Love Immortal

Love

Immortal

by

Linnea Hall

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

KTJ Publishing

Copyright © 2009 by Linnea Hall

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal
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or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return
to the site where you purchased this copy and purchase your own
copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

KTJ Publishing
8928 Swinnea Road
Southaven, MS 38671

Copyright © 2009 by Linnea Hall
ISBN: 978-0-98-325351-8
ISBN-10: 0-98325351-X
www.KTJPublishing.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews. For information contact KTJ
Publishing.

First KTJ paperback printing: January
2010

Printed in the U.S.A.

Cover art by Tom Konrath
maninthewood.com

To my Jewell, my inspiration and to the man
that put up with me for the months, that stretched into years while
I wrote this. And to all of the people that helped me edit and
rewrite this book to help me get it “write.”

CHAPTER 1

The man had been in full cardiac arrest for
over a minute, but he was still screaming. His screams filled the
emergency room with blood curdling intensity and reverberated
throughout the rest of the hospital. Jewell McKean looked at the
monitors. He was dead; his heart had stopped beating. She leaned
against the door to the room where they worked on him and watched
as the doctors and more experienced nurses worked to save the man’s
life. While they worked, she tried to imagine how his screams could
be described to someone who wasn’t here to witness his pain; blood
curdling, certainly. Anguished? Tortured? Otherworldly? She
contemplated the eerie sounds emanating from the body that lay in
the room. His screams sounded inhuman, like a banshee’s wail
echoing across the Irish countryside heralding death. The hollow
scream foretelling of the man’s imminent demise: terrifying in
their torment, frightening in their volume.

She felt a connection to this man; something
other than pity, other than sorrow. She was drawn to him, belonged
with him. Maybe because he looked so young; it was tragic that his
life had taken this turn. He should still have his whole life ahead
of him. She thought about his family; how would his parents cope
with the loss of their son; no parent expects to outlive their
children. She wondered if he had brothers and sisters that would
miss him; whether he had a girlfriend.

Working in triage, Jewell was one of the
first to see the man. He was the victim of a drunk driver, just
like her mother. Seeing him, brought back all of the memories of
her mother’s death so many years before. The blood, the broken
bones, the pain so apparent on his face reminded her of the last
time she saw her mother’s broken body.

It had been nearly two minutes since the last
futile beat of the man’s heart when his screaming abruptly
stopped.

Jewell watched as the doctors tried
desperately to bring life back to the man’s empty, now soulless
body. They worked feverishly for another several minutes before
finally calling the time of death: 11:26 p.m. She stared as the
doctors and nurses slowly filed out of the room, covered in blood
and gore evidencing their ineffectual attempt to save the man’s
life. Their faces drawn with their efforts, their lips pressed
tight together against the unspoken question that was on everyone’s
mind: Why?

Jewell stepped silently into the room. The
machines that only moments ago were beeping and moving, indication
of hope, were now woefully silent. The flat green line split the
EKG monitor in half, evidencing the absence of life.

The man’s lifeless body lay silent on the
gurney that had carried him into this room; the room where he would
take his last breath. His body was covered with a plain white
sheet; a shroud covering the remains of what had once been his
life. Jewell didn’t know why she entered the room to take one last
look at the man: why it seemed so important to her. And yet, at the
same time, she knew unquestionably that she had to look upon him
one last time.

She carefully pulled the sheet away from his
face, her eyes averted, perhaps fearing what she might see. After
folding the sheet back to reveal his face and upper chest, she
returned her eyes to his body. His right collarbone was crushed,
his shoulder twisted at an awkward angle. His torso, what she could
see of it, was covered with bruises. An incision had been made on
his right side, evidencing the doctors’ efforts to drain his lungs
of blood that was seeping into them maliciously working to take him
into the cold embrace of death.

There were red marks on either side of his
chest where the paddles of the defibrillator had been placed in an
effort to start his silent heart beating, to carry precious blood
throughout his body, to keep his body alive if only for a short
while longer, until his family had the chance to say good-bye. On
his right side, just above the sternum, there was an unnatural
depression, suggesting that some of his ribs must be broken,
crushed beyond repair.

The man’s screams echoed in her mind again –
he shouldn’t have been able to draw enough breath to produce the
deafening scream that resonated through her head. With his
injuries, he shouldn’t have been able to manage a whisper. Then she
reminded herself that he was screaming even after his heart had
stopped.

Jewell finally braced herself and forced her
eyes up the line of his sternum and into the small hollow at the
base of his neck. Her eyes moved further up, to trace the line of
his jaw. It was strong, angular. It reminded her of carved marble,
chiseled to perfection by the artist’s tools and vision. And yet,
the hard line was softened ever so slightly by his youth. He had a
small dimple in the center of his chin, not a flaw, but character
in an otherwise perfect face.

The man’s mouth was peaceful; beautiful when
it wasn’t stretched wide in a dying, agonized scream. His lips were
full, conveying just the hint of a pout. They were nearly white in
death, but she imagined in life they would be the deep red of
garnets caught in sunlight. His nose had been broken in the crash,
and now curved on his face at an eerie angle. Somehow, even
distorted as it was, she could see that his nose was in perfect
proportion to the rest of his features. His right cheek was
crushed, flattened by the force of whatever had damaged the rest of
his right side. His right eye was swollen, bruised.

