My Deja Vu Lover (21 page)

  
His face was gray. He lay still, snow melting off his coat. I removed his hat and helped him work his way out of the coat, rolling slowly while I pulled off first one sleeve, then the other. The effort left him exhausted.

  
“Lie still, don’t try to move,” I said and he didn’t argue which really scared me.

  
I untied his shoes and very slowly worked off the right one to avoid pulling on his knee. And then after a lot of complaining and hollering, he let me work his slacks down over his hips and down his legs.

  
Okay, pants off and holy hell. The knee was a swollen mess rapidly discoloring.

  
“That’s it,” I said in my bossiest voice and picked up the phone. Hurray. The clerk was back at the desk.

  
“I don’t suppose you have a hotel physician?” I asked. “Oh. Okay. Well, he fell on the ice and twisted his knee and it looks really bad. Yes. Sure, that’s fine, he isn’t going anywhere. Uh, does your kitchen do room service? Really? Okay, great.”

  
“I don’t need a doctor,” Tom said.

  
“I do.” I hung up the receiver. “My shoulder is busted from lugging big fat you. So listen, here’s the deal. She’ll phone the local MD and he makes house calls, okay, hotel calls, and in the meantime, room service is sending up dinner.”

  
“What’s on the menu?” He looked pale but he was also hungry enough to perk up a bit.

  
“They don’t have a choice in the winter because there aren’t that many people here. Tonight is baked chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and biscuits.”

  
Tom snickered, I giggled, and then we both started laughing. It sounded like Sunday dinner at grandma’s house. Biscuits and gravy. I had heard of that combination but had never actually seen it served.

  
When dinner came, twenty minutes later, carried up on a tray by the desk clerk, I realized why the combination was so popular here. It not only looked good, it smelled like food that would unthaw our bones.

  
She glanced at Tom who had managed to haul himself into a seated position against the bed’s headboard, with his long legs out straight in front on top of the quilt because he couldn’t stand the weight of the cover on his knee. Fortunately, he had on boxer shorts, which somewhat decreased his embarrassment.

  
The clerk stared at his knee and then her round face dimpled into a motherly smile and she said, “Oh you poor thing! That’s just terrible! Gotta watch out for that ice. Now Doc said he’d be by in about an hour and I brought you some aspirin because you need it. Now I’ll just settle this tray right here for you and you enjoy your supper. Call me if you want anything more.”

  
She put the tray on top of the bed and turned it around until she was satisfied it was well within Tom’s reach while Tom turned bright red.

  
After she left, we both looked at the tray. Yup, Sunday at grandma’s, heaps of food plus a pot of coffee.
 
It would have been embarrassing to eat in the dining room, the way we both dug in, but it had been a long cold night and day with nothing but airline peanuts and day old pie.

  
When the doctor arrived, I opened the door for him and pointed at the patient. The doctor walked toward Tom, saying, “What have we here? Looks like you took quite a spill.”

  
I picked up the tray and carried it downstairs. Examining a knee wasn’t something that required privacy, but us babysitters need a break and I kind of knew this was going to turn into a babysitting night.

  
“You didn’t need to do that, dear,” the clerk said, gesturing at the tray.

  
“Yes, I did. I’ll be listening to him moan all night.”

  
She did the dimple twinkle thing. “Men. All big babies, aren’t they? Tell you what, be sure Doc leaves some sleeping pills for that hubby of yours. Take a couple yourself.”

  
There it was again, the husband thing. What did I know? Maybe in a small town they presumed that any couple checking into the hotel must be married. Or else they thought, no matter what their personal opinions, it would be rude to assume otherwise. So I let it go. We chatted for a few minutes and then I thanked her, and headed back up the staircase to hear the verdict.

  
The doctor must have gone down the elevator. Tom was alone and had some sort of elastic and plastic thing around his knee to keep it straight, and several small containers of pills on the bedside table. A cane leaned against the side of the bed, one of those aluminum ones that adjusts to height.

  
“Are they sending the ambulance or the hearse for you?” I asked.

  
“The hearse would be okay. My parents would pay. But the ambulance, hmm, you know, April, I’ve got a little problem here.”
 
He leaned back against the headboard and looked up at me. His expression was more worried than pained.

  
“You’ve got a big, swollen yellow-purple-green problem,” I said.

  
“Yes, but besides that. See, I should have been at work today. But I figured, hell, I hate that job, so what do I care? If they fire me when I go back, it doesn’t matter. Only, now it does.”

  
I stared at him. It hadn’t occurred to me he was cutting work. “I figured you had vacation time. Didn’t you leave a message?”

