Evidence of Mercy Page 5

  Then again, maybe a four-car crash on the highway was just what she should expect. Maybe she deserved all she’d been going through. Maybe, as Keith had said so many times, Paige was petty and selfish and stupid. Maybe she had brought all this misery on herself.

  Lightning flashed, followed by a quick clap of thunder, and she touched Brianna’s knee to reassure her. What did it really matter what Paige deserved, she argued. It was what Brianna deserved that mattered. Brianna deserved peace and she deserved safety and she deserved security and stability. She didn’t deserve a father who could sing her a lullaby one minute and crack her mother’s jaw the next.

  The child was just drifting off to sleep as Paige turned onto their street and glanced ahead to her house halfway up the road. It would be good finally to get home, make Brianna a bowl of soup, and put her to bed for her nap.

  Then she saw it: Keith’s car in the driveway.

  Slamming her foot on the accelerator, she flew past the house, skidded around the corner, and headed as far away from the neighborhood as she could.

  Her breath came in gasps as she watched her rearview mirror for a sign of him. Terror clutched at her heart. Where could she go to be safe? Not home—he was there, sitting in her house, waiting for her.

  Trembling, she pulled into a Walmart parking lot and groped for her purse. Grabbing out two quarters, she circled to a pay phone on the edge of the lot. Afraid to get out of the car, she inched as close as she could to the phone then rolled her window down. The rain poured in, soaking her arm as she reached for the receiver. Quickly she dialed 911.

  “You’ve got to help me!” she cried when the dispatcher answered. “I have a restraining order against my ex-husband, but he’s in my house waiting for me right now. You have to send an officer out immediately. They have to see him there!”

  She rattled off the address, then restated the urgency. When she’d hung up, she tried to catch her breath.

  She’d go back, she told herself. She’d go back to make sure they got him. If he was still there, maybe she’d go in and try to reason with him. Maybe that would hold him there until they came.

  But what if it didn’t? What if he took Brianna?

  No. She couldn’t risk it. Instead, she would drive by the house to make sure he was still there. Then she would watch from the corner, and when the police came, she could follow them into the driveway.

  The rain pounded harder against the roof of the car, and the wind whipped more viciously, but Brianna stayed asleep as Paige, weeping softly, made her way back to the neighborhood and turned up her street. Holding her breath, she peered through the rain-blurred windshield to see if his car was still in her driveway.

  He was gone.

  Slamming the heel of her hand against her steering wheel, she cried harder. This was hopeless! He was out there somewhere, looking for her. . . .

  And the women’s shelter would be the first place he’d look if she didn’t come home. He’d told her more than once that he knew where all of them were, and if she ever went there, he’d go after her and make her sorry.

  Leaving the street as fast as she could, she went back to the Walmart parking lot and dug through her wallet for money. She had thirty dollars and an ATM card. There might be fifty more in her account if her checkbook balance were right. That was enough for a hotel room, she told herself, trying to calm down. It would get her through until tomorrow.

  She took a few deep breaths, trying to calm down, scanned the roads nearby to make sure he was nowhere in sight, and then pulled back into the street. Don’t even think about tomorrow right now, she cautioned herself. All you can deal with is one day at a time.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  * * *

  The creak of her hospital room door woke Lynda from her shallow sleep. Squinting her eyes open, she watched the plump nurse come in, her nylons making a brushing sound as she walked and her white Reeboks squeaking on the floor. It was the same nurse who had attended to her the last time she’d awakened—Jill something—and Lynda watched her set down her tray of medications and flick on the dim light over Lynda’s head.

  “How are you feeling?” the nurse asked in a voice loud enough to wake the comatose patients on the floor above her. “Any pain?”

  “Some,” Lynda mumbled.

  “Well, that’s expected.” Pulling a thermometer out of her pocket, she covered it with plastic and shoved it into Lynda’s mouth. “If I had as many stitches in me as you have, I’d be hurting, too. The doctor said they pulled half the plane’s windshield out of you.” She took the thermometer, made a notation on Lynda’s chart, then adjusted the IV. “We’ve given you something for pain, but if it’s worn off, I can give you more.”

