White Lies (3 page)

           
 
Her throat was so dry that speaking was
painful. "How can I possibly identify him?" she asked rawly.
"You
knew
 
I couldn't. You knew how he looks!" Payne
was watching her with sympathy. "I'm sorry, I know it's a shock. But we
need for you to try. You were married to Steve Crossfield. You know him better
than any other person on earth. Maybe there's some little detail you remember,
a scar or a mole, a birthmark. Anything. Take your time and look at him. I'll
be just outside."

           
 
He went out and closed the door behind him,
leaving her alone in the room with that motionless figure and the quiet beeping
of the monitors, the weak whistle of his breathing. Her hands knotted into
fists, and tears blurred her eyes again. Whether this man was Steve or not, a
pity so acute it was painful filled her. Somehow her feet carried her closer to
the bed. She carefully avoided the tubes and wires while never looking away
from his face—or as much of his face as she could see. Steve? Was this really
Steve?

           
 
She knew what Payne wanted. He hadn't actually
spelled it out, but he hadn't needed to. He wanted her to lift the sheet away
and study this man while he lay there unconscious and helpless, naked except for
the bandages over his wounds. He thought she would have a wife's intimate
knowledge of her husband's body, but five years is a long time. She could
remember Steve's grin, and the devilish sparkle in his chocolaty brown eyes,
but other details had long since faded from her mind.

           
 
It wouldn't matter to this man if she stripped
back the sheet and looked at him. He was unconscious; he might well die, even
now, with all these miracle machines hooked up to his body. He would never
know. And as Payne would say, she would be doing her country a service if she
could somehow identify this man as Steve Crossfield, or as definitely not.

           
 
She couldn't stop looking at him. He was so
badly hurt. How could anyone be injured this critically and still live? If he
were granted a lucid moment, right now, would he even want to live? Would he be
able to walk again? Use his hands? See? Think? Or would he take stock of his
injuries and tell the doctors,

           
 
"Thanks, guys, but I think I'll take my
chances at the Pearly Gates." But perhaps he had a tremendous will to
live. Perhaps that was what had kept him alive this long, an unconscious,
deep-seated will to
be
. Fierce
determination could move mountains.

           
 
Hesitantly she stretched out her hand and
touched his right arm, just above the bandages that covered his burns. His skin
was hot to the touch, and she jerked her fingers back in surprise. Somehow she
had thought he would be cold. This intense heat was another sign of how
brightly life still burned inside him, despite his stillness. Slowly her hand
returned to his arm, lightly resting on the smooth skin just below the inside
of his elbow, taking care not to disturb the IV needle that dripped a clear
liquid into a vein.

           
 
He was warm. He was alive.

           
 
Her heart was pounding in her chest, some
intense emotion welling up in her until she thought she would burst from the
effort of trying to control it. It staggered her to think of what he had been
through, yet he was still fighting, defying the odds, his spirit too fierce and
proud to just let go. If she could have, she would have suffered the pain in
his place.

           
 
And his body had been invaded enough. Needles
pierced his veins; wire and electrodes picked up and broadcast his every
heartbeat. As if he didn't have enough wounds already, the doctors had made
more to insert drainage tubes in his chest and side, and there were other
tubes, as well. Every day a host of strangers looked at him and treated him as
if he were nothing but a slab of meat, all to save his life.

           
 
But she wouldn't invade his privacy, not in
this manner. Modesty might not mean anything to him, but it was still his
choice to make.

           
 
All her attention was focused on him; nothing
else in the world existed in this moment except the man lying so still in the
hospital bed. Was this Steve?

           
 
Would she feel some sense of familiarity,
despite the disfiguring swelling and the bandages that swathed bun? She tried
to remember.

           
 
Had Steve been this muscular? Had his arms
been this thick, his chest this deep? He could have changed, gained weight,
done a lot of physical work that would have developed his shoulders and arms
more, so she couldn't go by that. Men got heavier in the chest as they matured.

           
 
His chest had been shaved. She looked at the
dark stubble of body hair. Steve had had chest hair, though not a lot of it.

