Lord of Lightning (22 page)

Julie thumbed through the phone book while Lise paced and searched her memory for any clue Stephen might have given as to where he was going. She recalled him mentioning NASA, and then she remembered something else—the equipment tag.

She found the tag in her purse, tucked in the zipper compartment where she’d placed it for safekeeping. The scrawled numbers still looked foreign to her, but as she held the paper out for Julie to see, she realized what it was.

They both spoke at once. “It’s a phone number.”

The dash was omitted after the prefix, Lise realized, making it look more like a serial number or some other form of ID.

“I’ll call him,” she told Julie. “Don’t worry, I’ll find him, I
will
. You go now. Take care of the kids, okay?”

Once Julie and Danny had left, Lise tried the number. She wasn’t even sure she had the right area code, and when the phone began to ring, it startled her. Her stomach went nervously light as she realized she might actually be talking to Stephen at any moment. The days that had passed since she’d seen him felt like months. In some ways he seemed a stranger. And yet she felt sure that once she’d impressed upon him how serious Em’s condition was, he would come immediately
. He had to.

The phone rang several times before a woman picked it up and repeated the seven digits Lise had just dialed. “How can I help you?” she asked.

“I was told I could reach Stephen Gage at this number.”

“Stephen Gage? Who’s calling?”

“My name is Lise Anderson. It’s important.”

“Just a moment—”

Lise was aware of a soft, continual clicking as she waited for the woman to come back on the line. She was also aware of the receiver, slick and cold against her hand.

“I’m sorry,” the woman broke in abruptly. “This is the switchboard. The facility
is
closed, and I’m not authorized to give out any more information over the phone.”

“Can you tell me if he works there? It’s an emergency—”

“I have no listing for that name, ma’am. I’m not authorized to say more. Thank you for calling.”

A dial tone discouraged Lise from further questions.
No listing.
She sighed heavily and considered her options, which had just dwindled from one to none. It was too big a haystack, she realized, despairing. He could be anywhere, including the Arctic circle.

She glanced down the hall, saw the double doors of the operating room, and froze. Em was in there now, she realized, her fate in the hands of strangers—nameless, faceless people who didn’t know how important their five-year-old patient was. They couldn’t know. They’d never been privileged to see her regarding the world with her serious, gray eyes. They’d never been the recipients of her wistful smile ... on those occasions when she did smile. They didn’t know she was a tiny, steady light against the darkness.

Oh, please
. A wave of helplessness crashed over Lise.
Please
, she thought, her mind reaching into the operating room.
Save her. I want to see that smile again.

Moments later Lise sat tucked in a molded plastic chair in the waiting area, afraid to move. She wanted to shudder, but she forced the impulse away. It might unlock the trembling shakiness inside her. Her nose stung like fire and her jaw ached, but it was better than the alternative. She was too full of anguish. Losing control now would destroy her.

Lise had no idea how much time had passed when she heard someone coming down the hall with a quick, deliberate cadence. She expected the footsteps to pass the waiting room, another doctor or nurse on the run. But they didn’t. They hesitated and entered the room, approaching her as she sat huddled in meditation.

“Lise?”

Lise looked up, her heart beating oddly.

Julie hovered over her, pale and frightened. “Lise? What’s wrong? Is it Em? Has something hap—”

“No,” Lise said quickly. “There’s been no word since they took her into surgery.”

“What about Stephen?”

“I couldn’t reach him.” Lise’s chin began to tremble and she looked away, making a pretense of checking her watch. As she noticed the time she realized she’d been at the hospital for two hours. “What are you doing here, Julie?” she said. “You’re supposed to be on your way home with the kids.”

“We won, Lise.”

“What?” Confused by Julie’s excitement, Lise rose to her feet. “What are you talking about?”

“Our maglev took top honors at the science fair. We won the scholarship, Lise. We won!”

“Oh, Julie.” Lise had such mixed emotions. She was thrilled, and at the same time, deeply saddened. She wanted to share the triumph with all her students. They’d exceeded her dreams—and probably their own. But there could be no triumph without Em.

Julie’s smile faded, as though she’d read Lise’s mind. “Em would be very happy about this,” she managed awkwardly.

