The Girl With Aquamarine Eyes (35 page)

It was impossible, there must be a telltale sign somewhere.
He remembered the smell of the smoke, and the acrid smell of singed hair. It
certainly would still smell of a faint trace of smoke, if Bonita hadn’t washed
the odor away completely.

He held her hand under his nose, and sniffed her palm. The
smell of freshly scrubbed skin wafted toward him. Maybe last night was nothing but
a bad dream. He sniffed her hand again, still unconvinced.

He sniffed her wrist, and gradually sniffed his way up her
arm. The scent of her skin was nothing out of the ordinary. She was consumed in
smoke the night before, he was certain there was a burn mark or singed hair
somewhere.

“Mr. Steele?” Bonita stood in the doorway. “What are you
doing to that poor girl?”

He quickly dropped her hand to the bed. “Never mind, Bonita.
How is Bice?”

“He’s not yet awaken.”

“Thank you. Carry on.”

He gazed at the sleeping girl once more, shook his head in
disbelief and quickly left to check his fallen comrade.

* * *

Tommy followed Dr. White into his father’s office.

A picture of him alongside his mother sat proudly displayed
on the desk. He gazed at the portrait, wishing with every fiber inside he could
fall back into that dream world. He yearned for a way to somehow leap into the
past, and live within the silent plane of frozen time.

Dr. White took a seat at his father’s desk and studied at
him. “Tommy, I’ve been retired a short while, but I still act as a medical
consultant on occasion. The staff decided it would be better if I spoke with
you about your father, since he and I have worked closely for many years.”

“What’s wrong with my dad?”

“A couple of things. First, he has a closed head injury. He’ll
be fine, but I’m afraid his short term memory is gone, and he has no idea how
he was injured last night. He remembers nothing.”

“Will he get better?” Tommy fought back stinging tears.

Dr. White took a seat next to him, and handed him a box of
tissues. “Eventually. He will need rehab. He also has some internal injuries,
but they will heal. His speech seems to be affected, however, we’re hopeful in
time that will resolve.”

“When can I see him?”

“As soon as he’s awake.” The physician stared at him a
little to eagerly. “For now, I’d like to talk to you about Heaven.”

* * *

Harmon walked into Bice’s suite, and quietly closed the door behind
him.

Bonita had indeed been busy while he’d slept the day away.
Bice’s room was also sparkling clean. Beside his bed sat a tray of food,
untouched.

He moved to the bedside and studied his friend. Bice lay
silent on the bed, his long dark hair swept back from his face. His skin was
freshly scrubbed, but a deathly pallor still clung to him. A cot had been
brought in for Hawk, on which he slept alongside Bice. An empty box of donuts
lay next to the cot.

“Bice,” he whispered, “can you hear me?”

Only silence could be heard throughout the room, except for
Bice’s ragged breaths.

He slowly pulled the sheet back, and studied his friend’s
chest. There was nothing remarkable. A normal human chest, and not a trace of
blood to be seen. Like Heaven, Bice showed no telltale signs of the disaster
which had occurred the night before. It was as if it’d never happened.

“Bice?”

Harmon whirled around. Heaven stood in the doorway, fighting
to hold herself up. “Heaven, you’re weak and you should stay in bed.”

“No. Let me sit with him, please.”

“He’s still asleep. He won’t even know you’re here.”

“He needs me.”

Harmon gazed at her. She was shaking, and obviously still
exhausted after the ordeal. Her eyes no longer burned with their usual fire,
but were dull and lifeless. He turned back to Bice. The man seemed to be in
some sort of a coma from which he may never awaken.

He pictured Heaven old and grey, still holding vigil at Bice’s
bedside. Cobwebs would dust them both, as their clothing slowly yellowed into a
sepia patina with passing time.

He sighed. Maybe somehow, someway, Bice would know she was
at his side, and finally wake. He sighed in resignation. “I’ll get your
blankets and pillow. Then, you will eat.”

He left the room without a backward glance. It was time to
find Bonita. He too would need a cot sent up, to hold vigil at Bice’s side as
well.

* * *

“I’d like you to tell me what you know about Heaven.” Dr. White
gazed at Tommy, tapping his pen lightly on the desk.