  
“No. I have to put in for vacation like about three months in advance. So here’s the problem. I can’t give the doctor’s bill to the insurance if I’m fired. And one doctor appointment is okay, I can afford it. But he thinks I’ve strained some ligaments and might even have a hairline fracture. So he says I need to get it x-rayed when we get home. And that could start running into big bills.”

  
I said a few words that fell into grandmother’s ‘wash your mouth with soap’ category.

  
“Yeah, well,” he said. “The rest is just bruises.”

  
“The rest of what?”

  
“The rest of me.”

  
I leaned back, looked him up and down. Nothing else on his face or arms and legs except that one awful knee. Bending toward him, I ran my hands around his waist and pushed up the lower edge of his tee shirt.

  
“I should be enjoying that, but I’m not.”

  
“Shut up. Ohmygod, Tommy. You’re purple-green all over. You look like you got run over by a truck.”

  
“Uh. That’s about right. That’s how it feels.”

  
“So what now? Can you phone in sick?”

  
“Like flu? And turn up next week with my knee in a cast and an x-ray referral from a Minnesota doc on my insurance claim?”

  
I edged very gently onto his bed, trying not to make it shake. With my back to the headboard and my blue jeaned legs stretched out beside his bare legs, I murmured, “Poor Tommy.”

  
“That’s nice. From there you can move on to poor baby.”
 
His attempt at a smile didn’t have its usual glow despite the effort he forced into it.

  
I patted his hand and said, “Poor baby.”

  
But that wasn’t going to solve anything. And this was my fault. Think, think, think, back over the whole stupid day. Flight, long drive, hotel, library, accident, go back to librarian. The librarian had mentioned the cemetery.

  
“Hey, Tom, how about you phone work and tell them a close relative died and the funeral is tomorrow and you had to get the first flight available?”

  
“Huh?”

  
“And you got here and fell on the ice, which is why you’re late phoning in, and the doctor has just been here, listen. Is there anyone at your office who would take this message without screaming at you?”

  
Tom turned his head and stared at me, those big dark eyes going wider, his thin face tight with pain, and then the grin spread slowly. “God, April, you are something else!
 
Yeah, you know, there is a gal in the human resources office who kind of, umm, hangs over my shoulder sometimes.”

  
I tried to picture that and couldn’t. “Hangs over your shoulder? What, she’s seven feet tall?”

  
“No, I mean she comes into my cubicle on lame excuses like, do I know the lunch hour schedule, stuff like that, stuff that’s posted all over.”

  
“She’s hitting on you?”

  
That made him laugh. “If she is, I am pretending not to notice. Anyhow, that’s a good idea, I’ll call her in the morning. Guess I’d better call Mom and update her in case anyone checks.”

  
“Didn’t you say you left a note yesterday?”

  
“Yes, sure, but I said I was going to visit an old buddy.”

  
“Tangled webs,” I muttered.

  
He slid his arm around me and kissed the top of my head. “My webs are nothing more than a few broken threads. I don’t remember a past life and I’m not in love with some dude because he reminds me of a vision.”

  
“Hope not. I was kind of counting on you being one hundred per cent straight, but if you’ve got a few kinks, that’s okay. I never ask my friends about their sex lives.”

  
“Right.”

  
“Or why they are running away from their girlfriend stalkers.”

  
“Touché.”

  
“So get yourself ready for bed and I will tuck you in and did he leave sleeping pills for you? And do you need help getting to the bathroom?”

  
“Oh you really are playing nursey. A pity I don’t feel up to taking advantage. Here, let me try this damn thing.”

  
Reaching for the cane that the doctor had left with him, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. With a fair amount of groaning, he made his way to the bathroom door, then looked back over his shoulder at me. “If I felt better, I’d tell you I needed help taking a shower.”

  
“Do you want to take a shower?”

  
“Do I want to lift my leg over the edge of the tub and stand in running water and then try to get out again? Hell, I could dive out the window into a snow bank and have about as much fun.”

CHAPTER 21

  
That night I lay in the other bed watching the light and shadow of the occasional passing car play on the window, and drifted in and out of dreams about Graham.

  
If Esther was right and Laurence had helped his wife to an overdose, than Laurence was a murderer. And if Graham was his reincarnation, what did that mean?
 

  
They were alike in so many ways. But surely that wasn’t possible, surely Graham didn’t do anything to encourage his wife’s alcoholism. Did he?
 

  
In my visions, Millie was crazy in love with Laurence. That’s how I thought it when I was in Millie’s mind. In my own life, I knew I had never felt this breath-stopping, gut-wrenching tension about anyone before Graham. I can’t live without him, I thought, and knew I was a fool. Somehow, sometime, in this age of easy divorce, he would wake up one day knowing he needed me as much as I needed him.