“
Will
be happy,” Lise corrected.

The two women stood a moment, unable to find the right words. Finally Lise pulled Julie into her arms, and they hugged fiercely. Lise thought her heart would break as the tears she’d been fighting welled up.

“She
will
be happy,” Julie whispered.

Stephen clenched his fist, locking off the satisfaction of putting it through the nearest wall. The familiar array of his equipment sprawled before him, only now the bank of monitors was dark and the perpetual electronic whirring had been silenced. He’d just pulled the plug on the entire system. What had kept him from destroying it, he didn’t know.

There was a flaw in his design somewhere, a fatal error that eluded him. It was the kind of problem that would have totally absorbed him a year ago. Now, staring at the maze of cold steel and circuits, all he wanted was to take a sledgehammer to it
. To hell with the whole noble endeavor,
he thought savagely.

He breathed in deeply, feeling the pain that had been with him since he’d left her, the searing ache in his heart, the rip of claws through his gut. She was there in his mind, just as he’d known she would be ... eyes as pale blue as dawn, hair the color of ripe wheat. He could see the freckles on her nose, the proud tilt of her head.

He could almost reach out and touch her.

Lord, he could almost give it all up for her!
Almost
. That was what was killing him. Much as he might want to vent his rage, much as he might want to destroy the Omega, or walk away from it, he couldn’t—not and still live with himself. He’d come too close. It would haunt him.

His head began to throb, and again he resisted the violent pleasure of putting his fist through the wall. Instead he hit the light switch, plunging the room into darkness. He’d had these black rages before. He had lived with episodes of terrible despair. They went away in time.
This one would too.

In the background of his thoughts a telephone began to ring, its shrill, harsh and insistent. It would be the facility with a message, but he had no interest in talking to one of their anonymous female operators at the moment.

He let it ring.

“M
S.
A
NDERSON?”

Lise turned as the doctor entered the waiting area. “Emily’s in intensive care,” he said. “The appendix we removed was badly abscessed. We’re treating her with intravenous antibiotics, but we haven’t been able to bring her fever down.”

“Will she be all right?” Lise asked.

He looked suddenly haggard. “We’re doing all we can.”

Lise turned away as he left, her heart pounding. She tried to force away the dread that swamped her, but the feeling was too strong. As she sank to the chair a horrible realization took hold. Em was dying.

She had no sense of time passing as she sat there, slumped against the wall, though hours might have slipped by. She was trapped in the agony of waiting, stunned by it. The sun had begun to fall, and the small room, which had been quiet all day, was now completely deserted.

Perhaps it was the chill passing over her skin that roused her. She heard no unfamiliar sounds, nothing out of the ordinary ... and yet she felt the presence of someone else in the room. She looked up, scanning empty air. She was alone, but her heart began to pound. Had someone said her name? She could hear it resonating softly in her mind.

“Stephen?”

She had the sudden and intense feeling that he was near. A moment later she was rushing into the hallway, impelled by the impulse. “Where’s the recovery room?” she called out as an orderly appeared. He pointed her down the hallway past the operating room. She reached double doors that said No Admittance and pushed through them. Only one bed was occupied—a small child in an oxygen tent. It was Em. Standing over her was a golden-haired man in a red flannel shirt.

Lise whispered the name. “
Stephen
?”

“Ma’am? You can’t come in here!” A nurse moved to block Lise’s path, and then the orderly appeared. Lise was propelled gently but firmly through the doors she’d entered.

“No! Please—I have to talk to him,” she pleaded as the doors closed behind her.

The orderly looked confused. “Who, ma’am? The doctor? He’s not in there.”

“No, Stephen—” She glanced through the door’s window, pointing toward the child’s bed. What she saw froze her in disbelief and confusion. It
was
Em in the oxygen tank, but no one stood next to her. Stephen wasn’t there. Lise felt another chill burn her skin. Maybe he’d never been there. Maybe she’d imagined him.

She caught hold of her arms, trying to make sense of what had happened when she heard someone say her name, a resonant male voice that came from behind her.

“
Lise
?”

She swung around, a gasp in her throat.

