when I realized that I’d probably feel it until I took my last breath.
 
It felt as though everything he did, every touch, every whisper, every thought was permanently burned into my mind.
 
And, I knew that for as long as I lived, I would never want it any other way.

I hadn’t realized that my eyes were closed again until I opened them to see the mercury of his.
 
I had always used liquid to describe the way they looked when they were this color, but never had I been this close to his face to see that I had been more correct than I thought.
 
The shimmer of his irises looked like actual molten silver rolling around in a bowl, the pupil merely floating on its gilt surface.

He was so close I could count his eyelashes, see that while they were the blue black of his hair, the ends were ash gray, and seemed to have multiple tips like the plume of a feather.
 
I needed to touch his face, but he held my left hand now, tighter than I had when he had tried to remove it.
 
Without thinking, I moved my right hand towards his face, and touched it softly with my fingers.
 
Just the side of his face, his temple, his cheek, but it felt so good.
 
I wanted to cup his face like he did mine, but the plaster of the cast was in the way.
 

I turned my head to look at my right arm, and then quickly returned to look at Robert.
 
“I can move my hand and arm,” I said, alarmed, and raised and lowered it as if to prove the point.
 
 
“I’m not supposed to be able to do that, am I?”

His smile was sheepish.
 
“It’s not like you didn’t know that my touch could heal you.”

Well, I had known that.
 
But he had worked his little healing thing on me before, and my bones hadn’t healed so quickly.
 
“Why did it happen so fast this time?”
 
I was nervous, wondering how I was going to explain this to the doctors, or to Dad.

“It was because I’ve pleased you,” he answered proudly.
 
“The human body seems to respond much better to healing when it feels sated, pleasured in some way.”

I blushed, because feeling pleased was an understatement when describing how my heart raced, and how things were fluttering in my stomach at the moment.
 
I started to gather up the courage to say that perhaps I needed more healing when suddenly Robert was no longer next to me on the bed, but rather, sitting on the chair that Dad had been sleeping in.
 
I looked at him questioningly, almost dejectedly, when the door opened and Dad walked in with a tray of food, the doctor right behind him.

Dad looked at my face, flushed most likely, and then looked at Robert, whose face only showed concern for me as the doctor began pulling, twisting, bending, and poking me, seeing how my injuries were healing.

“Grace, are you feeling okay?
 
You look like you might have a fever,” he said, putting the food and drinks down onto the little rolling table next to the bed and placing his hand on my forehead.
 
He pulled it back quickly.
 
“Jesus, you’re burning up!
 
Doc, she’s got a fever!”

I’m sure the doctor had already come to that conclusion after man-handling me, but just to placate him, he pulled out an object that looked like a reflex hammer with a ball at the end and rolled it across my forehead and down my neck.
 
After glancing at its reading, he looked at me and said, “It looks like you have a nice little fever, dear.
 
We’re going to get you some Tylenol to try and bring it down, okay?”

I nodded, not too concerned about the fever at all.
 
Not with my own little miracle sitting just three feet away from me.

Dad, on the other hand, wasn’t going to accept just Tylenol as the solution.
 
“Don’t you think you should see what’s causing the fever?
 
She might have an infection!
 
We have Tylenol at home.
 
She’s in a hospital, for crissakes!
 
Don’t you have stuff here that’s stronger?
 
Faster?
 
If all you’re going to give her is Tylenol, I could go home and get some right now so that I won’t have to see the $25 charge for two pills.”

I sat there, gaping.
 
Dad wasn’t always the most patient, but I had never seen him act like this before.
 
To hear him go off on the doctor was scary.

You just saw my birth, and you think
THIS
is scary?

I looked at Robert sitting peacefully in his chair and frowned.
 
He wasn’t helping.
 
“Dad, it’s okay.
 
Tylenol is fine.
 
It’s probably just stress or something.”

He looked at me and shook his head, not accepting that as enough.
 
“Look, baby, I already lost your mom and I came pretty damn close to losing you tonight.
 
I know how these things work.
 
One minute you’re fine, and the next, you’ve got a fever, and then you’re gone.
 
I won’t let that happen.”
 
He was gripping my shoulders, the strain and terror on his face was hard to stomach.

“Dad, this isn’t like mom.
 
I was hit by a car, but I’m fine.
 
A few broken bones, some bruises, but I’m fine.
 
It’s going to be okay, Dad.”
 
I tried to reassure him.

Robert stood up and placed his hand on Dad’s shoulder.
 
It appeared to be a comforting gesture, but I knew what Robert was doing before he had even raised his hand.
 
He had told me silently, warning me not to interfere.
 
In an instant, Dad collapsed, Robert catching him under his arms.

The doctor rushed quickly to see to him, checking his vital signs while pressing the nurse call button on the side of the bed.
 
Soon, the room was filled with people who were not interested in how I was feeling at all, fever or no fever.
 
Instead, Dad was taken to a room of his own to be treated for exhaustion and dehydration caused by stress.

You’re good.
 
I looked at Robert and his smile told me he agreed.

As soon as everyone else had cleared out of the room, Robert returned to the edge of the bed.
 
As much as I wanted him to hold me again
—
and I so wanted him to hold me again
—
he had yet to answer my question…one of many.
 
But, before that, I wanted an answer to a very simple question.

“Did you cause me to have a fever?”

The smile on his face couldn’t have been any more smug.
 
“Yes.”

“Why?”

He reached out and grabbed my hand, brought it to his face. “So that I could be alone with you.”

My heart started racing, but then he let go of my hand and reached for the rolling table, pulling it between us and grabbing his coke.

“You’ve got questions that I have the answers to, and I didn’t want to answer them while your father was here, so I had to give him something to get worked up over.
 
It only took a little nudging on my part with his emotions
—
and your fever
—
but as soon as he hit that pivotal point, I knew I could easily have him pass out without causing any suspicion.”
 
He sounded like some war strategist.
 
It might have sounded so simple to him, but to me it was all too complex.
 
The what-ifs would have driven me crazy before a single step had been taken.