           
 
His beard? She looked at his jaw, what she
could see of it, but his face was so swollen that she couldn't find anything
familiar. Even his lips were swollen. Something wet trickled down her cheek,
and in surprise she dashed her hand across her face. She hadn't even realized
she was crying.

           
 
Payne reentered the room and silently offered
her his handkerchief. When she had wiped her face he led her away from the
bedside, his arm warm and comforting around her waist, letting her lean on him.
"I'm sorry," he finally offered. "I know it isn't easy."

           
 
She shook her head, feeling like a fool for
breaking down like that, especially in light of what she had to tell him.
"I don't know. I'm sorry, but I can't tell if he's Steve, or not. I
just... can't."

           
 
"Do you think he could be?" Payne
asked insistently.

           
 
Jay rubbed her temples. "I suppose so. I
can't tell. There are so many bandages—"

           
 
"I understand. I know how difficult it
is. But I need something to tell my superiors. Was your husband that tall? Was
there anything at all familiar about him?"

           
 
If he understood, why did he keep pushing? Her
headache was getting worse by the second. "I just don't know!" she
cried. "I guess Steve is that tall, but it's hard to tell when he's lying
down. Steve has dark hair and brown eyes, but I can't even tell that much about
this man!"

           
 
Payne looked down at her. "It's on his
medical sheet," he said quietly.

           
 
"Brown hair and brown eyes."

           
 
For a moment the import of that didn't
register; then her eyes widened. She hadn't felt any sense of recognition for
the man at all, but she was still dazed by the storm of emotion he had caused
in her: pity, yes, but also awe, that he was still alive and fighting, and an
almost staggering respect for the determination and sheer guts he must have.

           
 
Very faintly, her face white, she said,
"Then he must be Steve, mustn't he?" A flash of relief crossed
Payne's face, then was gone before she could be certain it was there. He
nodded. "I'll notify our people that you've verified his identity. He's
Steve Crossfield."

           
 
When Jay awoke the next morning she lay very
still in the bed, staring around the unfamiliar hotel room and trying to orient
herself. The events of the previous day were mostly a blur, except for the
crystal-clear memory she had of the injured man in the hospital. Steve. That
man was Steve.

           
 
She should have recognized him. Even though it
had been five years, she had once loved him. Something about him should have
been familiar, despite the disfiguring bruises and swelling. An odd feeling of
guilt assailed her, though she knew it was ridiculous, but it was as if she had
let bun down somehow, reduced nun to the level of being too unimportant in her
life for her to remember how he looked.

           
 
Grimacing, Jay got out of bed. There she went
again, letting things matter too much to her. Steve had constantly told her to
lighten up, and his tone had sometimes been full of impatience. That was
another area where they had been incompatible. She was too intense, too
involved with everyday life and the world around her, while Steve had skated
blithely on the surface.

           
 
She was free to return to New York that
morning, but she was reluctant to do so. It was only Saturday; there was no
hurry as long as she returned in time to go to work Monday morning. She didn't
want to sit in her apartment all weekend long and brood about being unemployed,
and she wanted to see Steve again. That seemed to be what Payne wanted, too. He
hadn't mentioned making arrangements for her return to New York.

           
 
She had been so exhausted that for once she
had slept deeply, and as a result the shadows beneath her eyes weren't as dark
as they usually were. She stared into the bathroom mirror, wondering if being
fired might have been a blessing in disguise. The way she had been pushing herself
had been hard on her health, burning away weight she couldn't afford to lose,
drawing the skin tightly over her facial bones so that she looked both haggard
and emaciated, especially without makeup. She made a face at herself in the
mirror. She'd never been a beauty and never would be, but she had once been
pretty. Her dark blue eyes and swath of sleek, heavy, golden-honey-brown hair
were her best features, though the rest of her face could be described as
ordinary.

           
 
What would Steve say if he could see her now?
Would he be disappointed, and bluntly say so?

           
 
Why couldn't she get him out of her mind? It
was natural to be concerned about him, to feel sharp sympathy because of his
terrible injuries, but she couldn't stop herself from wondering what he would
think, what he would say, about her. Not the Steve he had been before, that
charming but unreliable will-o'-the-wisp, but the man he was now: harder,
stronger, with the fierce will to survive that had kept him alive in the face
of overwhelming odds. What would that man think of her? Would he still want
her?

