LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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