He stood at the juncture of two hallways, his golden hair aflame, his red flannel shirt a beacon in the drab surroundings. Lise pressed her hand to the wall, steadying herself as he walked toward her. “Do you see him too?” she asked the orderly, terrified that she was imagining things again.

“Yes, ma’am, I do.” The orderly’s whisper spoke of awe, as though he knew he was in the presence of something magical.

Suddenly Stephen was there, his hand gripping hers, warm and life-giving, his strength flowing through her. “Lise, I came as soon as I could—” Lise’s eyes welled with tears as she searched the concern etched in his rugged features. She didn’t bother to ask him how he knew where to find her. “Em needs you, Stephen.
Hurry
.”

Stephen could feel the life force ebbing out of the unconscious child as he stood over her. An oxygen mask covered her mouth and nose; monitors measured her faltering vital signs. Outside, Lise waited with Em’s mother and Danny, who had just arrived with Julie. There were so many people whose lives this child had touched, Stephen thought. And so many more lives she could still touch if she lived.

He caught hold of her hand, enfolding it in his as he tried to project his thoughts into her mind. “Come back, Em,” he said. “Come back to us. It’s not your time to return to stardust.”

The sparkling light that enveloped Em was warm and beautiful. It seeped into her being, filling her with peace and contentment. It bathed her in a love beyond anything she’d ever known. She watched with delight as the light gently spun away from her and shot upward, arcing across an indigo sky. Vibrant colors danced in its path, every color the eye could see and some it couldn’t even imagine. The light was a rainbow, Em realized, and she was meant to follow it to the treasure.

A man called her name as she began her journey. His voice was familiar, and she smiled as a form materialized out of the darkness.

“Are you coming with me. Spaceman?” she asked him.

“No, Em, it’s not my time. I can’t go with you.”

“Would you like to, though?”

“Someday, Em. Yes, someday, I would like to go. Right now, there’s someone I don’t want to leave behind.”

“You mean Miss Anderson?”

He nodded. “Are you sure you want to leave her behind, Em? Or Danny and your mom?”

Em thought that over a long time. “I’d like to leave Danny behind,” she said. “Sometimes he teases me.”

The spaceman smiled then, and Em was glad. He’d looked so sad before. For the first time, Em noticed he was carrying her doll. “Can Elizabeth come with me?” she asked.

“Sure ... I’d think she’d like that.”

He handed her the doll, and as Em tucked it under her arm, she felt a tug of sadness. She didn’t want to leave her mother behind, not really. She didn’t want to leave Miss Anderson either. She would miss them all, even Danny. She contemplated the spaceman’s deep blue eyes. “If I don’t follow the rainbow this time,” she said. “I mean if I came back to Shady Tree instead, would you show me how to make birds fly?”

Lise and Stephen stood apart from each other in the waiting area. Even Danny and Mrs. Baxter were separated by several chairs, and Julie had taken up a post near the snack machine. Five excruciating hours had passed since Stephen had returned from Em’s bedside, and still there’d been no change in her condition.

Lise was numbed by despair. She’d been so sure that Stephen’s presence would bring about a miracle. Perhaps they all had been. Now it seemed they’d reached the stage where they weren’t even able to console each other.

“Mrs. Baxter?” The young doctor’s voice was faint as he entered the room. He looked as though he’d aged ten years in a single day.

Em’s mother turned to him, fear in her eyes. Lise felt it, too, gut-wrenching fear. They all did.

A heavy sigh drained out of him as he nodded at Mrs. Baxter. “Your daughter’s taken a turn for the better, ma’am. Her vital signs have stabilized.”

The woman rose to her feet unsteadily. “Emily’s going to be all right?”

The doctor nodded. “Yes, we think so.”

Lise’s eyes filled with tears, and she pressed a trembling fist to her mouth, unable to control the gratefulness that rocked through her. The vigil was over. Her legs swayed beneath her as she turned to Stephen and held out a hand.

He was there as she turned, moving toward her in a red-and-gold blur of motion, his eyes full of relief and crazy passion. He was there, catching her in his arms, breaking her tilting, teetering fall. He was there, whispering the most incredible things in her ear, telling her how thankful he was that Em was okay, telling her how much he loved her.