Love Immortal (5 page)

“Please,” he moaned. “No more. I feel fine. I
swear. I don’t need anyone poking me with needles or taking my
temperature. Just go away.” His voice washed over her, making her
feel faint. He had a tenor voice with a muddled possibly European
accent, though she couldn’t place the country. She thought that it
sounded a bit British, but some of the words seemed to have more of
a Mediterranean accent; perhaps French, or Italian, definitely not
Cajun. It was subtle, not pronounced, but enough to give his voice
an alluring, exotic quality.

“Um, hi,” Jewell said timidly by way of
introduction. “I’m not one of your attending nurses. My name is
Jewell; I work downstairs in the ER. I was there when you came in
the other night.”

He was silent for a long time. She thought
that maybe he wasn’t interested in visitors so she turned to leave.
She knew this was a stupid idea anyway. Her heart sank, but in her
head, she knew this was for the best. She was acting like some
infatuated teenager. She reached for the door to leave.

“Wait.” His plea made her heart flutter and
her knees go weak. “It was you that came to see me in ICU.” It was
a statement, not a question.

She swallowed against the lump in her throat.
How could he possibly know that? He was in a coma when she saw him
last. “Well, yes, but I’m sure that a lot of nurses came to see you
when you were in ICU.”

“Yes, but you…” he paused, looking for the
right word. “You felt different. I can feel you that way now.”

“You felt me?” She had turned back towards
him, but his back was still to her, still looking out the
window.

“Maybe felt isn’t the right word. Have you
ever been sitting in a room with your back to the door, and all of
a sudden you know that someone is right behind you, even though you
didn’t hear them come in? It was like that, sort of. Well, that’s
still not exactly it, but it’s the same now. You only came in one
time. I could feel you watching me. Not like you were checking my
injuries, but like you were looking at me.”

Jewell was taken aback by his words. How
could he know what she was doing when she came to see him in ICU?
How did he know it was her, and not someone else?

“In the emergency room too. I felt you, your
eyes, looking at me. I know it was you. You sat with me, you were
crying. Why?”

Jewell didn’t know how to answer that
question. In fact, she was unsure of a lot of things right now. She
felt like a deer caught in a car’s headlights, knowing that it
needs to run to save itself, but not being able to move, staring at
the car that would soon end its life.

He turned then, to look at her. His eyes were
nothing like what she had expected. They weren’t blue at all, as
she imagined they would be, but gray, almost black, like clouds
just before a thunderstorm. And now those eyes were focused on her,
trapping her in his intense stare. He didn’t say anything else; he
simply waited, expecting her to respond to his question.

She couldn’t remember the question. She
couldn’t remember her name, or what she was doing here. Her heart
was racing so fast she was certain she was going to faint. Her
knees started trembling, and her hand was pushing against the wall,
bracing her, keeping her from falling. Then she realized she wasn’t
breathing. She concentrated, and was able to draw a deep, gasping
breath.

Swallowing hard, she took another deep breath
before trying to speak. When she finally felt she could say
something, she asked “Excuse me? What did you say?” But her voice
was only a whisper, and she wasn’t sure that he heard what she had
said from across the room.

“I said, why were you crying?”

“How…how do you know that? How can you know
when you were…?” Her voice trailed off, unable to say dead, unable
to convince herself that his death had really happened, that he had
defied death and was now speaking to her.

“I don’t know,” he whispered, “it was like I
was dreaming, but it was more…real. I knew even before I turned
around what you would look like, because I saw you then, in the
emergency room.” His voice was measured, even. She realized then
that he was probably as confused as she was. “Would you like to sit
with me? I don’t get many visitors. At least, none that don’t want
to poke me with something.”

Jewell stepped away from the door, testing
her legs. She wasn’t sure that they were solid enough to support
her weight. When she was certain that she wouldn’t collapse if she
let go of the wall, she walked carefully across the room toward the
recliner on the other side of his bed. He watched her attentively
as she moved around the room. When she reached the recliner, she
put her hands on the arms of the chair and carefully eased herself
down. She was relieved to be sitting, she wasn’t sure she would
have been able to stand much longer.

