Damon (26 page)

Her hand felt so cool and soft on my forehead I closed my eyes, then opened them so I wouldn’t drift off. “Mama’s alive?”

“She’s recovering. They moved her to Nashville. We’ll need to discuss what to do with her once you’re well, but that can wait.”

“She has to come home.”
Of course.

“Well, hon,” she said, giving me a calming pat on the hand, “we’ll worry about that later. Right now, she’s fine.”

But she wasn’t really. I knew the look of sympathy in Bella’s eyes. Mama would need constant care. She would be a vegetable.

I couldn’t make tears come to my eyes, and I wanted to cry. “Cynthia tried to kill her. I was so messed-up I couldn’t see. I should have seen.”

“No, honey, it’s not your fault,” she soothed. “James Eddie had a long talk with Cynthia and she claimed she got confused on the dosages. Unless you want to press charges there’s really not much we can do, hon.”

“She and James Eddie grew up together. He won’t do anything.”

She straightened my covers and took a comb out of her purse to work on my hair. Apparently, she thought that, and chitchat, would help. “Chester just left. He had to go home and take care of a few things, but he’ll be back in the morning. I had Troy drive your car home, so everything’s in order. You just concentrate on getting well.”

“I remember Chester. He came and gave me something warm to drink.”

“He stayed here till late last night, hon, worried sick.”

My head pounded, my thoughts flew around like gnats, and I could only focus on one thing. “I need to see Damon.”

I needed to see him to know for myself that he was still alive and safe, and I needed to touch him to get rid of the terrible ache in my chest. Bella pulled at my hand when I tried to figure out how to separate myself from the IV.

“He’s resting, just like you should be,” she assured me. “Don’t touch that or you’ll hurt yourself.”

“I need to be with him. He needs me. He’s calling me.”

I could hear his voice, and then I heard it again, louder. The door opened and he looked in, but he didn’t see me and started to leave.

“Damon!”

My voice wasn’t very strong but the door flew open and he came back, seeing me this time. He hurried to the bed. He didn’t say anything, just nudged Bella aside and climbed into bed with me.

“No, don’t do that,” Bella said, but there was no stopping him. And I was as eager to have him there. To feel his hands on my skin and his lips kissing my face.

“Oh, jeez. Honey, you need to go back to your room,” Bella told him, tugging on his shoulder. “Maggie needs her rest.”

“I thought you were dead,” he whispered in my ear with a dry, shaky voice. “I thought we were in hell.”

“Me, too.”

A terrible thought came to me and I tried to lift his head so he would listen to me. “Try to act normal,” I told him. “They’ll lock us up, apart.”

He looked into my eyes and saw the fear there. Tears came to his beautiful blue eyes, but he nodded and gave me one last, long kiss. Our lips were dry and wouldn’t quite meld.

When he pulled from my grasp, he sat up on the edge of the bed and held my hand with both of his. “Is this better?” he asked Bella.

She made a funny face, something between a wince and a shrug. “I suppose.”

He was wearing a silly little hospital gown just like mine. I could see his naked behind and knew he must be showing more than he should beneath the short gown, from Bella’s viewpoint. He had no sense of humility and didn’t notice that in a sitting position, with his legs spread, the gown rose high up on his thighs. And Damon had plenty to see. More than an old woman with high blood pressure needed shocking her eyes.

“Take my blanket,” I told him.

He looked at me, then downward to where I was tugging, and pulled the blanket over his lap. “Now?”

“Better,” Bella said with a sigh. She backed up to sit in the chair by the window, to give us some privacy.

Damon turned to me and kissed my hand. “I’ll get you out of here tonight,” he said. His voice was so scratchy it hurt me. He hadn’t had anyone there to tend to him the way I had.

“Drink some water.” I tried to reach the plastic decanter but he reached it himself and drank a glass of water. He poured another one and offered it to me, but I was a little nauseous and couldn’t take it. He gulped it himself and sat back. I watched the color return to his face.

“I love you,” I told him.

He lifted my hand to kiss my wedding ring, but it wasn’t there. He looked twice, searching my hand, his eyes wide with alarm. I was equally alarmed.

