Читать книгу Against The Odds - Laura Drake - Страница 9

CHAPTER TWO

HOPE SANDERSON WOKE to her second worst nightmare.

A gray-haired woman in a scrub cap so pink it hurt, leaned over her, calling her name.

“Hope, how are you feeling? It’s good to have you back. You’ve been shot. You’ve just come out of surgery.”

Dopey and disoriented, Hope battled the cotton in her head. “Wah?”

“You’re going to be fine.” Her eyes crinkled in a mask-covered smile. “Sleep now.”

When the cotton expanded, Hope sunk into its soft embrace.

Until, sometime later, a piercing siren stabbed her brain.

She’s crashing! Bring the cart!

There was nothing for her to do, so Hope floated away again.

The cotton released her to the sound of squeaky shoes on waxed floors. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but the window in the corner was a blacked-out rectangle. Monitors hovered over the bed, their snaking wires and tubes disappearing into several of her body parts. She shifted her arms, legs. All there, thank God. When she lifted her head, her guts bellowed, Stop—stop—stop!

With the pain came the memories, rushing at her: her finger on the alarm button, the evil black eye at the end of the gun barrel, blood and brains trickling down a cream-colored wall. Who shot me? The cops or the robber? She moaned. Did it matter?

The squeaking shoes got closer, and a nurse’s face appeared over her. “Try not to move. You had a bullet nick your stomach and take out your spleen. You gave us a scare, but you’re going to be okay.” She turned over Hope’s palm and put something in it. “The doctors repaired the damage, but it’s going to hurt like a mama bear for a while. Just push the button on the end of that, and it’ll dispense pain medication.”

Right now Hope didn’t feel strong enough to stand up to the pain—in her body or her mind. She pushed the button and the cotton came rushing to envelop her again.

When she woke, it was daylight. There were fewer machines, fewer tubes than before. She found if she didn’t move, her stomach only felt as though a smoking coal was burning its way through her gut. Her throat felt as if she’d inhaled desiccant.

“Well, look who’s awake.”

She carefully turned her head. Her boss, Andrew Horner, rose from the guest chair and stepped to her bedside. And here she lay in a too short, too skimpy hospital gown. Imagining what her mother would have said, she pulled the covers over her in spite of the knife in her guts. Nothing she could do about her bare face, or lack of suitable underwear.

His tie fell across her when he leaned in. “How do you feel?” His bushy eyebrows drew together, at odds with his thin, receding hairline. “We’ve been so worried.”

“W-water,” she croaked.

He lifted a cup from the tray hovering over her legs. “They say you can only have ice chips.” He fumbled with the spoon, managed to snag a few chips and dropped them in her mouth.

“Hmm.” The cold seeped into her parched tissues and down her raw throat. She wanted more, but asking her boss for personal maintenance was embarrassing—for her, and judging by the red spreading up from his collar, him, too. “The robbers—”

“Are dead. You’re safe.”

“What day is it?”

“Friday. You’ve been out for forty-eight hours.” He laid a damp hand over hers.

Hard to believe that only a few days ago, her boss had been transparently working up the nerve to ask her out. It now seemed harder to believe she’d considered accepting. Andrew (never Andy) was an efficient district manager, a good boss and a nice man. Middle-aged, middle management, middle—everything. They fit together like chalk dust and dust bunnies. Easily overlooked. Ordinary. Pedestrian.

She flexed her elbow, pulling her hand from under his. “Is the bank open for business?”

“Yes, of course. They haven’t yet replaced the front window, but the cleaning crew was able to clean the—oh. Sorry.”

She forced her face muscles to relax. “I appreciate your visiting, Andrew, but I’m really tired, and...”

“Of course.” Worried eyes scanned her face. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“Could you bring my laptop from the office? I have the monthly reports almost done.”

“I submitted the reports yesterday. You’re not to even think about anything work related until you get home.” He patted her hand. “You’re a hero you know. It’s all over the news.”

Some hero.

When he’d gone, she listened to the hospital whispers, trying to get her head straight. Things felt different; as though the bullet that ripped through her guts had kept going, tearing a hole through her entire life.

She lay, testing the edges of the hole. How big was it?

Everything felt foreign. Off-kilter. While she’d slept, Andrew had changed from a possible beau to a well-dressed Rodney Dangerfield, but without the sense of humor. The bank manager role she’d been so proud of had morphed to a well-titled paper-pusher. Her apartment...

The shudder ripped down her spine so hard it woke the banked fire in her gut.

I can’t go back to that apartment.

Everything was gone. All the satisfaction, peace and sedate joy she felt about her life just three days ago were gone. With a flip, it had become someone else’s life. A boring person’s life. This was too big to contemplate right now. There were no edges to the black hole. Pressing the morphine button, she tumbled in.

* * *

BEAR MERGED CERULEAN blue with a touch of mixing white until he had just the right shade, then, with one long brushstroke, created a shadow on the robe to give it movement. Three more swipes and he stepped back, set down the brush and put his fists to the small of his back. The uncovered bulbs of several desk lamps threw light against the bright white wall and the start of his mural.

It had come to him in a dream, so stark and clear that it haunted him for weeks, until he began sketching the scene. He did it more to get it out of his head than anything; after all, no one would ever see it. A warped floorboard creaked when he backed up to double-check the perspective.