  Lynda moaned. “No wonder I’ve slept most of the day. No, I don’t want any more.” She watched the nurse wrap the blood pressure cuff around her arm. “Jill, do you know if Jake is out of surgery yet?”

  Jill stared at her watch for a few seconds then slipped the cuff off again. “As a matter of fact, he is,” she said, making another notation. “He’s still critical, though. I don’t have any of the details.”

  Lynda tried to sit up. “I want to see him.”

  “Sorry.” The nurse gently pushed her back down. “He’s still in ICU. No visitors.”

  “But I’m not a visitor. I was in that crash with him. It was my plane.”

  Jill snapped her chart shut and put it back in the pocket at the foot of Lynda's bed. “He isn’t even conscious yet. Wait until tomorrow, and we’ll see if we can get you permission to visit him. But not tonight, Lynda. Besides, you’re still too weak to get out of bed.”

  “No, I feel fine. I just want to make sure he’s all right.”

  “I’m sorry, Lynda. You’ll just have to take our word for it tonight.”

  Lynda closed her eyes as the nurse left and tried in vain to steer her thoughts to something besides Jake’s life. What weren’t they telling her? Critical. What did that mean?

  She tried to turn over, but a cut down her leg made it uncomfortable, so she shifted to her other side. The sheets were rough beneath her skin, and she wondered why they couldn’t manage to get sheets that covered the whole bed, instead of those stupid half sheets that folded halfway down, overlapping another one that covered the end. It made changing the beds easier, she supposed, but that didn’t help the patient’s comfort any, especially when the patient was covered with cuts and scrapes. She longed for her own smooth sheets and the big bed she had shopped for a month to find.

  She was so uncomfortable she might never fall back to sleep, and what good was lying here when Jake could be dying? If she could just see him, maybe she could relax tonight and let go of the guilt that was causing more pain than her broken ribs. If the only way to see him was to sneak through the halls and slip into ICU, she was willing to give it a try.

  Making the decision almost as quickly as the thought came to her mind, she sat up and moved her feet over the side of the bed. The checkerboard floor was cold beneath her feet, and she felt a wave of vertigo as she sat up. Fighting it, she stood slowly. Her muscles strained, and she touched the place on her abdomen where her spleen had been removed. The pain in her head got worse, and she stood still a moment, waiting for the dizziness to pass.

  Steadying herself with a hand against the brick wall, she put one foot in front of the other, stepping carefully until she reached the door. Already she felt soul weary, but she knew that ICU was just one floor up. If she could just get to the elevator. . . .

  Opening the door, she peered up the corridor. A visitor was going into another room, but she saw no one else. She closed the door behind her and took a barefoot step up the hall.

  Miraculously, a wheelchair sat parked against the wall. Mumbling a “Thank you, Lord,” she dropped into it. For a moment, she tried to catch her breath, but then, fearing she’d be caught if she didn’t hurry, she grabbed the wheels and tried to push herself along.

  Her left arm was stiff and sore, and pain sta
bbed through her ribs, making her perspire, but she pushed on nonetheless, passing the nurse’s station without being noticed. She made it past the waiting room, where two or three people sat watching television, and breathed another “thank you” that none of them knew her.

  Waiting anxiously beside the elevator, Lynda glanced up the hall. Nurse Jill stepped out into the hall from someone’s room, and Lynda turned her head away. The elevator doors opened, and quickly she rolled on.

  She pressed the button for the next floor up and waited, trying to fight the pain sending clouds circling through her head. The elevator stopped and she got off, careful to avoid the nurses clustered at the coffee pot near the elevator.

  She was growing fatigued, and she pushed more slowly, wondering whether she’d made a mistake. But the doubts fled when she caught sight of the glass doors to the Intensive Care Unit.