“I’ve got all your clothes and things,” Bella said. “I took off your ring to make sure nothing happened to it. You never know with these places.”

“Give it back,” Damon said, rising to his feet so determined Bella gasped and fumbled through her purse. She handed him my pretty emerald and diamond ring then let her shoulders fall when Damon returned to the bed. He slipped the ring on my finger as lovingly as he had at our wedding, with as much intent in his eyes.

We both relaxed and tried to sit closer. “I want in there with you,” he whispered.

“I know. Bella, when can we leave?”

She stood up to move closer. “I’m not sure. They’re running some tests, just to make sure everything’s okay. I guess we have to wait till those come back. They haven’t told me much. The doctor was here just a few minutes ago, but she was so evasive. I don’t know why they like to keep us in the dark. I guess if anything was wrong they’d say so.”

The door opened and a pleasant, yet firm, nurse came in to check on me. She pretended to frown and be angry with Damon and told him he would have to go back to his room and behave.

He didn’t want to leave and I could tell by the look in his eyes he was thinking about stirring up a fuss. After all, we were married, so why couldn’t we share a bed? I could read his mind too, sometimes.

“Go,” I told him. “We have to get through this.”

He went, but not before whispering in my ear, “I’ll be back when it’s dark and quiet.”

***

Damon kept his word and sometime during the night, I felt his warmth press against my cheek.

Nothing could be too bad when we were together, not even a stay in the hospital.

“Wake up, baby,” he whispered.

I opened my eyes and saw he was standing by the bed, not lying beside me. The room was dim but I could see well enough to notice he was wearing clothes that weren’t his own. The gray t-shirt fit him like a second skin, and so did the too-short sweat pants.

“What are you doing?”

“C’mon,” he whispered, pulling my hand and throwing the covers back. “We have to hurry. They’re coming for us.” He removed the IV from my arm and licked the drop of blood that rose.

“Who is?”

He wouldn’t answer until I sat up. He began putting red socks on my feet. “I saw one of them in my room,” he said. “They know about us.”

“Who does? Know what?”

The woman in the room with us moaned, but didn’t wake up. Still, we lowered our voices further.

“They know we’re not human,” he said. “They want to study us. We have to leave right now.”

I didn’t see how we could. Damon was barefoot and I only had the thin, backless hospital gown. Damon was determined, though, and I didn’t want to get him into trouble. His body was recovering but his mind was the same as before. The delusions couldn’t be stopped with antibiotics and fluids.

I convinced myself to go along by deciding I couldn’t stand being in a place where they wouldn’t let us be together. I felt better than I had when I’d come in, so I knew I’d do okay.

I stood up, testing my legs while Damon draped the blanket around my shoulders.

“It was clear a minute ago,” he said. “I’ll go check.”

While he was gone, I folded the blanket and tied it around my waist. The door opened and he waved at me to hurry.

I didn’t feel like jogging, and was a little dizzy, but I kept up as Damon rushed us down the hall, past the nurses’ station, where a single nurse stood working with her back to us.

We took an elevator in silence and found the exit on the first floor. When we stepped outside I saw that we weren’t at Polar’s little clinic. The elevator should have tipped me off, but I was still out of it. We were in a strange town, where cars still dotted the streets at this hour.

Damon pulled me along by the arm. “The time has come, baby.”

“For what?”

“To run to the mountains. To find our cabin.”

“But….” I looked over my shoulder at the hospital growing more distant behind us. I couldn’t decide what was holding me back. Mama was gone, taken away from me, and I could no longer live in the world I’d always known – not if I wanted to keep Damon.

“Don’t look back. We’re on the run now,” he told me. “We can’t stop till we’re safe.”

I didn’t want to be ‘on the run’. I didn’t mind finding a new place, but I didn’t want to run there. I wanted to find a nice, soft bed and crawl into it with Damon by my side. We would find that at home, and I hoped by that time Damon would have forgotten about his phantom adversaries.

My mind wasn’t in the greatest shape, but I knew the people in the hospital didn’t believe we were aliens. I knew because Mama had been in the hospital dozens of times, and I had been there more than once. No one ever thought we were anything more than average humans. Humans with mental and emotional problems, but humans all the same.

