Alone (4 page)

The older paramedic examined him. “Doesn’t
look too bad, but we better take you in for observation. Chances
are, you’ve got a concussion and will have a headache for a couple
of days, but we’d better be sure”

“
Where are you taking him?”
she asked finally.

“
Good Sam
s, the hospital down on Wilshire
Boulevard,” he said. “It’s the closest one to here with an
emergency room.” He took her question as concern. “Don’t worry; you
can ride in the back.”

Jackson turned to her. “You’ll come
with me, won’t you, Baby?” he asked, turning into a little boy when
it suited him. “You know how much I hate hospitals.”

She forced a smile, “Sure.”

The ambulance moved silently
down
the
freeway, not needing the siren since Jackson clearly wasn’t about
to die anytime soon.

Serenity sat on the narrow bench beside
the gurney. The younger of the paramedics, John—according to his
name badge—sat opposite her.

Jackson lay between them. He’d fallen
into a heavy sleep and still managed to snore, despite the oxygen
mask covering his nose and mouth.

Serenity rested her elbows on her
knees and her chin in her hands. She had thrown on a sweater and a
pair of jeans before they left, diminishing the scrutiny of the
paramedics. Though she avoided the young paramedic’s eye he still
attempted to make small talk, resulting in perfunctory one word
answers. She didn’t want to be rude—impoliteness wasn’t in her
nature—but she couldn’t discuss the weather or the latest Dodgers
game when she had so much more on her mind.

With a loud
thud
, something landed on the roof and
the ambulance swerved, pulling into another lane. Serenity lurched
to one side as the vehicle fought against the control of the
driver. Someone behind them blasted their horn.

“
What the..?” John glanced
up at the roof.

The driver got the ambulance back
under control and shouted back, “You guys all right? I’ve no idea
what that was!”

“
A bird?” Serenity
suggested, thinking one of the big pelicans dropping out of the sky
might cause such a big thump.

“
It didn’t bounce,” John
said thoughtfully, half to himself. “A bird would have
bounced.”

Whatever landed on the roof had been big,
really big. If Serenity thought in the terms of an animal, it would
have been closer to a Great Dane than a bird.

They both glanced back up at the roof of
the ambulance. Was something still there? Perched, waiting? The
interior of the rig seemed to have shrunk down to toy size. A chill
ran down Serenity’s back and she saw the paramedic shiver as
well.

“
Not far now,” John said,
seeming to try to reassure himself as well as her.

She nodded, but said
nothing.

Someone was there; both of them felt
the presence.

Is it you?

She sent the thought out with
every concentration of her soul.
God, I’m losing my mind.
Why would a man be
on the roof of the ambulance? How the hell would he even get there?
She must be crazy to be having such thoughts. She probably was—what
with all the stress she’d been under—but that didn’t stop her
believing.

They pulled into the unloading bay at the
hospital. Jackson woke at the vehicle’s change of motion. He tried
to roll over, discovered straps held him to the gurney, and went
back to sleep.

“
It’s the bump,” John told
her, mistaking her worried expression for concern. “It’s normal for
him to want to sleep.”

Serenity started to climb out of the
ambulance, but instead of climbing down from the back, she stood
up. Ignoring the paramedic’s look of surprise, she hooked her
fingers over the edge of the roof and pulled herself up so her
elbows took her weight.

Whatever had hit was no longer there
but the metal was dented inward. No blood, or feathers, or even fur
indicated an animal had landed on the roof, but she hadn’t been
looking for that, had she? Instead, she reached out a hand as best
she could and traced her fingers across the
indentations.

Footprints?

She dropped down to find John staring at
her. “Anything?” he asked.

Serenity smiled and shook her head.
“Must have been a ghost,” she said, wondering if she was so far
from the truth.

The paramedics admitted Jackson and a
couple of nurses transferred him to another gurney in a shared bay.
Three other men occupied the space, ranging from an old man whose
fragility was exposed as he slept, to a young guy, not far out of
his teens, with tattooed sleeves covering both arms. He too slept,
but in the zonked out way people did when they were either sleeping
off an overdose of drink or drugs, or a combination of
both.

Serenity could do nothing more. The
woman at reception gave her a pile of paperwork on a clipboard to
fill in and she hugged the board to her chest. She hoped her
medical insurance was still valid and her work hadn’t yet notified
the company about her being fired. Hopefully, the claim would slip
through the net, but if it didn’t she was in even more
trouble.

A heavy sigh escaped her and she stood
up. The restaurant must still be open, despite the late hour. She
desperately needed some caffeine.

Strips of long fluorescent
lights
lit up
the cafeteria with a harsh, unnatural light.

Blocks of tables and benches reminded
Serenity of her school canteen, soulless and unloved. Behind the
aluminum, heated display cabinet, a tired-looking woman in an apron
gave her a half-hearted smile as she walked in. Floor to ceiling
windows made up the far wall, giving a view out on a small patch of
yard for the hospital residents.

A lone figure sat in the corner of the
restaurant, their face turned to the window. Above the person’s
head, the fluorescent strip light had blown, and the figure sat in
partial darkness.

Serenity’s heart caught in her chest. She
didn’t need light to know the person’s identity. Even though she
had only spent moments with him, she would recognize the breadth of
his shoulders, the angle of his jaw and the curve of his forearms
anywhere.

