The Hidden Years (47 page)

She had gone back to university at the start of the
academic year, determined to catch up on her studies and determined,
too, that no one,
no one
, would ever hurt her
through her vulnerability again, that never again would she allow
herself to care so deeply for anyone that they could hurt her.

She had also gone back to university determined to get her
Arts degree and to make herself independent from her mother, to cut
herself off from her and shut her out of her life, so that never, ever
again could she interfere in it the way she had done over Scott. Daniel
by this time had left Alcester, and she had felt relieved that she did
not have to see him again.

Sage had pushed to the far reaches of her mind her last
confrontation scene with Daniel. The wounds from that encounter were
still too raw for her to want to risk opening them again by any further
contact with Scott's so-called 'friend'.

Daniel
hadn't in fact seen Sage again for some days after their last
disastrous meeting and it was a telephone call from the hospital that
alerted him to what she was doing.

He frowned as he listened to the message he was given, and
then, picking up his jacket and his keys, headed for his car.

He felt sorry for her, and wondered a little at what
manner of man Scott's father was, not to allow her these last few hours
with his son.

As far as he knew he was the only one who had guessed that
it was her temper that had provoked the accident; he could well
understand that Lewis McLaren would want to take his son home, that he
might not particularly have wanted his son and heir falling in love
with an unknown English girl, but to banish her from Scott's bedside,
especially when within a very short space of time he would be putting
so many thousands upon thousands of miles between them anyway, seemed
unnecessarily cruel.

The sister who had rung from the hospital had explained to
him that Sage was positively haunting the place, that she had begged
and pleaded with them to be allowed to see Scott, even though she knew
he was still in a coma and unlikely to respond to her.

They had apparently had to remove her forcibly several
times but even this hadn't deterred her, and now it seemed the hospital
staff were becoming concerned for her health.

Knowing from his visits that he, Daniel, was one of
Scott's closest friends, they were appealing to him in the hope that he
would be able to make Sage see reason.

Scott's father had made it plain that Sage was not to be
allowed to see his son and, since Scott could not speak for himself as
yet, the older man's wishes had to be obeyed.

There had been an accident in the high street—a
lorry had overturned disgorging its load. Luckily no one had been hurt,
but there was a considerable delay to the traffic, causing Daniel to
reflect as he waited for the congestion to clear that with the
projected increase in road traffic, the majority of Britain's small
towns, with their narrow streets, would encounter severe congestion
problems, which would eventually result in a good deal of replanning
and new roads. Good news for companies like his father's…
good news ultimately for him as well.

Eventually the road cleared and he was able to get through
but it had taken him longer to reach the hospital than he had
anticipated and he half expected to discover that Sage had gone.

He went straight to the ward, where the sister, a pretty
and very efficient-looking girl in her mid-twenties, gave him a warm
smile and explained that Sage was in the waiting-room.

'And Scott?' Daniel asked her.

She shook her head.

'He's still in a coma…there have been
occasional signs that he's starting to come out of it… His
father's very anxious to get him home. In fact he's made arrangements
for them both to leave tomorrow… He's chartered a specially
equipped plane…' Her eyebrows rose. 'Nice if you can afford
it.'

Acting on impulse, Daniel asked quietly, 'I don't suppose
there's any chance of Sage seeing him, just for a few minutes? After
all, if he's leaving so soon…'

The ward sister looked at him.

'Well, it does seem as though Mr McLaren has relented. He
has said that she can have five minutes with him but that a nurse must
be in attendance. Only five minutes, mind, and it might be an idea if
you could accompany her.'

Thanking her, Daniel headed for the swing doors and the
corridor. He found Sage sitting alone in an airless, depressing cube of
a room with no windows, furnished basically with several chairs and a
table heaped high with out-of-date magazines.

When he walked in she was staring blankly at the wall. His
heart somersaulted and then stood still. He had never seen such a
dramatic change in anyone.

All the life, all the colour seemed to have drained out of
her. She had lost more weight… too much—where she
had been slender she was now haggard. She raised one hand defensively
to her face as she saw him and he was shocked by the thinness of her
wrist. He suspected he could have circled it easily with his thumb and
forefinger.

She was dressed all in black, whether deliberately or by
accident he had no way of knowing, but the sombreness of her clothes
added a shockingly clown-like falsity to her appearance, as though it
was impossible for anyone to actually look as intensely unhappy as she
so patently was. Her suffering was all the more shocking for being so
unhidden; he could well imagine how others would turn away from it,
frightened or angered by its intensity. In this world it was considered
self-indulgent, immoral almost to allow one's feelings to show so
clearly, to the discomfort of others.

She wasn't crying, but her eyes were red-rimmed, as much
from lack of sleep as anything else, he suspected, and when she looked
at him they were without their usual fire, without fight, without
hope… without anything, he recognised.

'Sage.'

When he said her name she focused briefly on him but with
so little reaction that for a moment he actually feared that her grief
might have even affected her mentally.

'Daniel. What are you doing here?' Her voice was slow and
heavy, apathetic and without inflection, like someone heavily
tranquillised.

'The hospital rang me…they're very concerned
about you. You've got to stop doing this,' he told her when there was
no response, wondering angrily where her family were, her friends. Did
they know what was happening to her? They must do… and if so
why weren't they doing something to help her? Or did they simply not
care?

He waited for her to explode with anger and frustration,
to fly at him physically and verbally as she had done before, but
shockingly she stayed mute, simply looking at him with vacant, uncaring
eyes until he said quietly, 'It seems that Scott's father has relented
and said that you can have five minutes to say goodbye to Scott and I
have to stay with you… But Sage…'

She wasn't listening. She was standing up and half
walking, half running towards him, her face suddenly transformed with a
happiness so brilliant, so luminescent that it was almost frightening.

