KILLIAN: A Mafia Romance (The Callahans Book 2) (96 page)

              When Rose woke the next morning she felt a strange mix of elation and dread. She almost couldn’t believe the Starlight Energy pipeline was going to be built far out in East Bellevue. It was the biggest accomplishment of her career, and there was nothing to fear. Taylor had signed the contract. This was happening. As thrilled as this made her, it wasn’t reason enough for her to forget the damning prognosis she had received from Dr. Fitzpatrick. Vital nerves behind her eyes were too damaged for Seattle Mercy to feel confident about giving her donor eyes. The board felt they couldn’t risk wasting two good eyes should her surgery go badly, and it would, according to her doctor. Taylor was acting as though he wouldn’t let Dr. Fitzpatrick’s opinion on the matter stop him. But Taylor’s determination to somehow secure donated eyes without the help of the hospital wasn’t exactly realistic, as far as Rose was concerned.

              Opposites might attract, but Rose knew she and Taylor couldn’t be more different. She had been raised in a loving family, which had virtually no money. Because of this, she understood that life could be hard, it could be a struggle, bad things could happen to good people and sometimes a person had to weather the storm and accept that they had no control over when the skies would clear.

              Taylor had been raised with a silver spoon in his mouth and had witnessed firsthand that money truly could buy just about anything. But when it came to buying someone’s eyes, Taylor was being downright delusional to think he could find a donor just by offering a price.

              It wasn’t that Rose dreaded going in to see Dr. Fitzpatrick to run a few more tests and begin her physical therapy, it was that it was becoming hard to watch Taylor’s unrelenting optimism, when in her heart she knew she was blind and there would be no way to change that.

              She would give anything to regain her sight. She wanted to believe Taylor. And because of this, a great conflict was rising in her chest.

              Staying focused on her work with One World had been a great help in that it distracted her to a degree. On the other hand, working also made her aware of just how much her life had been changed when she lost her vision. Hector and Jenny had been a great help, but knowing that she couldn’t get a thing done without them because she couldn’t see was gut wrenching.

              As if she didn’t have enough to deal with, in the back of her mind she was in a constant state of puzzlement at who had let themselves into the Escala that night to try to strangle her to death. Would they come back for her now that One World had succeeded at getting Taylor to move the pipeline eight miles out? Or would they give up? Had the attack been meant to scare her into giving up? Or had it been a taste of what would come if she succeeded?

              It was this silent war brewing inside her that forced Rose from the bed as if she could escape it. Padding carefully down the hallway, she found the bathroom, stepped cautiously inside so as not to bump her shin or hip on the sink, toilet, or counter. When she reached the shower stall, she turned the dial until a hot stream of water was flowing, stripped off her tee shirt and panties, and stepped in.

              As she washed, she was careful not to let the shower spray hit the gauze around her eyes, which made washing her face a real challenge. According to Dr. Fitzpatrick, she didn’t have to wear the protective gauze any longer, but having an idea of what she looked like without it had been reason enough to keep it on. She considered what she might be able to use as an alternative. Perhaps if she found a strip of silk from a scarf or something like that, she could fashion an eye wrap to look more like an accessory than a surgical bandage.

              After washing her hair and doing what she could to shave her legs (Taylor had provided a Lady Gillette shaver in the stall, but every time she used it she accidentally cut herself, especially around her knees and ankles), she returned the shaver to the ledge, rinsed her legs, and stood under the hot stream to enjoy the water now that she’d thoroughly cleaned herself up.

              As she stood there, she heard the door creak open and Taylor pad across the tiles.

              “Can I join you?” he asked.

              Smirking, she told him he could, and Taylor slid the glass door aside and stepped in, reaching for her hip to help her maneuver without slipping.

              When he entered the shower stream, he began working a bar of lavender soap over her shoulders and neck then down her arms. At the same time, she felt for his bottle of shampoo, squirted a dollop into her palm, and then began massaging it into his hair, churning up a good lather.

              “Can I ask you something?” she said, as she rinsed her soapy hands in the hot stream.

              “What?”

              “I’m not being negative, I just don’t see the point in going back to the eye specialist. I mean, what is the point really? So I can exercise my eye muscles into seeing better shades of black?”

              Taylor let out a carefully measured breath.

              “Don’t you want to do everything you can to improve your sight?”

              “There is no sight, Taylor. I want to avoid getting my hopes up. I can deal with a disability, but I can’t deal with the emotional upheaval that comes with hoping for something unrealistic, because the letdown is more than I can manage.”

              “When we were in Fitzpatrick’s office last time, he evaluated whether or not you’d be a good candidate for the hospital’s donor list. That’s a very different criterion than the one for the actual surgery. He just needs to run a few more tests to see what he will be working with when I find you a pair of eyes myself.”

              “Taylor,” she sighed then breathed in a lung full of hot steam. “I think you need to manage your own expectations, as well.”

              “You think I’m not going to be able to find you new eyes?”

              She didn’t respond, but her silence was enough of an answer.

              As he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closely against his hot, wet body, he said softly, “I’m moving a pipeline for you. The least you can do is play ball when it comes to your eyesight.”

              She snorted a laugh. It was true. Maybe if she thought about jumping through the hoops with Dr. Fitzpatrick as something she was doing
for
Taylor as a means to thank him for signing her contract, it would be easier.

              She would try.