She stopped dead in the middle of the
room. Blood rushed through her ears, thumping like horses’ hooves
in her head. Adrenaline flowed like water; speeding up her heart,
making her hands tremble.

“
Can I help you, love?” the
woman behind the counter called to her.

Serenity couldn’t respond. She stood
frozen. Part of her wanted to turn and run, the other part of her
wanted to fall to her knees and weep, but she stared,
inert.

Then he turned, his beautiful eyes
focusing on hers, despite the gloom surrounding him, and she found
herself able to walk again.

“
Are you okay?” the woman
asked. This time Serenity managed to give her a smile and nod of
reassurance, but her eyes never left the man sitting by the
window.

She walked toward him as though
gliding on water. As she approached, he got to his feet.

“
What are you doing here?”
she tried to say, but her voice came out as a whisper.

“
I’m visiting
someone.”

“
Oh? A family member? A
friend?”

“
It’s good to see you
again,” he said, not answering her question.

“
It’s strange seeing you
again. Small world, I guess.”

He gestured to the seat opposite him.
“Will you sit with me a while? Allow me to buy you a
coffee?”

The act seemed so
normal
in such surreal
circumstances and she grasped onto the lifeline he
presented.

“
Coffee,” she repeated.
“Yes, coffee would be good.”

He brushed past her as he headed to
the counter, sending a thrill of goose bumps up her arm. She stood
watching his broad back as he walked away, then she sat heavily,
her legs weak.

He was here.
God, he was here!

She
didn’t dare take her eyes off him, fearing he would turn out to be
a figment of her over-stressed imagination. As he paid the woman
behind the counter, he caught her watching and gave her a smile she
wanted to pack up and take home.

He returned with two cups of thick,
dark coffee. In her nervousness, she took a sip too quickly and
burned her mouth.

“
Careful,” he said with a
smile, his green eyes lighting up. “The coffee’s hot.”

She couldn’t help but smile back.
“Thanks, I think I figured that one out.”

“
Your husband is
here.”

The sentence wasn’t a question but she
answered with a nod.

“
What happened?” he
asked.

“
He had a... accident.” She
glanced up at him. For reasons beyond understanding, an underlying
current of truth ran beneath their words, but neither of them
tapped into it.

The strangeness of the evening made
her head hurt. She couldn’t explain what had happened in her
bedroom, but she remembered her initial reaction—the face of the
man before her, flashing in her mind.

“
What are you doing here?”
she asked again.

“
I needed to make sure you
were all right.”

His words made her heart race
and the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. He
was
here for
her.

“
What happened to my husband?”
she asked, barely believing the words had left her
mouth.

“
What happened to
you?”

She looked up, her eyes fierce.
“Answer the question!”

His eyes grew dark under his furrowed
brow. He pressed his lips together as though he had to control
himself before answering. “He didn’t get anything he wasn’t asking
for. In my opinion, he got off lightly.”

“
So it was you!” Anger
bubbled within her. “Why ask me? Are you just another controlling
man who likes to screw around with a woman’s head?”

He sat back, astonished at her fury.
Then he leaned forward and took her hand across the table. She
caught her breath at the touch of his skin on hers and the anger
melted away like a night’s snowfall under the day’s first rays of
sun. She saw worry in his face; in the creases at the corners of
his eyes, in the lines between his eyebrows.

“
No, never,” he said. “I
didn’t know how much you had figured out for yourself. I didn’t
want to scare you.”

“
Scare me? It’s a bit late
for that!” she sat back, shaking her head. “But how? How did you
get into the bedroom? And the ambulance, that was you on the
roof?”

He nodded.

“
What are you? An acrobat, or a
magician, or...” She trailed off, at a loss for ideas. “Something?”
she finished weakly.

“
Yeah,” he lowered his head
and a lock of thick black hair fell across his forehead.
“Something.”

“
But how did you get in and
out of the room without us seeing you?”

“
I can’t explain exactly.
Try to think of it as a trick of the light, an optical
illusion.”

She wanted to press further, but she
didn’t want to scare him off. His presence was nothing short of a
miracle and however he’d managed to perform his ‘tricks’, he’d kept
her from being raped by her own husband.

He must have read her
thoughts.

“
You could leave him now. Pack
your bags and go.”

The thought struck fear into her heart and
she hated herself. He was right; she should have left Jackson years
ago, but didn’t have the courage. More things came into play than
simply packing her bags because he was a bad husband. Things had
happened in their marriage, some weren’t Jackson’s fault, and she
blamed herself for them. Part of her didn’t blame Jackson for the
beatings. Deep down, she felt like she deserved it.

“
I don’t know how to,” she
admitted, her cheeks heating with shame. “I don’t know how to be
alone.”

“
Alone is all I’ve ever
been.”

They looked up at each other and time
stopped. Even though they sat in dim light, his features were more
real to her than anything she’d seen before. The gloom cast shadows
across his face, making his pale skin jump out from the darkness
and his eyes almost glowed. She wanted to reach out and touch the
thick lashes framing his eyes, trace her finger along his jawbone,
touch the fullness of his lower lip.

How was
it possible to want someone so
badly when you knew nothing about them?

“
I will leave him,” she
said, her voice low. “As soon as he is well again, I’ll
leave.”

He dropped her hand.

Panic rose within her; she was being
forced to make a decision she should have made years ago. “I don’t
even know your name,” she said, “and you’re asking me to leave my
husband.”

“
I’m not asking you to leave
your husband for me. I want you to do it for yourself.”