  A sign warned against unauthorized personnel entering ICU, and she knew that in the wheelchair she’d never get through that door and to Jake’s bed. Taking a deep breath and bracing herself against the pain, she got to her feet.

  Slowly, she opened the door and slipped inside.

  A nurse was on the phone, and another one bent over a monitor. Stepping carefully, and battling the dizziness threatening her again, she made her way past them.

  A little girl lay in an oxygen tent behind one curtain, and further down she saw an old man. She reached out to steady herself against the wall and checked a file on a door. Heather Nelson and then Lawrence Sims—

  She froze as she came to the next room. Inside was a man with a bandaged face lying still on his bed, tubes and wires attaching him to the monitors and machines that hummed and beeped.

  She searched for the name on the file on his door.

  Jake Stevens.

  A sob choked her, and she stumbled into the room. He was as still and pale as death. A bandage covered one eye and half his face, and large patches of skin were scraped from his arm, his hand. . . .

  “Jake?” she whispered.

  He didn’t stir. Muffling another sob, she stood over him, thinking how carefree and healthy he had looked this morning, driving up in his Porsche and irritating her with that lethal grin.

  “Jake, I’m so sorry.” Clutching the bed rail, she leaned over him. “I don’t know how—”

  “What are you doing here?”

  The voice startled her, and she swung around and saw one of the nurses she’d seen outside, a black woman, standing in the doorway. “How did you get in here?”

  “I—I had to see him,” Lynda wept. “I had to.”

  Instantly, the nurse was at her side. “It’s all right, child,” she said, putting her arms around her and guiding her back to the door. “You’re the lady who was in the crash with him, aren’t you?”

  Unable to speak, Lynda nodded her head.

  “Honey, I’m so sorry,” the nurse said, taking her to her wheelchair and lowering her into it. “But you shouldn’t be out of your room. You should be in bed. Jake will still be here tomorrow.”

  “Will he?” Lynda asked, looking up at her. “He looks like—like he may not make it.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” the nurse said. “I don’t know you, but I’d say you’ve probably looked better yourself.”

  “But he’s still . . . unconscious. What if he doesn’t wake up? And what’s wrong with his face? It’s all bandaged.”

  “He was in a plane crash, darlin’. His face is the least of his problems.”

  Lynda grabbed the nurse’s arm and started to stand, her face pleading for the truth. “Just tell me if—if he’s expected to die.”

  The woman gently lowered her back to the chair. “I can’t lie to you. It could go either way. But if he makes it through tonight, I’ll feel a lot better about his chances tomorrow.”

  Finally leaning back, Lynda wailed into her hands.

  “I’m gonna take you back to your room now, darlin’, and tomorrow, if he wakes up, I’ll make sure you get to see him. My name’s Abby, and you can call me anytime tomorrow to get a report.”

  Lynda couldn’t talk as the nurse rolled her back to the elevator.

  CHAPTER NINE

  * * *

  Paige lay still as she heard a car door slam in front of her motel room. Footsteps passed her door, and then she heard the door to the next room open and a woman’s shrill laughter.

  It wasn’t Keith. She turned onto her side and looked at her daughter, sleeping only in her underwear since they hadn’t brought any extra clothes with them. The child slept soundly. Why not? She feared her father, but she didn’t understand that her father was stalking them, threatening to take her from her mother and make her little life one nightmare after another, just as Paige’s marriage had been.

  What was he doing right now? Was he still waiting at her house, expecting Paige to breeze in and confront him? Or was he at his own apartment, devising another way of getting close to Brianna, inventing more lies about Paige’s being an unfit mother, a child abuser, and a general danger to society?

  “What am I gonna do?” she whispered to the darkness.

  Brianna muttered a string of nonsense words under her breath. Turning on her side, Paige pulled her daughter against her. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” she said softly. “Mommy’s here.”