           
 
The thought made her face flame, and she
jerked away from the mirror to turn on the shower. She must be going mad! He
was an invalid. Even now, it wasn't by any means certain that he would survive,
despite his fighting nature. And even if he did, he might not function as well
as he had before. The surgery to save his sight might not have worked; they
wouldn't know until the bandages came off. He might have brain damage. He might
not be able to walk, talk or feed himself.

           
 
Helplessly she felt hot tears begin to slide
down her cheeks again. Why should she cry for him now? Why couldn't she stop
crying for him? Every tune she thought of him she started crying, which was
ridiculous, when she hadn't even been able to recognize him.

           
 
Payne was calling for her at ten, so she
forced herself to stop crying and get ready. She managed that with plenty of
time to spare, then found, surprisingly, that she was hungry. She usually
didn't eat breakfast, sustaining herself with an endless supply of coffee until
lunch, when her stomach would be burning and she wouldn't be able to eat much.
But already the strain of her job was fading away, and she wanted food.

           
 
She ordered breakfast from room service and
received it in a startlingly short length of time. Falling on the tray like a
famine victim, she devoured the omelet and toast in record time; when Payne
knocked on her door, she had been finished for almost half an hour.

           
 
Without seeming to, Payne studied her face
with sharp eyes that noted and analyzed every detail. She'd been crying. This
was really getting to her, and though that was exactly what they wanted, he
still regretted that she had to be hurt. She also looked immeasurably better
this morning, with a bit of color in her face. Her marvelous eyes were bigger
and brighter than he had remembered, but part of that was the result of her
tears. He only hoped she wouldn't have to shed too many more.

           
 
"I've already called to check on his
condition," he reported, taking her arm.

           
 
"Good news. His vital signs are
improving. He's still unconscious, but his brain waves are increasing in
activity and the doctors are more optimistic than they've been. He's really
done better than anyone expected."

           
 
She didn't point out that they had expected
him to die, so anything was better than that. She didn't want to think about
how close he had come to dying. In some way she didn't understand, Steve had
become too important to her during those minutes when she had stood beside his
bed and touched his arm. The big white naval hospital was much busier that
morning than it had been the night before, and two different guards stood at
the doors to the ICU wing where Steve's room was located. Again they seemed to
know Payne on sight. Jay wondered how many times he had been here to see Steve,
and why he would have felt it necessary to be there at all. As he had that
morning, he could have checked on Steve's condition by phone. Whatever Steve
had gotten himself into must be extremely important, and Payne wanted to be on
hand the instant he recovered consciousness, if ever.

           
 
Payne left her to enter the room on her own,
saying he wanted to talk to someone. Jay nodded absently, her attention already
focused on Steve. She pushed open the door and walked in, leaving Payne
standing in the hall practically in midsentence. A wry, faintly regretful smile
touched his mouth as he looked at the closed door; then he turned and walked
briskly down the hall. Jay stared at the man in the bed. Steve. Now that she
was seeing him again, it was a little hard to accept that he was Steve. She had
known Steve as vibrant, burning with energy; he was so still now that it threw
her off balance. He was still in the same position he'd been in the night
before; the machines were still quietly humming and beeping, and fluids were
still being fed into his veins through needles. The strong scent of hospital
antiseptic burned her nose, and suddenly she wondered if, in some corner of his
mind, he was aware of the smell. Could he hear people talking, though he was
unable to respond?

           
 
She walked to the bed and touched his arm as
she had the night before. The heat of his skin tingled against her fingertips
despite the coolness of the controlled temperature. The mummylike expanse of
bandages robbed him of individuality, and his lips were so swollen they looked
more like caricatures than the lips of the man she had once kissed, loved,
married, fought with and finally divorced. Only the hot bare skin of his arm
made him real to her. Did he feel anything? Was he aware of her touch?