He caught up with her as she reached the door, his hand
closing round her arm, his mind wincing with pain as he felt its
thinness.

'No scenes, Sage,' he warned her, keeping hold of her.
'Scott is very sick. He's still in a coma, so he won't recognise you.
You know his father is having him flown back to Australia tomorrow?'

She nodded. Her hands suddenly twisted together as she
turned to him and spoke for the first time. 'It won't make any
difference. I love him and he loves me…nothing can change
that. Once he's well he'll come back for me, you'll see…'

Scott was in a private room, a nurse discreetly in
attendance when Daniel opened the door and ushered Sage in.

He felt the shudder that went through her as she stared at
the bed. Scott was still unconscious, his body connected to a vast
battery of medical equipment.

A cassette recorder was playing silently in the corner,
and the nurse explained briefly, 'We're playing him messages from his
father… that's why he's wearing ear-plugs.'

'Scott's father said you could have five minutes with him,
Sage,' he reminded her, but if she heard him she gave no indication of
having done so.

All her attention was concentrated on the bed, as she
leaned over Scott, the look on her face as she gently touched his arm a
mixture of youthful anguish and almost maternal love.

'How is he?' she asked the nurse without looking away from
Scott.

'Still very poorly,' she told her.

'Will he… will he get better?'

'It's too early to say yet. He's very strong physically,
and young. We've had patients with far more stacked against them who
have made remarkable recoveries.'

There was a chair beside the bed. Daniel pulled it back a
little, inviting Sage to sit in it. She did so, and he noticed how much
she was trembling. She reached out over the bed, smoothing the already
immaculate cover, and although he didn't know why something about the
awkward, tender little gesture brought a huge lump to Daniel's throat.

He wanted to take hold of her and to go on holding her, to
give her all the love, all the security he knew instinctively she
craved, and the reason he knew she craved it was because he recognised
within Sage the same doubts, the same vulnerabilities, the same
loneliness that had so often plagued him.

And yet why should he feel like this about her? They were
worlds apart in every way. Her life had been completely different from
his. There had been no John Ryan in her life, no bullying cousins, no
taunts, no feelings of not fitting in, of being different.

And yet still he couldn't stop his thoughts from focusing
on her. Her head was bowed, her hair parting to reveal the vulnerable
nape of her neck. Her skin there was white and fine, the bones of her
spine far too sharp beneath her skin. The radiant vivacity that had
made her such a beauty had gone and yet strangely he found her almost
as desirable now as he had done before, even if now his desire was
muted by compassion and concern. Now if he were to make love to her it would be with
tenderness, his possession gentle and coaxing, rather than with the
fierce intensity which had burned in him before.

She was crying, he realised, watching the silent glissade
of tears fall on to her hands.

The nurse coughed warningly and glanced at her watch.

Daniel touched Sage lightly on her shoulder, but before he
could speak she reached down and gently removed the ear-plugs from
Scott's ears and before either of them could stop her she was
whispering pleadingly to him, 'Scott… please, please get
well… I need you so much. You mustn't leave me… I
can't live without you. Scott… Scott.'

The nurse was frowning, moving closer to the bed, and,
anticipating her next action, Daniel took hold of Sage, firmly pulling
her back, telling her quietly as he pulled her to her feet, 'That's
enough, Sage… It's time to leave now…'

As they all moved towards the door, unobserved by any of
them, the still figure in the bed made a small seeking movement, a
frown furrowing his forehead as though he was searching the silence.

As they left the room Sage kept her head down, trying to
conceal the fact that she was still crying. Tactfully Daniel affected
not to notice, looking away from her.

There was a man standing in the shadows of the corridor
watching them. Daniel's mouth compressed a little as he recognised
Scott's father. He was staring at Sage… What was he doing,
checking to make sure she didn't overstay her allowed five minutes? He
could understand the older man's pain, but he still wasn't going to
allow him to vent it on Sage, although why on earth he should feel this
urge to protect her he certainly had no idea. One thing he did know,
and that was that she wouldn't have thanked him for it.

She looked so ill that Daniel half expected her to faint
before he could get her outside and inside his car.

He had to fasten the seatbelt for her, though. She had
stopped crying, but in a brief moment of forget fulness he looked
directly into her eyes and saw such a terrible hell of pain and anguish
there that he felt as guilty as though he had stripped the clothes from
her body and looked openly at its nakedness.

He took her back with him to his home, as he had the night
of the accident, not knowing what else to do with her. She wasn't the
suicidal type, or at least he had never thought of her as such, but he
didn't want to leave her alone. And besides, if he kept her under his
roof where he could keep an eye on her, it would stop her heading back
to the hospital.

He would put her in Scott's room again, he decided, as he
parked his car outside the small narrow house, and went round to open
her door for her and help her out.

The apathetic lack of reaction to him disturbed him, and
once he had got her inside, even though he told himself it was not his
business and he ought not to get involved, he rang his own doctor, and
asked him to call round.

'She's suffering very badly from shock,' the doctor told
him three hours later. 'How long did you say it was since the accident?'

Daniel repeated what he had already told him.

'Mmm… well, I've given her a tranquillising
shot for now. She'll probably sleep for twenty-four hours, which won't
do her any harm. She needs to rest and eat. The rest we can
arrange—the eating…'

The tranquilliser the doctor had given her did its work,
and Sage was deeply asleep when the private jet Lewis McLaren had hired
took off with its passengers. Her body, craving sleep and a chance to
restore its strength, slept well into the next day and night.

Daniel, who had been checking on her every couple of
hours, found her awake at midnight when he went up to look at her.