скачать книгу бесплатно
The woman’s vital signs had never faltered once. They’d remained strong throughout the lengthy procedure, as if her will to live was not to be snuffed out by whatever curve life and the road had thrown at her.
He wished all his patients were that resilient.
Weary, hungry, relieved, Reese stripped off his surgical mask and cap for the second time that day. Now that this newest crisis was over, he became aware again of the deep pinched feeling in his gut. It felt as if his stomach was stuck to his spine. He still hadn’t had a chance to take in anything more substantial than a stale candy bar.
This time, he promised himself, he didn’t care if the paramedics brought in Santa Claus and his eight tiny reindeer laid out on nine stretchers, he was determined to go get something to eat before he literally passed out from hunger.
At this point freshness would no longer play a part in his selection. He didn’t care what he ultimately got to eat. His only criterion was that it remain relatively inert long enough for him to consume it.
Even the bran muffin was beginning to sound pretty tempting.
But first, he knew, he had to go out and face the sentry out in the hall. The man who had remained steadfast throughout the entire procedure, standing there like an ancient gargoyle statue, guarding the door and watching the surgeon’s every move. Reese hadn’t had to look up to know that the deep-set brown eyes were taking in everything that was being done in the small, brightly lit operating room.
“How—” The single word leaped out at him as soon as Reese pushed open the door.
“She’s fine,” Reese said quickly, cutting the man off. He didn’t want to stand around for any more threats or whatever it was that the man had in mind now that the operation was over. “Like I said, she had some internal bleeding, but we found all the openings and sutured them. She had a couple of fractured ribs as well—”
Wallace stopped him right there. “Fractured?” he demanded. “You didn’t mention them before.”
Reese chose to ignore the accusatory note in the other man’s voice. Instead, he cut him some slack. It was pretty clear that they were both a little over-wrought, he thought.
“It could have been a great deal worse. The paramedic who brought her in said her car was totaled.” Reese saw guilt wash over the wide face. Had that somehow been his fault? he wondered.
“Yeah, it was.” And then, just as suddenly, the guilt left his eyes. His expression turned stony. “How soon can she be moved?”
“Why don’t we wait and see how she does first?” Reese calmly suggested. The next twenty-four hours would decide that. “In the meantime, maybe you should go to admitting and give them any information you can about her. Administration has forms to keep your mind busy for a while.”
“I don’t need to have my mind kept busy,” the man snapped.
“But I do.” With that, Reese turned on his heel and began to walk away.
“Hey, Doc.”
For a moment, Reese debated just continuing to walk away. There was no sense in encouraging any further confrontation. But if there was going to be another scene, he might as well get it over with now.
Suppressing a sigh, Reese half turned and looked at the larger man. “Yes?”
There was what passed as a half smile on the man’s face. He suddenly didn’t look the least bit threatening, but more like an overgrown puppy whose limbs were too big for his body.
“Thanks.”
Surprised, it took Reese half a beat to recover. He nodded. “It’s what I do.”
Mercifully, Reese’s stomach had the good grace to wait until he was well down the hall before it let out with a fearsome rumbling.
Each eyelid felt as if it was weighed down with its own full-size anvil.
Either that, or someone had applied glue to her lashes.
Maybe they should apply the same compound to the rest of her, London thought giddily, because she felt as if she had shattered into a million pieces.
A million broken, hurting pieces.
Breathing was almost as much of a challenge as trying to pry her eyes open. It certainly hurt a great deal more.
And right now there was a herd of drunken African elephants playing tag and bumping into one another in her head.
London heard a deep, wrenching moan echoing all around her, engulfing her. It sounded vaguely familiar.
It took her a beat to realize that the noise had come from her.
The pain was making her groan. And why did it feel as if there was a steel cage wrapped around her upper torso?
London opened her eyes or thought she did. The only thing that seemed to be filtering through was white. Lots of white.
Heaven? It didn’t feel hot, so it couldn’t be hell.
No, it felt cool, very cool.
Was she dead?
Where was the light everyone had always talked about? The light that was supposed to lead her to a better place. Or was that just a lie, a myth like unconditional parental love?
She thought she heard a male voice.
St. Peter?
Lucifer?
Batman?
Her mind jumped around from topic to topic like a frog attempting to reach safe ground using lily pads that kept sinking beneath his weight.
The male voice spoke again. This time she heard real words. A question. “How are you feeling?”
Was he talking to her?
With one last massive effort, London concentrated on pushing her lids open. This time she succeeded and saw—a man.
Not Batman, Superman, she amended. No cape, no blue tights that showed off rows of muscles, but definitely Superman. Right down to the chiseled chin and blue-black hair falling into brilliant blue eyes.
She swallowed. Her throat felt like rawhide. He’d asked her something. What? London searched the vacant caverns that comprised her mind and finally found the words, then laced them together.
Feelings, he’d asked something about feelings. No, wait, he’d asked her how was she feeling, yes, that was it.
It was a damn stupid question. How did she look? If she looked half as bad as she felt, Superman had his answer without her saying a word.
“How are you feeling?” Reese repeated for the third time.
He bent over close to her so she could hear him. He had been in twice before, only to find her still sleeping. This time, as he’d checked her chart, he saw her eyes flutter slightly. She was trying to come to.
London took a breath before answering. It felt like someone had shot an arrow into her ribs. “Like…I’ve been…run over…by…a…truck.”
Was that breathy, scratchy voice coming out of her? It didn’t sound like her, London thought. She tried to read Superman’s face and see his reaction to the pitiful noise. Was he recoiling in horror?
No, his eyes were kind. They were smiling.
She liked that. Smiling eyes.
“Not quite a truck,” Reese told her. “They tell me a pole did this.”