“Where are we?” I asked, moving closer to him as we walked.

“Nashville.” He released my hand to put his arm around me. “I grew up here. I have a house here.”

“Oh, that’s good.” But then, I remembered him telling me about the house. “I thought you sold your granddad’s house.”

He looked up, as if struggling to remember. “I don’t know. I think… they said I should. The, um, executor, or the lawyer, the other man, he said I should sell the house. I was going to. They gave me lots of money. Granddad’s money. The house didn’t seem important.” He nodded with certainty. “I’m going to sell it. That’s what I meant.”

“Okay. Well, that’s good. We have a place to go. Where is it?”

Damon looked all around, frowning.

I also looked around. I began to recognize the street. We were not in Nashville. We were in Junction City, the nearest town for shopping, or to see a movie. I’d been here a hundred times over the years, but was still a stranger. I couldn’t think of one person I knew who lived here. The seven or eight miles between Junction City and Polar took twenty minutes by car because of the winding roads.

He didn’t seem on the verge of figuring out our situation. “We’re not in Nashville, Damon.”

Still looking around, he began to nod. “I think you’re right. I thought everything seemed odd. Smaller.”

“How will we get home?” I asked. I really, really, didn’t want to hitchhike.

“This way.”

We crossed a convenience store parking lot and backed up against the brick building. Damon opened his fist and showed me a small cell phone.

“Where did you get that?” I asked. But I knew. He’d stolen it, from some sick person’s room.

I let it go and took the phone. We had to call somebody to come get us.

“I could walk it, but you’re sick,” he said with imploring eyes.

He was just as sick, but I didn’t mention the fact. Even healthy, we couldn’t have walked the eight miles dressed as we were. I only had loose socks on my feet and Damon’s feet were bare. Damon had been naked when the ambulance arrived, but it occurred to me my own clothes had probably been in the hospital room if I’d thought to look. But my mind was still full of fog.

I couldn’t think of one person I could bother in the middle of the night to pick us up. Bella and Chester had done enough. I couldn’t interrupt their much-needed sleep for Damon’s delusions.

“We have to get home,” he said, “for money and my car.”

I would rather have slept behind a Dumpster than wake people up. But it was cold, and we were sick. Damon’s feet and arms were bare, and my back was exposed to the wind. I knew he wouldn’t go back to the hospital.

I would not call Cynthia. She’d tried to kill Mama. She was no longer friend nor family.

“I’ll call Jaynie,” I decided, groaning from the pang of discomfort that accompanied my decision. “She’ll hate me but I think she’ll come. I’ve done her a hundred favors.” Including last summer when I’d handed out her real estate brochures and business cards all day in the heat at the county fair so she could go to a concert in Memphis with Steve. I had leverage.

Jaynie wasn’t happy to hear from me, asking her to get out of her nice, warm bed to drive across the county at night. I could almost see her falling back to her pillow, swearing silently.

“Please, Jaynie, I’m standing at a convenience store in socks and a hospital gown. There are
people
watching me.”

“
Man
!” she hissed. “All right. Let me get a pen and write it down. I can’t think straight. Go inside till I get there.”

“I owe you so big. I promise.”

Damon stood with his arms wrapped around me from behind during the conversation, and moved around to hear the news after I hung up.

“She’s coming. Maybe.”

He looked over my shoulder. “Back here.”

We went around to the back of the store and crouched down between some soggy, discarded boxes, hugging against the cold. We had a long wait ahead. It would take Jaynie thirty minutes to leave and another twenty or so to make the drive. We had a very long hour in the cold.

Damon untied my blanket and wrapped it around me.

“Cover us both,” I told him.

“No.” He closed his arms around me again and we leaned back against the wooden fence.

“I put us here,” he said after a while. “I let it take control of me.”

“Our cuts got infected, that’s not your fault. We didn’t take care of them. We got careless.”

His body shook and he pressed his head against mine. “I had fake teeth,” he confessed with a thick voice. “I’m sorry.”

“I know. I found them.”

“God, Maggie, I can’t stop lying. Even when it hurts you. I try so hard but it feels like the truth when I’m saying it.”