  Brianna’s breathing settled back into a peaceful rhythm, and Paige checked the clock. Only three hours before she had to be at work, she thought. What was she going to do with Brianna? She couldn’t take her to day care again. Keith could come back and intimidate Brianna’s teachers into handing her over. No, she couldn’t take that chance. But she couldn’t call in sick, either. She’d used up all her sick days earlier in the year when Keith had broken her arm and blackened both eyes. The shame of going to work like that had kept her home until makeup could disguise her bruises. But there were no sick days left.

  There was no choice, she told herself. She would take Brianna to work with her. Brianna could sit on the floor and color as Paige typed; maybe if she explained it to her boss, he would understand. Maybe, just this once, fate would have a little mercy on her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  * * *

  Someone had driven a stake through his temples, Jake thought as he opened the eye that wasn’t bandaged. And if his pain was any indication, that someone had done the same through his cheekbone, his neck, down his arms, and across his shoulders. Had some woman’s angry boyfriend or husband beaten him to a pulp? Had he been in a car accident?

  He opened his eye, and a cruel, blaring light forced him to close it. Confused, feeling the beginnings of panic, he squinted the eye open and tried again to orient himself. Before his eye was able to make out the room, his other senses detected the smell of iodine and alcohol, a soft beeping, and the electrical hum of machinery. Focusing, he saw the white walls of intensive care, the camera in the corner with which he was monitored, and the impressive machinery around his bed.

  Yes, he thought through the haze in his brain. He’d been in an accident. But not a car crash.

  A plane crash.

  Catching his breath as the horror of his landing came back to him, he tried to sit up, but something held him down, and the pain stabbing through his face and head warned him not to try again.

  His throat felt as if he’d swallowed a bucket of sand. He needed a drink, he thought desperately. He needed a drug. He needed to die.

  “He’s waking up!”

  He looked up to see a pale, skinny nurse standing over him on one side, and a man with a stethoscope on the other.

  “Jake, can you hear me?” the man asked in a voice so loud it thundered through his brain. “Jake, you’re in the hospital.”

  No kidding, he thought, but when he tried to speak, his throat rebelled. The nurse set something cold against his lips, something wet—ice chips—and he opened his mouth gratefully and let the cold water ooze into his throat.

  “How long?” he asked in a raspy whisper.

  “Since the cra
sh?” she asked. “Almost twenty-four hours. How do you feel?”

  He thought of the worst hangover he’d ever had and decided it was a mere annoyance compared to this. “My head,” he said, raising a lead-heavy hand to touch the bandage covering his eye.

  “You have a gash down your face, Jake,” the man said gently. “Your eye was pretty badly injured.”

  Jake looked up at him with horror. “My eye?”

  “Yes. Do you have any feeling in your legs yet?”

  His legs. There was no pain in his legs, he realized for the first time. They were numb. He tried to slide his leg up, to feel his toes, but it wouldn’t move. Closing his eye, he wished he could block this out, that he could have stayed asleep, never to wake up and face the ways his body was failing him.

  “Jake?”

  “Tell me about my legs,” he whispered, looking up at them with dread.

  The doctor laid his hand on his shin. “Can you feel me touching you, Jake?”

  “Yes!” he blurted, as if that proved that things weren’t as bad as they seemed. “I feel pressure. Weight.”

  “That could be a good sign,” he admitted weakly. “We need to run some tests.” He started listing orders for the nurse, but Jake grabbed the sleeve of his coat and stopped him.

  “What’s broken?” he asked desperately. “My legs? My neck?”

  It was obvious the doctor wasn’t ready to be pinned down. “No broken bones, Jake, but you have deep lacerations in several places. The numbness is probably a blessing, considering the pain you might be feeling.”

  “I don’t need any blessings like this,” he bit out. “Besides, my head is enough to do me in.”

  “Well, if you need a stronger painkiller—”

  “Yes,” he cut in. “I need it.”

  “All right.” But he didn’t rush off for a hypodermic, as Jake had hoped. “Jake, your chart says you’re new in town and no relatives have been notified. Is there anyone we could call for you?”