Tommy glared at the aging physician. He was tired, confused
and hungry. His life had turned into a living hell in the course of a few
hours. Now, he was being interrogated by a strange and nosey physician who
seemed to have one thing on his mind. Heaven.

Apparently his father had contacted Dr. White. Now, this man
was obviously pursuing as much information about her as possible. His father
had told him in the kitchen her wrist had healed quickly. Much too quickly.

Now, his dad remembered nothing. Yet Dr. White seemed to be
eagerly picking up where his dad left off. Something strange had happened last
night. Bice was dead in the back of the car, moments after his father had taken
Heaven hostage a second time.

His father had acted like a madman, first abducting her from
the prom and yet again when he’d stumbled upon her sitting in the driveway. It
was beginning to make sense now.

He too had chased the Limo, only a few miles separated him
from the speeding car. Harmon and Hawk managed to pull Heaven from the wreckage
and put her in the backseat with Bice’s dead body, in very short order. They’d
left him standing in the blowing wind, and quickly sped away with barely a
backward glance.

Why hadn’t the police been called? Bice was dead, he’d seen
him with his own eyes. Why weren’t the police here, interrogating him under a
bare light bulb and offering him cigarettes in return for his cooperation?

“Tommy?”

Tommy blinked at the ageing man. As he studied him, the
words his father had spoken came back with a resounding fury, “
A dead child
at the hospital is suddenly walking and talking, after she left his room.”

Bits and pieces of the puzzle crashed down on him. In
momentary flashes they fell into place, leaving him breathless as the jumbled
picture in his mind began piecing itself together. Her broken wrist healed in
short order, and the cut across her knee was gone the next morning. He
remembered becoming ill in the car, thanks to Harmon’s obvious prior inability
to conquer Driver’s Ed.

It was clear now. He choked back a sob as he remembered. He’d
seen his mother that night, the moment he felt the warmth of Heaven’s palm on
his forehead. Instantly, his overwhelming nausea was no more.

Harmon and Hawk then shoved her into the backseat with a
dead man, when a normal human would have put her up front, away from the
macabre scene. An unmistakable feeling Bice was no longer dead washed over him.

Bice had told him in the study Heaven was different, without
telling him too much. He used carefully chosen words that day. Heaven was a
ticking time bomb for being discovered, and Harmon and Bice knew it all along.
They only wanted to protect her.

They knew sooner or later someone might find out the girl’s
secret. The two men had gone to great lengths to keep her mystery unsolved.
Now, his father lay in a coma all but brainwashed of the ordeal.

There was only one person left who knew too much.

Tommy stared at the physician, feeling his muscles grow
rigid and his knuckles go numb as he held the arms of the chair in a death
grip.

He would protect Heaven, at any cost.

* * *

Three days later Bice had not stirred.

His muscles were slowly becoming flaccid, his skin sallow
and pale. To make matters worse, he was loosing weight. His ribs were more
pronounced, his trousers covered skeleton-like legs and his lips were dry and
cracked.

Harmon and Heaven sat by him day and night.

Hawk and Bonita came and went, yet Harmon never offered to
tell either what truly happened that night. Neither pressed him.

Heaven refused to leave the ailing man’s side. She spoke to
him as if he could hear every word. Other times, she’d grasp his hand and
clutch it to her teary cheek. She often lay weeping against his chest,
listening to the sound of his weakened heartbeat.

Harmon watched silently. He knew if Bice didn’t wake soon,
he would never wake. The man would die of dehydration if he didn’t come around.
Maybe, he would die anyway. He’d toyed with the idea of putting him in a
hospital, but Heaven insisted to let him be.

He knew she was right. If he took Bice to the hospital, he’d
have a lot of explaining to do. He couldn’t even begin to sort things out, much
less be forced into the position of telling the tragic tale that had unfolded
on a night which should have been a fairytale.

They would take her away if he relented. If this were to
happen, he’d have no reason to exist.

But he couldn’t let Bice lay there and die. If he were not
back with the living by morning, he’d have no choice but to take him to the
hospital whether Heaven liked it or not, and suffer the consequences. He
sighed, as he slowly drifted into a restless sleep.