His left side had suffered little damage in
the crash. Jewell reached across his body to grab a four by four
gauze pad from the tray of instruments on the other side of the
bed. She saturated the pad with alcohol and gently wiped the dried,
caked blood from the left side of his face and forehead. Despite
the pallor of his skin, she still had a sense of how his rosy
cheeks would glow through his sun-kissed skin when he smiled. His
cheekbones were pronounced, high on his face and well-proportioned
but, like his chin, the strong line softened by youth.

She tried to imagine the color of his eyes.
His heredity seemed to be Anglo, with sandy colored hair and light
skin. His eyes would probably be blue, the color of sapphires, or a
clear winter sky. She longed to look into those eyes, to see life
reflected back in them. His sandy hair was matted with dried blood,
an ugly gash cut through his hair, from the crown of his skull to
the middle of his forehead. At certain angles, the wound sparkled
as if it was filled with diamonds. She leaned closer, noticing
glass embedded in the injury, not attended to because death took
him before the wound could be cleaned and sutured.

She stared down at his peaceful, beautiful
face, which such a short time before had been drawn tight with
pain. She consoled herself with the thought that at least he was no
longer suffering. At least he would never again feel pain: or love,
or joy, she appended sadly to her thought.

She was surprised when a small drop of water
splashed onto his face. Her eyes turned to the ceiling where she
searched for the source of the leak. There was no sign of any water
on the ceiling. She lowered her head, once again gazing into his
battered and broken face. She tasted the salt of tears on her lips,
and only then realized that she was crying.

Beep. The sound pulled Jewell from her
reverie, reminding her that she had responsibilities. She glanced
at her watch and realized that she had been sitting with the man
for over ten minutes. She was certain that people were wondering
where she had wandered off to. Though, they may have thought that
she needed some time to recover from the shock of seeing someone
die. It was expected of the new nurses, that they wouldn’t be able
to handle death easily. They were not yet jaded to the realities of
the ER. She was assured, each time she saw someone die, that it
would get easier. While the pain would still linger, the ability to
handle it would improve with time.

Jewell slowly pulled the sheet back over the
man’s peaceful face, trying to imagine that he was only sleeping,
though his injuries betrayed the truth. She stood for a minute
looking over his shrouded corpse feeling as if she should have
known him. That somehow, he was a part of her, their lives meant to
be a part of one another’s. She felt that somehow, losing him was
like losing a part of herself.

Beep. It was the same sound that she had
heard before. She turned, looking for the source of the sound and
heard only silence. After standing completely motionless straining
to hear that sound again, and hearing nothing but the beating of
her own heart, she decided it must have come from the hallway, or
her imagination. As she turned to leave the room, she heard the
sound again: beep. But this time, she saw the flat, thin green line
on the EKG monitor spike.

* * *

It took a few seconds for Jewell’s brain to
register what her eyes were seeing. Could it be possible? Could he
still be alive? “Code blue!” She screamed into the hallway, yanking
the sheet from his shrouded body. Beep. Her training kicked in and
she immediately started checking for other signs of life. Her hand
wrapped around his wrist, her finger on his pulse while her other
hand rested lightly on his crushed chest. She leaned her ear close
to his mouth to see if he was breathing; she felt a gentle exhale
of air, and felt his chest rise, perhaps a fraction of an inch. It
was impossible, but he was alive.

As she leaned over his broken body, a single
nurse sauntered in to see what the commotion was. When she saw the
strong, if somewhat irregular heartbeat on the EKG monitor, she ran
out of the room for a crash cart, screaming code blue as she
ran.

Seconds later, doctors and nurses poured into
the room. As doctors ran to the man’s side, nurses frantically tore
open sterile packs, readying instruments for the doctors’ use.
Instead of stepping back as she had done in most critical
situations since she had started working here, Jewell stayed close
to the man’s side, ensuring that the doctors were doing everything
they could to save his life…again. Refusing to release his hand,
Jewell continued to monitor his pulse despite what she could see on
the heart monitor.

It had only been about fifteen minutes when
the doctors pronounced him stable enough to move upstairs for
surgery. It was critical that certain injuries be stabilized to
improve his chances, amazingly he seemed stable enough to endure
it.

CHAPTER 2

These late night calls were brutal. Sheriff
Hugh Payne was annoyed that he had to cut his date short for a
call. What a mess he thought, stepping from his cruiser. Hummer
versus…well the car was barely recognizable. The force of the
impact had ripped two of the tires from the car and propelled them
across the road where they came to rest next to the curb of a
convenience store. The top of the car which had once been a
convertible, flapped lazily in the light southern breeze blowing in
from the gulf. The only undamaged piece of the car that attested to
the former identity of this twisted horror was the small cobra
snake emblem lying on the ground next to the car’s shapeless mound.
The miserable remains of a Shelby GT 500 Mustang.