“You still haven’t answered my question.” He
grinned, his smile lopsided because of the injuries to his
face.

“I’m sorry; I don’t remember what you
asked.”

“Why were you crying?”

“Well, I guess because it’s sad when
someone…” She was about to say “dies” but thought better of it
“well, when someone gets injured because someone else was doing
something stupid. My mother was killed by a drunk driver; I guess
the situation just reminded me of her.”

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed as he looked
away from her.

Was he expecting something else? What was the
answer that he wanted to hear? That she was crying because she
thought she had lost her soul mate? Because she wouldn’t meet
someone she should have met? Because fate had ripped from her the
one person who would complete her life? Was that what he was
waiting for? Was that how he felt too? Could she find the courage
to tell him that?

When he didn’t say anything for several
minutes, she pushed herself up from the chair. “Well, I guess I had
better go. My father will be expecting me. I’m…well, I’m glad to
see that you are doing so well.”

“Thanks,” he muttered without turning to look
at her as she left.

When he heard the door close behind Jewell,
he rolled over to stare at the door hoping that she would come back
to tell him the she felt about him the way he felt about her. It
was crazy, but when he looked into her eyes, he felt like she was
the only thing that mattered in his life. There was nothing else in
the world, just her. When she was in the room, all of his pain
disappeared; all of his thoughts were about hope and beauty and
her.

She was the woman that he had been looking
for his whole life without even knowing that he was looking. He had
dated before, in high school, in college, but nothing could have
prepared him for this. The electricity between them was palpable.
He was certain that she must feel it too. For a moment, when she
first walked in, he believed that she could feel it, like he did,
the inexorable draw, pulling them together like two magnets.

But then, it was gone. The look in her eyes
that made him think, maybe…just maybe; but when he asked her why,
her answer was one of concern; simple, professional concern. Then
he understood. She was a nurse, concerned for her patient, checking
on his well-being, nothing more.

But he could not bring himself ignore that
she did not feel about him the way that he felt about her. He would
convince her. He would make her see the possibilities of what they
could be, together. He tried to go to sleep. He was tired. He
hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since his accident. Every couple of
hours someone came in to give him a shot, or to check his injuries,
or to measure his pulse, or to shine a light into his pupils to
make sure that they were dilating correctly, to ensure he hadn’t
suffered an injury to his brain.

He hadn’t, he was sure of it. In fact, he
felt fine. The self-administered morphine that hung from a bag next
to his bed and attached to a tube in his arm, remained untouched.
He hurt, but not enough to suffer the disorientation brought on by
the drug. He asked the nurse for an aspirin now and again drawing
confused looks and sometimes a reminder about the morphine.

The nurses always seemed surprised he wasn’t
in more pain but he wasn’t. When he was five he climbed a tree in
front of his house that was tall, but spindly. It was very young,
and not strong enough to support the weight of a young boy. When
one of the branches broke he plummeted towards the ground landing
with his arm twisted under his body. His arm broke in three places.
The doctor told his uncle that Collin would likely be in a cast for
at least six weeks, more likely eight. His uncle, who was a doctor,
had removed the cast only two weeks after it had been put on.
Collin’s arm was fine. His uncle didn’t seem pleased. In fact, he
almost seemed despondent that Collin had healed so quickly. Collin
was thrilled to be climbing trees again so soon after his
disastrous mishap. So the fact that Collin now felt fine, with the
exception of some lingering pain where the injuries were
particularly bad, did not surprise Collin.

Now, lying in a hospital bed after a near
fatal crash, he was grateful for his quick healing. His body ached.
Sometimes, when he was sleeping, he would turn onto his right side
and the pain from his injuries would jolt him awake, pain stabbing
through his entire body. When he was awake however, he was able to
maneuver so as to minimize the pain. It had been almost five days
since the accident. He knew that he shouldn’t feel this good, not
that he really felt all that good, but he was glad that he did.