              They dried off, and as they dressed in the bedroom, she asked, “If these bandages aren’t necessary anymore, can you think of anything I can put over my eyes? I was thinking about a scarf or something, but I’m not sure how that would look. You’re way more fashionable than I am.”

              He took a moment to consider her question, and as he did, she sensed he had stopped dressing to give the idea his full attention.

              “I can ask my stylist,” he said finally.

              “You have a stylist?”

              “She’s one of my assistants,” he said through a self-deprecating laugh. “She’s the reason the Versace dress fit, the one I dropped off for you that day way back when we first met.

              “Way back when we first met,” she mused, fastening her jeans closed. “It was barely three weeks ago.”

              “Funny, it feels like a lifetime.”

              Taylor put in a call to his stylist before they left his suite, and he told his limo driver to make a quick stop on their way to the hospital so that Rose could get a feel for his stylist’s ideas about what she could use to conceal her scarred eyes.

              His stylist, a woman named Greer who had received her master’s degree in fashion from FIT, was waiting for them outside her studio in downtown Seattle by the time they pulled up to the curb.

              Taylor kissed her hello on the cheek then introduced Rose, and Greer invited them inside.

              “I pulled together some options,” she explained as she led them to a table in the back of her studio. “There they are,” she said when they came to a stop in front of the table. “They are all double-eye patches. I took the classic eye patch idea, but strung two together and glued feathers on.”

              “These are really beautiful,” said Taylor, helping Rose’s fingertips feel each patch.

              “The first is covered in black feathers, and I trimmed them to the exact shape of the actual patches. The band is elastic, which I covered with black velvet. When you wrap it around the back of your head, you can pull your hair over it.”

              To Rose’s touch, it felt quite nice.

              “The bridge of the nose is a band of black velvet, as well,” she concluded before Taylor moved Rose’s hand to the next design. “The next is the same idea, except it’s eggshell white and the feathers aren’t trimmed, so they plume on top. And the last one is an earth-brown color with the features glued in a radial design, so that the plume fans over your eyebrows, temples, and cheeks.”

              “What do you think?” Rose asked Taylor. “Which should I wear?”

              “I think we should take all of them,” he said. “The black one is good for everyday. The white would look nice if you were wearing a cocktail dress. And the brown is a good option if you feel like switching it up.”

              “Fantastic,” said Greer.

              “Here,” said Taylor, picking up the black mask and helping Rose unwrap the gauze from around her eyes. As he pulled the mask over her eyes, Greer placed the remaining two masks into white boxes, which she then set into a shopping bag with her studio’s logo on the front.

              “Thank you so much,” said Rose, finding Greer’s hand to shake.

              Having the black feather mask did wonders for changing her confidence as she and Taylor made their way to the limo, which then took them across town to Seattle Mercy. Wearing the medical gauze had made her feel damaged in some strange, indescribable way, as though she was healing and not yet whole. But now that she was wearing this mask, and knew how fashionable it looked, she felt as though she had accepted her new disability. She was accentuating it as if she’d learned to live with it.

              Had she?

              Dr. Fitzpatrick met them in the anteroom of his office almost as soon as they checked in.

              While Rose sat in his exam room and endured similar tests as those he had conducted a few days prior, Taylor stepped out to make a few calls, the reason for which he had been somewhat secretive about.

              As Dr. Fitzpatrick was finishing up, she asked, “What do you think the likelihood of Taylor finding me donor eyes will be?”

              The doctor released a sigh then said, “I really couldn’t tell you. I’ve never endeavored anything so ambitious. All I can tell you is the likelihood of whether or not your body will accept or reject your new eyes, and the degree to which you might be able to see once they’re in.”

              “So what’s the likelihood?”

              “I’ll have an idea once I examine the photos I’m taking. I should know in a day or so. Bear in mind, though, that we have three battles. The first is making sure the donor is, in fact, a match. I explained to you earlier that this aspect could be tricky to navigate. Then your body has to accept the eyes. And then after the nerves attach and heal, we’ll have to closely monitor your sight. Just because the donor has 20/20 vision, for example, doesn’t mean you will be able to see anything more than shapes and colors. There are a lot of moving parts here. We’ll have to take this one step at a time.”

              As Rose listened to her doctor explain the ins and outs of the surgery, she felt grateful he was being pragmatic, realistic, and not optimistic. She thanked him as she got out of the chair.

              “I’ll give you and Taylor a call as soon as I can,” he said, walking her out to the anteroom where Taylor had been waiting.

              He lowered his cell from his ear and joined them.

              “How did it go?”

              Rose shrugged then angled her nose over in the direction of Dr. Fitzpatrick for his response.

              “As I mentioned to Rose, I’ll give you both a call as soon as I analyze the tests.” Then, before they left, he added, “I like your eye patches, by the way. You might just start a trend with those.”

              Rose laughed and wished she could roll her eyes playfully. For an activist who generally never gave her clothing a second thought, there was something funny about her suddenly becoming a fashion icon, not that her doctor had taken his comment that far.

              When Taylor and Rose climbed into the back of the limousine, he asked her how she felt like spending her day. But before she could answer, he quickly added, “I need to head out to East Bellevue to make sure Davey Construction is on track, make sure they’ve loaded and transported our materials to the new site, but I don’t have to head out until the early afternoon.”

              “I might like to join you,” she said, as the limo pulled away from the curb.