Between Darkness and Daylight (24 page)

The news didn't sound good from where she was sitting. Someone had gotten hurt pretty seriously and it appeared that Zane had been listed as the next of kin. He was halfway out the door before Nova could hear the rest.

She followed him to the living room, where he was shoving his arms into his leather jacket, the cell phone nestled between his ear and shoulder.

Ransom shuffled out of his room, looking dejected and resigned. Nova could only imagine what was going on in his head, since she barely understood all that she was thinking and feeling right then. It didn't help that she sensed the precursory ripples spreading through her head, the warning of thoughts and feelings to come that weren't her own.

She felt a sharp pain in her chest and for a moment she thought she might be having a heart attack, until she realized she was feeling Zane's pain. Her throat tightened as if she were trying to hold back tears. She swallowed past the boulder, staring at Zane. His Adam's apple was bobbing crazily, his eyes glistening,

"Yes…Yes…As soon as I can…I'm on my way."

Nova watched him put the cell back on his belt before he turned to her and Ransom.

"Ran, I'll be right ba—"

"'S'kay."

Nova grabbed her coat off the pegboard, flung a grateful but embarrassed look over her shoulder at the teen, and headed for the front door before Zane could argue. "I'm going with you."

166

Gracie C. McKeever

Chapter 15

The smells were all too evocative, antiseptic and illness and death wafting to his nostrils as soon as he and Nova rushed through the front entrance of St. Vincent's Hospital.

They checked in and picked up visitors' passes at the front desk before heading up to the Intensive Care Unit.

Zane wasn't aware of holding his breath until they reached their floor, and when he finally inhaled and saturated his lungs, he thought he'd pass out from the memories of the last occasion he'd been in this hospital—on another floor, with another dying loved one.

He paused several steps from the elevator and grabbed the doorjamb, closing his eyes and taking several more deep breaths, which only made his head spin, and worse, sent his olfactory senses into overdrive.

"Zane? Zane, are you okay?"

"The smell," he blurted. "It…it just took me by surprise."

Nova slid her hand down his arm and caught his hand in a strong grip.

"It's okay."

He gave her a weak smile as they walked to the nurse's station.

"I'm here to see Manuela Diaz."

The older black woman behind the desk looked from him to Nova and back again before asking, "Mr. Youngblood?"

"Yes. Someone here called me and…"

"That would have been me. We found your number and address in the young woman's personal belongings. She had you listed as next of kin."

The nurse frowned as if doubting his connection to Manuela. "You're not her father or other relative."

"No, as a matter of fact, Manny's one of my students. I'm the social worker and guidance counselor at her school."

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The nurse nodded, pointing down the hall. "She's four doors down on your left."

Zane grabbed Nova's hand to lead her down the hall, but the nurse's voice stopped him.

"I'm sorry, but there's a detective in there now. You won't be able to go in for another fifteen minutes, and even then, only one of you."

"But—"

"I'm sorry." She winced as she pointed them to a row of orange vinyl sofas and chairs where a couple of teary-eyed girls were sitting. "You can wait right there."

Zane nodded and headed toward the girls. They seemed vaguely familiar, both looking so much like Manuela in coloring and stature he might have thought them her sisters, had he not known that Manny was an only child. He guessed that they had been with Manuela when the car struck her.

He got on his haunches beside the girl in the chair closest to the nurse's station. "I'm Zane Youngblood, a friend of Manny's."

"I know who you are. Manny talks about you all the time." She looked at him warily, sniffled and blew her nose into a tissue. "I'm Giselle Rosario."

"You go to school with Manuela?"

The girl nodded, fresh tears running down her cheeks. "We were crossing the street outside the sports center and this car…this car came out of nowhere…"

The other girl spoke then. "He just hit her and kept going. He didn't even slow down."

Zane glanced her way. "Did either of you get a good look at the car?

The driver?"

Both girls shook their heads and Giselle spoke for both of them. "It happened too fast. We told the detective."

Zane had a feeling he knew who "the detective" was and wondered why Leary would be on this case, unless…

God, this can't be happening again. He thinks this was intentional, not
just a run-of-the-mill hit-and-run, but attempted murder.

"It's all my fault," Giselle burst out. "I convinced her to come to the skating rink with us. She didn't really want to come, but I twisted her arm, 168

Gracie C. McKeever

told her it might be one of the last times she'll get to have any fun, what with the baby coming and all. I never should have teased her. I never meant for this to happen…" She put her face in her hands and wept.

Zane put an arm around her, rubbed her shoulder in a slow, steady motion. "Do either of you know where her parents are, or whether her mother's on the way?"

The second girl shook her head. "We didn't know where to contact them. And your number was the only contact information Manny had in her bag…" She choked on a sob. "There was blood…all over…on her bag, on her papers…"

Zane had to get in there soon, didn't know how much longer he could stand to listen to the dark tale of what had happened to Manuela and not be able to see her for himself, see how bad the damage was.

She had to make it. The idea that she could die was only now beginning to dawn on him; it was followed closely by vehement denial.

She'd been through enough pain for one lifetime. God wouldn't take her like this. He couldn't, not now.

Where the hell are you, Leary?

The rangy detective drifted from down the hall as if summoned and stopped in the middle of the group, glancing down at him with a pensive expression.

Zane stood, his heart plummeting at the look on Leary's face. "Is she…she's not…"

"There's a priest with her now."

"No!" Nova slapped a hand over her mouth when four pairs of eyes flew in her direction.

Zane held her against him, gently squeezing her shoulder and shaking his head. "That can't be right, Leary. She's just a…she's just a kid."

"You'd better go in."

"Her parents?" He didn't know why he kept asking about them; he only knew that were Manny his, he'd want to know, want to be here. They had every right; even Zane couldn't deny them that.