The single word brought with it a scene from somewhere within her brain. She and her parents, sitting at a long, white table, watching blond girls in native costumes with wide skirts, black corsets, red boots and wreaths of flowers in their hair, dancing.
Poland, her parents and she had been in Poland.
Poland, the last place her mother had been before she couldn’t be anyplace at all.
“Pole?” she echoed. She didn’t remember hitting a Polish national.
Reese saw the confusion in her face and wondered if she was suffering a bout of amnesia. Her airbag had failed to deploy and she’d hit her head against the steering wheel. Amnesia wasn’t unheard of.
“The one you tried to transplant by running into,” he told her gently, taking her pulse. The rhythm was strong. She had a good constitution. Lucky for her. “The paramedic almost wept over your Jaguar.”
The words were filtering into her brain without encountering matching images. Her jaguar. A pet cat? No, car, her car. The man was talking about her car.
Oh God, now she remembered. It all came rushing back at her as fast as she had raced her car to get away from Wallace.
She’d lost control and totaled her beautiful car.
London groaned, the loss hitting her between the eyes—the only spot on her body that didn’t hurt.
She raised her eyes to look at him as he released her wrist. “Is it totaled?”
“Like an accordion.”
The paramedic, Jaime, was still shaking his head and talking about the colossal waste of metal to anyone within earshot. He drove a small, secondhand foreign car whose odometer had gone full circle twice, and he looked upon the other vehicle as if it was a gift bestowed by the gods. He periodically drooled over Reese’s Corvette.
Reese studied London’s pale complexion for a moment. There was a bandage on her forehead where flesh had met wheel, but apart from that, she was a gorgeous woman, possibly the most perfect specimen he had ever seen. She could have been forever disfigured. Why had she risked losing all that in the blink of an eye?
“What were you trying to prove?”
“Nothing,” she answered quietly. She would have turned her head away if the effort hadn’t hurt so much. So she just looked at him steadily, meeting his probing gaze. “Just looking for space.”
He laughed shortly under his breath. The woman had intelligent eyes, and she certainly didn’t look stupid, but then, looks could be deceiving.
“You very nearly got it. Six feet by six by six,” Reese told her, pausing to write a notation in her chart. “A final space in the family plot.”
Beside her mother, she couldn’t help thinking. Maybe it would be peaceful there and she could finally find out who she was.
A flicker of rebellion rose from some faraway quarter that hadn’t been banged around relentlessly, and London looked at her intrusive surgeon with as much defiance as she could muster.
“A lecture? Save your…breath, doctor…I’ve heard…it all.”
She’d certainly heard more than her share. From her father, from Wallace, although she preferred the latter because at least Wallace was her friend. Her father, well, she didn’t really know what Ambassador Mason Merriweather was or how he figured into her life, other than to impose restrictions on her for as long as she could remember. Even Wallace and the other two bodyguards, Kelly and Andrews were part of her life because of him.
“Not a lecture, a fact,” Reese told her mildly. He slipped her chart back into its slot at the foot of her bed.
She was tired, very tired and there was this wide, soft, inviting region just waiting for her to slip into it. Its pull was becoming irresistible, but London struggled to ask one more question.
“Did you do it?”
The question caught him off guard. Reese looked at her. She appeared to be drifting off again. In another moment she’d be asleep, and the keeper at the gate would have to continue to wait before he would have the opportunity to talk with her.
“Do what?” Reese asked.
Every word was a struggle. Her mind was shutting down again. “Save…my…life.”
What he had done was utilize his training, his education and his instincts, not to mention the up-to-date technology that a hospital like Blair Memorial had to offer. There was no doubt in his mind that twenty years ago she would already have been dead. But even now, with all this at his disposal, there remained at bottom the x-factor. That tiny bit of will that somehow triumphs over death.
He allowed himself a small smile, though he doubted she could even detect it. “You saved your own life. I just put the pieces together.”
“Modest.” The single word came out on a labored breath. “Unusual…for…a…man.”
He began to say something in rebuttal, but it seemed that at least for now, his side wasn’t to be heard. His patient had fallen asleep again.
Just as well, Reese thought, standing at the foot of the bed and regarding her for one long moment. He didn’t feel like getting embroiled in a debate right now.
Not even if the opposing team looked like an angel. An angel, he mused, slipping out of the room, who had gotten banged up falling to Earth.
Very quietly he closed the door behind him.
Chapter 3
The moment Reese stepped out of the ICU, he found himself accosted by the big man who had stood vigil in the hallway all this time. He’d been told that Wallace Grant had been hovering around the nurses’ station ever since London had been brought out of recovery. To his credit, he had tried not to get in anyone’s way.
The question in the man’s eyes telegraphed itself instantly to Reese.
“She’s asleep,” Reese told him.
Wallace frowned as he sighed, frustration getting the better of him. He’d already put in a call to London’s father. The ambassador was scheduled for a meeting with a highly placed official in the Spanish government, but he’d canceled it and was catching the first flight from Madrid to LAX that his secretary could book for him. Wallace wanted to have some good news to give the man who signed his paychecks when he arrived.
Laying a large paw on Reese’s shoulder to hold him in place, Wallace blocked his exit.
“Is that normal?” he wanted to know. “I mean, shouldn’t she be waking up around now?”
Reese knew for a fact that the man had been looking in on London for his allotted five minutes every hour on the hour. The day nurse had told him so. But it was obvious that each time he did, he’d found the young woman unconscious.
“She did,” Reese told him. Surprise and relief washed over the other man’s face, followed by a look of suspicion. Wallace was a man who took nothing at face value. “For about five minutes,” Reese elaborated. “She’s going to be in and out like that for most of the day and part of tomorrow.” Very deliberately he removed Reese’s hand from his shoulder. “Maybe you should go home.”
