LITMIR.BIZ

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they bandaged?”

      Kate gripped her hand again. “The bullet went through your temple, around the inside of your skull and out under your jaw. The bone wasn’t shattered. You were lucky.”

      Lucky? Being shot in the head was lucky?

      She almost laughed at the irony in that statement, but it hurt too much. She cautiously explored the gauze wrapping her head. “My eyes?”

      “The doctors don’t know,” Megan said quickly. “One eye was affected, but the other—”

      “Which one? Which eye?”

      “The left one might be permanently injured. The bullet grazed it near the optic nerve.”

      “I can’t lose my sight,” she explained to them as reasonably as she possibly could. “I have plans. My degree, the future, everything.”

      There was the practice she intended to open when she got her Ph.D. in psychology. And what of her dream of helping families work through their problems?

      “No,” she protested, pulling at the covering over her eyes. “No. I’ve got to see. I’ve got to!”

      She heard another voice in the room. “Keep her hands still,” the new person said.

      Little squeaky sounds accompanied the voice, as if the woman carried mice in her pockets. Shannon struggled with the hands that grasped hers.

      “It’ll be all right,” she heard both her cousins say.

      The words were a lie, meant only to soothe. “You don’t understand,” she told them. She was having trouble speaking, but she had to explain, to make them see…

      Her mind went hazy. Sounds faded. She fought the darkness, then realized she’d been given a sedative.

      “Don’t,” she said, her voice sounding far away. “I need to know, to find out… Oh, please, please, don’t…”

      She realized she was begging, just as she had when her father had packed and left. It hadn’t done any good then, either. The tears came, helpless and despairing, then everything fell into darkness.

      Shannon woke slowly, fighting her way through layer after layer of cloudy material. The room, which she somehow knew wasn’t hers, smelled of antiseptic and flowers. An odd combination. She listened carefully, every nerve alert and tensed for trouble. However, the room felt empty.

      The soft clink of metal against metal and the whir of a motor alarmed her, but then she recalled she was in the hospital. The floors were cleaned and polished during the wee hours of the morning. That was the sound she heard, coming from down the hall.

      So it must be after midnight but before dawn.

      She’d been dreaming—dark, restless dreams that still troubled her. In them, she faced the robber again and again, always experiencing the pain anew—quick, hot and blinding in its intensity.

      Then someone—an ethereal being of coolness and light, such brilliant light she couldn’t see his face—came to her, lifting her out of the hot pain and scary darkness, taking her to a secret haven, his arms strong, his embrace sweet, his scent fresh as the outdoors. She had instinctively known him. He was the one she’d been waiting for. He’d made her feel safe….

      It was a foolish dream. No guardian angel had come to her rescue. An illusion, her mind’s way of coping with the reality of being shot, was all it was.

      Turning her head against the pillows, she gingerly examined the bandages covering her head and half her face. Pressing her left temple, she found that to be a sore spot. Also a place under her jaw.

      It hurt to move her mouth, either to talk or eat. Swallowing the liquids they’d put her on was difficult. However, it wasn’t as bad as yesterday, and tomorrow would be better than today.

      Thus speaks the optimist, she mused, attempting a smile. That hurt, too.

      That morning—no, this was a new day, so it was Tuesday, the first day of the New Year, she realized. The day before, when the nurse had come in, her mind had been clear for the first time as the heavy drugs left her body. Every sound had made a sharp impression.

      During the day, she had listened to footsteps and tried to guess who the person was. She had known when Kate or Megan arrived before they spoke. And the hefty nurse who was always so cheerful. Her shoes made squeaky noises on the floor when she stopped or turned.

      No mice in her pockets. Shannon had liked that image.

      She had opened her Christmas presents yesterday, which seemed pointless, while her cousins described them to her. She’d pretended to be delighted so they wouldn’t worry about her state of mind.

      Still not quite able to believe what had happened, she’d tried to check her eyes during the night to make sure they were open, but she’d encountered the bandages. Maybe she’d hoped she was waking from a bad dream and that only the night was black, but it wasn’t to be.

      Everything was black to her. Day, night, it made no difference in her encapsulated world.

      And never would.

      Fear rolled over her in waves of nausea. She fought for control. The ophthalmologist called in on her case had been optimistic, but he had cautioned her that sometimes, when one eye was injured, the other, although medically okay, would sometimes act as if it, too, had been wounded.

      Sympathetic ophthalmalia, it was called. There was a fifty-fifty possibility she would be blind, not just in the injured eye, but in both eyes.

      Panic swept through her, pushing at her self-control like a log carried on a flash flood. She took deep breaths and willed it away.

      The doctor had also said her right eye could be as good as ever. Or there could be a period of blindness, then the gradual regaining of her sight and that it could happen in both eyes.

      So, there was nothing to fear but fear itself. Someone great had said that. President Roosevelt?

      Relief eased the fear. She could remember things. People’s names. Stuff she’d learned in school. Incidents from the past. She’d pestered Megan and Kate on their visits, making them test her so that she would know her mind was functioning normally.

      A mind is a terrible thing to lose.

      A slogan for an anti-drug campaign, she recalled. They didn’t know the half of it. Brain damage. It was a thought that frightened her even more than blindness. However, her mind appeared okay.

      It had been a week and two days since the shoot-out. If she really did lose her sight… She tried to imagine it, to see herself coping, tapping her way through life with a white cane. The blackness seemed to darken more. She would be a burden, dependent on others the rest of her life.

      But it was too early to think like that, the doctor had assured her. There was a chance. Fifty-fifty. Not bad odds for a person who’d been shot in the head.

      Tears filled her eyes and spilled into the bandages. She willed them away. Crying did no good whatsoever.

      Hearing a man’s voice in the hall, she wondered where Brad was. He hadn’t visited, or even called.

      What man in his right mind would tie himself to someone who might be blind for life? a cynical part of her asked.

      The man who loved her, came the answer from her never-say-die counterpart.

      A hopeless romantic, she had always believed a couple could make it through any tragedy, but it took strength and dedication from both of them. If she and Brad had married, would they have made it through this crisis?

      Maybe. If he had loved her. If she had loved him.

      Love was the key. She had thought that was a possibility with Brad, but now…

      The expectation faded into mist, like dreams barely recalled when dawn came. She felt the loss deep within, a nostalgia for what might have been,

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