His angel floated above the harsh desert landscape on his dining room wall, cool, detached, serene. He still saw her when he closed his eyes. The face he’d painted fast and easily from his vivid dream-memory. White-blond hair you only see on small children, wide-spaced winter-blue eyes that spread a balm of peace over the burns on his soul.

He’d left his parent’s religion behind with his childhood toys. But you didn’t need to be a shrink to see where the dream came from. He grabbed a turpentine-soaked rag from the pocket of his jeans and wiped his hands. This mural was penance. Exhausted, he shook his aching head. A ten-hour workday, then three hours spent repairing the house and a few more stolen ones, here.

He walked through the doorless kitchen to check the time. Cabinets squatted at the base of every free inch of wall space, and plywood sheets that impersonated a counter surrounded the chipped and stained porcelain sink.

Two in the morning. And another full day tomorrow. He walked to the sanded door stretched across two sawhorses that served as his dining table. He should eat something.

Screw it. He needed sleep more. Not that his nightmares would grant him much of that, but he had to try. But as he walked the hall to his cot, he felt better. Lighter. Maybe, given enough pigment, even mortal sins could be painted over.

* * *

HOPE OPENED HER eyes to yet another nightmare. Her older cousin, Jesse Jurgen, stood alongside the hospital bed, hand on hip, from the look, royally pissed from her towering blond hair to the shell pink toenails Hope knew were peeking out from strappy sandals.

“So I tell Carl, ‘It must be a coincidence. There’s no way that woman in the paper is my cousin, because she’d have called me, right off.’”

You didn’t face a force of nature lying down. Hope wriggled as upright as she could get. Only a small whimper got past her clenched teeth.

“Oh, don’t you try to make me all sorry for you, missy. You should have called.” Jesse’s words were tough, but she eased pillows behind her cousin, then straightened the sheets, threw away used tissues, and dropped her nosegay of daisies and delphiniums in the water pitcher on the lap tray.

“Jess, they only took out the morphine drip this morning. I couldn’t remember my own name before that, much less your number.”

“I’m on speed dial, and you know it.” She humphed, but the corners of her lips relaxed a bit. “Thank God our mothers have passed on, because they’d be having fits to see you now.”

Hope winced, imagining those doll-like twin dynamos descending on her. “Thanks for reminding me that things could be worse.”

Hope had always wondered if her father died young to escape his wife’s small, but mighty grip on his life. Hope had wanted to escape, too, after she’d completed commuter college in her Portland suburb. She’d never have made it, if not for Jesse’s help. Hope had loved her mother, but she was...exacting. Anything within Vivian Sanderson’s sphere had to be rearranged to her satisfaction. Lives included.

But growing up with rigorous direction wasn’t the hardest part. Her mother didn’t let go until you not only did things her way, but felt less intelligent if you didn’t believe it was for the best. Her mother whispered in her mind. How can you face company without lipstick on, at least?

For the first time in a long time, Hope ignored her.

Jesse pulled up a plastic guest chair, sat, crossed her legs and leaned in. “Enough small talk. Tell me.”

Hope had been lying listening to hospital sounds for hours, thinking. But she could make no more sense of things now, than she had on morphine. It was as if, in surgery, they’d taken her old life along with her spleen. The more minutes ticked by, the more anxious she’d become. Her life may not have been titillating, but it was hers. She felt torn from her sheltered harbor, adrift in a huge, heaving sea of choices.

And Hope Sanderson wasn’t used to choices.

She reached for the water glass, and knocked it over.

Jesse mopped it up, her eyes reflecting Hope’s own worry. “You’re upset. Talk to me.”

She not only owed Jesse, she trusted her. But how could Hope explain something she couldn’t wrap her own head around? “I think I’m possessed.”

Jesse patted her hand. “No, we exorcised your mother when you moved here, remember?”

Hope snorted a laugh, then grabbed her stomach when it felt as if her guts were going to fall out. “Thanks, I needed that, Jess.”

Jesse took her hand. “Just talk. Don’t worry how it comes out.”

Hope scoured her mind, searching for words to explain her feelings. “It’s like my life has become a dress in the back of my closet from high school. It’s not only out of fashion, I’ve outgrown it. It’s too tight, and too short and—” she shrugged “—not me anymore.”

“How so?”

“Andrew, you know, my boss—”

“The one who clearly has a crush on you?”

“Yes. In the couple of days I was out of it, he changed from a hot dish to a cold fish.”

“Hon, don’t know how to break it to you, but he was always a cold fish.” Jess gave her a canny smile. “You could do so much better than sushi. It sounds to me like you woke up in more ways than one.”

“But I didn’t ask to!” It came out louder and way more desperate than she’d meant. “It’s more than Andrew. I can’t go back to the bank. I can’t go back to my apartment. When I think about it, I break into a cold sweat.”

“Sweetie, you’ve been through a horrible experience. The memories of that night are going to take time to get over.”

“The memories may fade, sure, but when I picture myself going back to life as usual, I get depressed, then panicky.” She squeezed her cousin’s hand. “Am I going crazy?”

“Oh, hon, you know what I think?” Jesse’s eyes went soft. “I think the Hope your mother created died in that shoot-out.” She reached up and petted her cousin’s hair. “You get to decide who this new person is. How many people get that chance?”