But now, there was a new pain. Something in
his chest, stabbing, throbbing, and sending a conspicuous ache
throughout his body from his head to his toes that he was unable to
ignore. He glanced at the morphine. He knew the morphine was there
to help curtail the physical pain of his injuries, but he knew that
the euphoric effects produced by the drug may help to ease the
psychological pain he was feeling now. He pressed the button on the
morphine drip; the audible beep of the machine indicating that the
measured dose was being administered. He felt the medicine start to
take effect as it moved through his body. At first, there was just
a slight dizziness, but as he maxed out his dose, he felt oblivion
creeping in to cloak his mind and relieve him from his
heartache.

CHAPTER 8

When Jewell started to leave the house two
hours before her shift started at the hospital, her father was
curious.

“Isn’t it a little early to be leaving for
work? I haven’t heard anything about traffic on the causeway,
what’s the rush?

“There’s something I need to do dad, at the
hospital, before my shift. I need to look in on a patient.” That
was the truth, but not all of it. She found that she had been
leaving out a lot of information in her explanations of late.

Her dad, always curious about her job and how
she spent her days, pressed for details. “I didn’t realize they
expected you to do that. Shouldn’t they let you do that during your
shift, rather than making you come to work early? Your shift is
already twelve hours. This morning, you stayed almost an hour late,
and today you’re headed in almost two hours early. Doesn’t seem
quite fair, the way I see it.”

Jewell could tell by the tone in his voice
that he thought she was up to something. She had never been able to
hide anything from him. He tried so hard to treat her like an
adult, but he still thought of her as twelve years old. She knew
that he would never ask her directly about what she was doing, but
his tone, his curiosity, were not any less direct than if he had
come straight out and asked her what she was up to.

“I’ve just sort of been following that MVA
that came in a couple of days ago. Checking on his progress to make
sure he’s doing okay.” There it was again, half of the truth. She
had always been able to tell her father everything, why couldn’t
she open up to him now?

“Really?” He dragged the word out just a
little too long, his tone a bit more than curious. Even though
Jewell had never heard this tone in her father’s voice before, she
knew exactly what he was asking. “You haven’t been this interested
in any of the other patients you’ve treated in the ER. What makes
this one so special that he has you running off to work two hours
early and coming home an hour late?” Her father’s voice was almost
teasing.

“Ugh! Dad!” She was a bit embarrassed that
she had been caught. “His case is just really interesting. It’s not
often someone dies and comes back to life again. It’s just
professional curiosity, I swear!”

“Is he cute?”

“Oh my God, dad! What is wrong with you?
Stop, please?” She could feel the blush heating her face, telling
her father everything that he wanted to know, betraying her
secrets.

Her father crossed his arms over his chest
and smiled. “Have a nice time at work.”

“Whatever.” She stomped out the door,
slamming it loudly as she left, acting like the teenager her father
thought of her as, rather than the adult she was.

She didn’t go straight to his room when she
arrived at the hospital. She went to the locker room first, and put
her tote into her locker. She dallied a bit, trying to calm her
excitement. First she dug around in her bag for a hairbrush. She
walked over to the mirror and brushed her hair until the static
caused it to stick out on the sides. She went to the sink for some
water to brush out the static. Then she parted her hair on the
right side. She usually wore the part in the middle, because that’s
where it naturally fell, but she thought that made her head look
pointy. The part on the right didn’t look very good, it accentuated
a cowlick she had on that side of her head. She tried parting it on
the left side. That looked better, but she couldn’t keep the hair
from falling into her eyes. She ran her fingers back through her
hair and let the part fall naturally in the middle again. Maybe if
she teased the back a bit. She rummaged in her bag for a comb and
wandered back to the mirror. She pulled up a section of hair and
started back-combing to give it a little lift. By the time she was
finished, it looked like a colony of rats had decided to take up
residence on the top of her head. She combed it back down, working
out the tangles she had created with her failed attempt at hair
styling. It was then that Ashley walked in.