The clock above him ticked the hours away silently.

* * *

Tommy glanced at his watch. It was almost time for lunch break. He
hadn’t spoken to Heaven since after the Prom Friday night. Hell night.

His very first time to attend the Prom, his first time to
even have a date or a girl look at him for that matter, was nothing but searing
wreckage in his mind. A burned in memory of a fiery car on the bottom of a
desolate canyon. Searching for the body of his father as flames burned in the
distance. He shoved his books into his locker, and headed toward the lunch
room.

“Hey Tommy, do you want to sit with us?” A popular girl
asked.

“No, maybe next time.”

Her friend giggled. “He has eyes only for Heaven.”

He’d tried to call her three days straight. Her cell phone
rang endlessly each time,

finally clicking into a recording which said her mailbox was
full. He’d left her many endless messages deep into each night.

He blushed as he thought of one message in particular. A
message he desperately wished he could somehow reach through the airwaves and
pull out of her phone. He’d told her he loved her.

His face turned crimson as he thought of her reaction to
hearing that message. He was tired and worried about his father, and hadn’t
slept. He couldn’t have possibly meant it. But on the other hand maybe he did,
in a friend sort of way.

His father was awake now, mumbling and moaning about a girl
with aquamarine eyes. When the nurses asked him to clarify, he shook his head
in confusion and blurted out incomprehensible words on various medical
subjects, such as how to perform a rhinoplasty.

Tommy smiled as he thought of Ben. He was out of the
intensive ward now, and the two had spent an hour each day visiting. Ben would
be home soon, and back in school. The two made many plans, and had a lot to
look forward to.

And best of all, the strangest thing had happened when Dr.
White pressed him for details about Heaven.

The physician oddly fell victim to some sort of breakdown,
right in front of him. He’d simply told the man he’d seen his wife with another
man the night before, at a very cheap motel, in a very bad part of town. He
gave the pale physician a blow-by-blow account of the details, watching as the
man grew sickly green and fall in a faint to the floor.

The untold story of Heaven he would never hear. They carted
him away, and the last he heard the family was considering putting him in a
mental ward.

He glanced at his watch again. If he couldn’t reach her
soon, he would drive to the estate after school.

He couldn’t wait a minute longer to see his friend.

* * *

The clock ticked from somewhere in the distance, slowly waking him
with its rhythmic beat. He opened his eyes, and gazed about the room. A strange
room, but still oddly familiar.

Sunlight filtered through the window, yet he didn’t know if
it was a sunrise or a sunset. He didn’t know what day it was, or for that
matter, what month it was.

He gazed at his hands. Why, he didn’t know. They were still
there, attached to his arms, which were attached to his body. He carefully ran
his hands across his chest. He didn’t know why, but it was still there. He
heard a snore next to him, and gazed to the side of his bed.

A man with fiery hair lay asleep on a cot near him. He
struggled to remember who he might be. He blinked his eyes and studied the
stranger, trying to sort out a foggy memory. Ah, it was Harmon. Good old faint
over everything, eccentric and odd Harmon Steele.

He gazed beyond the sleeping musician. His eyes fell on a
big lumbering fellow asleep on a chair in the corner of the room. An empty
donut box rested neatly on his lap. He had graying-blonde hair, and feathers
hung from braids which framed his tired face. A rather peculiar fellow he was,
with massive arms the width of tree trunks.

He struggled deep inside, trying to put a name with the
face. Hawk, that was it. Hawk, the donut-loving bodyguard who fit right in with
their odd family.

His stare fell to the opposite side of his bed. He blinked
in surprise. An angel slept near him on a big chair, pillows and blankets were
neatly tucked around her. Her porcelain skin reminded him of his mother’s peach
cobbler, back in…back in…Philly, yes that was it, Philly. Beautiful
honey-blonde curls hung beyond her shoulders and framed her perfect doll-like
face.

He shook his head in confusion, and squinted at the
mysterious girl. He struggled inside, fighting to bring back a memory of whom
she could possibly be. He’d never before seen this angelic girl in his life.
Frustrated, he sat up to get a closer look, hoping to remember something about
her.