"They're on their way over now. Had a squad pick them up."

"Leary—"

"Go."

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* * * *

Zane stood on the threshold for several moments, getting his bearings.

He was wasting valuable time but couldn't push himself to go into the room until the priest spotted him at the doorjamb and waved him over.

He nodded, choked back a sob before speaking. "Father."

"Son."

"Is she…is she…?" He didn't know whether she was in a coma or brain dead, whether she'd know he was there or not.

"They're keeping her alive on the machines until her parents get here."

Brain dead. Would she hear him? Could she feel him and know how much he cared about her, how much more he wanted for her than this ending. He worked so hard with his kids, hoping to keep them out of trouble, to buffer life's harder knocks and tragedies..

He could have taken anything else, even her dropping out of school and unwed motherhood. But not death—death was too final. There was no going back, no chance to change, rectify, or make her life better. No chance for her to hear how much she was loved and cared about.

Zane swallowed hard, his stomach turning as he approached the bed.

He stood near her head, opposite the priest, watching Manuela's face, so young, so peaceful and smooth but for the bruises on her forehead and cheek. And she was dying.

This wasn't happening. Not to one of his kids. Not to
this
kid.

"It won't be long now."

That's exactly what he was dreading, that he didn't have enough time to be with her before her parents arrived, to tell her all that he needed to tell her before the end.

Zane impulsively caught her hand, gripped the long tapered fingers, the gentle elegant hands of an artist or a surgeon. So much potential wasted. He squeezed her hand in a grip that was tender but firm, not knowing how much she could feel, if at all. He said the first thing that came to his mind, the only thing he could think of to say to her. "I am so sorry, Manny."

The monitor sounded two seconds after his words; Manuela flat-lined as he stood by her side and the priest finished giving the girl her Last Rights.

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Zane watched in a blur while several doctors and nurses rushed into the room with a crash cart, shoving him and the priest away from the bed as they began to work on Manuela. He staggered to the door and drifted out into the corridor.

He spotted Manny's mother and father down the hall with Leary. The woman took one look at Zane’s grief-stricken expression and wailed, her bloodcurdling shrieks of agony floating down the hall, coursing through his brain. She pounded Leary’s chest with her fists, shouting, "No, no!
Por
que, por que!”
over and over again.

Her husband pulled her away from the detective and she collapsed against him, pounding her own head now with open hands.

Husband and wife then turned their attention to Zane, who was still outside their daughter's room. That's when the woman completely lost it.

She pulled away and came after him, and Nova, Leary, and Manuela's father were all hot on her heels.

He didn't even have the strength to fight her, just planted himself in front of the door, arms at his sides, chest out, and let her have at him. His body was so numb with shock and grief, he barely felt the first couple of punches.

When Leary and several hospital security officers pulled the woman off of him, he collapsed against a nearby wall and slid down to the floor.

Then he covered his face with his hands and wept.

* * * *

Nova glanced at Zane periodically during the silent drive home, her heart turning over at the blank stare on his face.

She was numb because he was numb. The vibrations emanating from his spirit were so low as to be almost non-existent. It was as if he was dead inside, and she didn't know which was worse, the death of his hopes for Manuela or the girl's actual death. All she knew was that she felt each loss as sharply as if it were her own.

Nova thought of her mother and the many days she'd spent at the temple ministering to the sick, convening Healing Circles and saying prayers for spiritual healing for those present and absent. She wished for
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but an ounce of the knowledge and faith that had gotten her mother and her congregation through many a spiritual crisis.

She wanted to believe in the teachings, especially now, wanted to draw on the philosophy and doctrines in which her mother found such strength.

She wanted to believe in the common sense of her mother's religion, that there was no death, only change, wanted to believe in the transference of energy from one plane to another. Believing this would be a hell of a lot more palatable than believing that poor girl was gone, her life force and light extinguished forever.

Nova tried to recollect the Prayer for Spiritual Healing, to envision the hand-painted words on the wooden plaque in her mother's kitchen, but kept coming up with the Five Steps To Peace instead. No matter how often or to where they moved, the plaque had been a mainstay in the Foxx household, occupying a place of honor in either the living room or the kitchen.

She remembered cutting her curious reading teeth on the words as a three-year-old. She'd recited the phrases over and over as she stood in a chair at the kitchen table while her mother prepared dinner, mastering each syllable even when she didn't know the full meaning of the text.

The words now blurred together in her mind—The Five Steps and the Prayer for Healing—fusing into meaningless pledges of comfort that she couldn't separate into something suitable to soothe Zane, to even soothe herself. She didn't think that anyone or anything could soothe him right now, doubted the words would mean any more to him than they had to a three-year-old thirty years ago.

He was beyond solace, beyond her. She sensed his spirit slipping away as palpably as she had slipped from Matt's grasp on that mountaintop.

She pulled up in front of the loft, déjà vu overtaking her as she parked and turned off the engine. She shifted in her seat to face Zane, desperate to hear his voice, to have some human contact that would let her know he was still with her.

He slowly turned his head in her direction, eyes bleak but glistening, and in a flash of recall, the Prayer for which she'd been fumbling popped full-blown into her head:
I ask The Great Unseen Healing Force To
Remove All Obstructions From My Mind And Body And to Restore Me To
Perfect Health; I Ask This in All Sincerity And Honesty, And I Will Do My
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Part; I Ask This Great Unseen Healing Force To Help Both Present And
Absent Ones Who Are In Need Of Help And to Restore Them To Perfect
Health; I Put My Trust In The Love And Power Of God.

The words seemed like empty rhetoric; Nova didn't feel them, was uninspired by "hearing" them. She was still trying to find it in her heart to actually believe in them and to trust her power, was still frightened by the hollowness in her soul, in Zane's soul.