           
 
"Steve?" she whispered, her voice
trembling. It felt so funny to talk to a motionless mummy, knowing that he was
probably so deep in his coma that he was unaware of everything, and that even
if by some miracle he could hear her, he wouldn't be able to respond. But even
knowing all that, something inside compelled her to try. "I.. .it's
Jay." Sometimes he'd called her Jaybird, and when he'd really wanted to
aggravate her he'd called her Janet Jean. Her nickname had evolved when she'd
been a very young child. Her parents had called her Janet Jean, but her elder
brother, Wilson, had shortened it to J. J., which had naturally become Jay. By
the time she'd started school, her name was, irrevocably, Jay.

           
 
"You've been hurt," she told Steve,
still stroking his arm. "But you're going to be all right. Your legs have
been broken, and they're both in casts. That's why you can't move them. They
have a tube in your throat, helping you to breathe, and that's why you can't
talk. You can't see because you have bandages over your eyes. Don't worry about
anything. They're taking good care of you here." Was it a lie that he was
going to be all right? Yet she didn't know what else to tell him. If he could
hear her, she had to reassure him, not give him something else to worry about.

           
 
Clearing her throat, she began telling him
about the past five years, what she'd been doing since the divorce. She even
told him about being fired, and how badly she'd wanted to punch Farrell Wordlaw
right in the nose. How badly she still wanted to punch him in the nose.

           
 
The
voice was calm and infinitely tender. He didn't understand the words,
because unconsciousness still wrapped his
mind in layers of blackness, but he
heard
the voice, felt it, like something warm touching his skin. It made him feel
less alone, that tiny, dim contact.

           
 
Something
hard and vital in him focused on the contact, yearning toward it,
forcing him upward out of the blackness,
even though he sensed the fanged
monsters
that waited for him, waiting to tear at his flesh with hot knives and
brutal teeth. He would have to endure that
before he could reach the voice, and
he
was very weak. He might not make it. Yet the voice reached out to him, pulling
at him like a magnet, lifting him out of
the deep senselessness that had held him.

           
 
"I remember the doll I got for Christmas
when I was four years old," Jay said, talking automatically now. Her voice
was low and dreamy. "She was soft and floppy, like a real baby, and she
had curly brown hair and big brown eyes, with inch-long lashes that closed when
I laid her down. I named her Chrissy, for my very best friend in the world. I
lugged that doll around until she was so ragged she looked like a miniature bag
lady. I slept with her, I put her on the chair beside me when I ate, and I rode
miles around and around the house on my tricycle with her on the seat in front
of me. Then I began to grow up, and I lost interest in Chrissy. I put her on
the shelf with my other dolls and forgot about her. But the first time I saw
you, Steve, I thought, 'He's got Chrissy eyes.' That's what I used to call
brown eyes when I was little and didn't know my colors. You have Chrissy
eyes."

           
 
His breathing seemed to be slower, deeper. She
couldn't be certain, but she thought there was a different rhythm to the rise
and fall of his chest. The sound of his breathing whistled in and out through
the tube in his throat. Her fingers gently rubbed his arm, maintaining the
small contact even though something inside her actually hurt from touching his
skin.

           
 
"I almost told you a couple of times that
you have Chrissy eyes, but I didn't think you'd like it." She laughed, the
sound warm in the room filled with impersonal, humming machines. "You were
always so protective of your macho image. A devil-may-care adventurer shouldn't
have Chrissy eyes, should he?" Suddenly his arm twitched, and the movement
so startled her that she jerked her hand away, her face pale. Except for
breathing, it was the first time he'd moved, even though she knew it was
probably an involuntary muscle spasm. Her eyes flew to his face but there was
nothing to see there. Bandages covered the upper two-thirds of his head, and
his bruised lips were immobile. Slowly she reached out and touched his arm
again, but he lay still under her touch, and after a moment she resumed talking
to him, rambling on as she dragged up childhood memories.

           
 
Frank Payne silently opened the door and
stopped in his tracks, listening to her low murmurings. She still stood by the
bed; hell, she probably hadn't moved an inch from the man's side, and she had
been in here—he checked his watch—

           
 
almost three hours. If she had been the guy's
wife, he could have understood it, but she was his ex-wife, and she was the one
who had ended the marriage. Yet there she stood, her attention locked on him as
if she were
willing
him to get
better.