Shatter Me (17 page)

             
“No.” He sits back and crosses
his arms over his chest. “I haven’t left this hospital since your father called me. I will sit here and be silent and you can ignore me all you want. But I am not leaving you.”

             
“Keith…” I sigh and close my eyes.
“Fine
.
”
There is no use arguing with him when I don’t have the energy to keep up with him.

             
They
must still be g
iv
ing regular doses of pain medication because I drift off without even trying…

I
have to be
dreaming because I hear Keith whispering sweet nothings to me and I want to cuddle close to him. When I reach out in my sleep I encounter…nothing. My eyes open and I find that I am in the new room with the glass wall and sliding door once more. Keith is not in the chair but outside at the nurses’ station speaking to Dr. Hayes and Dr. Shelton.

My father is talking in low harsh tones, and from what I can see of his expression he is royally pissed. I don’t know what Baxter Brandon is so angry about but it takes quite a lot to make him that
mad
. I can’t make out what he is saying, except for a few words here and there. Bianca’s name is mentioned several times and I grimace. My father and Bianca have always gotten along well. If he is angry at her then he must know what had happened right before the accident.

Very carefully I sit up with the help of the button on the bedrail to raise the head of the bed. The movement must catch the four men’s attention because the sliding door opens and they all come in. I push my limp, oily hair away from my face. “What is this place?” I ask, directing my question at Dr. Shelton.

“ICU.”
He is already taking the stethoscope from around his neck. “How are you feeling?”

             
I roll my eyes at the question. “Everyone keeps asking me that. The answer never changes.”

             
He grins.
“Must be feeling a little better if you are
this
snarky.”
He presses the stethoscope to my chest and closes his eyes while he listens. He moves it around several times then asks me to sit forward a little while he listens to my lungs from the back. “You still have a slightly irregular heartbeat.” He comments as he steps back. “But that might be from all of the pain medication.
I’m going to lower your dose and see what happens.”
             

             
“Can’t you just give me some Advil?” I mutter. “I really don’t like taking hard
core
pain medication.”

             
“Trust me, sweetheart. You would be begging me for them if you didn’t have them.” Dr. Shelton turns to face my father. “I want her to rest most of the day. No loud noises, no stress. You can visit for a few minutes now and perhaps a little later today. But otherwise you will have to wait in the waiting room with everyone else.” His gaze goes to Keith and the two men share a hard, yet understanding look. “Understand?”

             
Keith gives a curt nod but doesn’t say anything. Dr. Shelton excuses himself
while
Dr. Hayes steps up beside of my bed. “I would have much rather have eased you back into your memories, Kari. But now that you have them I think we should still see each other regularly. There were a few things that we talked about yesterday that we should explore further.”

             
That confuses me. “What things?”

             
He glances at the other two men quickly before raising a brow. I sigh. “Don’t worry about them. They will find out one way or another.
Especially Keith.”

             
Dr. Hayes nods.
“Very well.
One of the issues that I think we should explore is
your experience with your step
father.” He doesn’t elaborate, but I can feel the tension in the room coming from my father and Keith.
“Also
,
your friendship with Bianca.”

             
“Okay.” I agree if only to get him to leave faster. I know a storm is brewing and I watch the doctor leave a few minutes later with a feeling of dread.

             
“What was he talking about?” Baxter asks.

             
“It was nothing.” I have never told anyone except for Dr. Hayes and Bianca what had happened with my mother’s husband
right
before her divorce. I don’t understand why the psychiatrist wants to ‘explore’ my ‘issues’ concerning the dirty old man when I have never given the episode very much thought over the years.

             
“It didn’t sound like nothing.” Keith mutters as he takes the chair beside of my bed. “Did something happen with my father?”

             
“No!” I can’t believe he would even think this was about his father. “I loved Charlie nearly as much as my own father. He was a great guy. Not like…” I break off before I can even say the man’s name, feeling ill just think
ing about him. Okay, maybe I did have
some hidden issues after all.

             
“It
w
as that damned
Brice
wasn’t it? Something happened.”
Baxter’s eyes turn a dangerous color as he realizes the truth. “That was why you didn’t want to go anywhere near your mother that summer.”

             
“I…” Biting the inside of my cheek
I nod. “Yes.”

             
“What happened?” My father whispers, as if he was afraid of the answer but had to know for sure.

             
I rest my head back against the pillows and frown up at
the
ceiling. Thankfully the lights were dim. My head was starting to throb again. “He tried to touch me.” The room’s temperature cools by ten degrees, but I don’t spare either man in the room a glance. “I was home one weekend. Mother was out somewhere and he just grabbed me…”

             
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Baxter demanded.

             
“
You were in Dubai. And I just wanted to forget about it.” I shake my head. “But don’t think that I just let him get away with
it!
I made sure he would think twice about so much as looking at me, let alone touching me again.” I remember the look on old man Brice’s face when my knee made contact with his groin. The shade of red, then purple he had turned as he fell to his knees holding himself. “He walked wrong for the rest of my visit.” I assure my father.

             
He just stands there and glares off into space and I can see the menace churning inside of him. When he leaves a little while later I know that he is going to do something horrible to the old man and I can’t help wondering if my father will end up in jail by nightfall.

             
Keith continues to sit with me. I lay there, trying to ignore him and he doesn’t attempt
to
speak to me. I think he is afraid I will demand he leave if he does. But deep down I am glad to have him here with me. It means that he cares for me more than Bianca and that soothes something that has been aching since I first woke up a few days ago.

             
When the nurse comes in with a syringe she tells Keith that visiting hours are over. Reluctantly he gets to his feet and leans over to brush a kiss across my forehead. “Feel better.” He whispers in that gravelly voice I love so much.

             
“Keith..?” I murmur his name just as he reaches the sliding door. He turns a questioning brow raised and I falter, not sure what I had wanted to
ask
him. “Do you love her?” Is what I really want to know more than anything in the
world.
Followed by the second burning question.
“Did you prefer her to me in bed?”

             
But I ask neither question. Instead I lower my eyes to my fingers where they are playing with the corner of the sheet and blanket. “Will you come back later?”

             
“Yes.” He assures me. “And I will be out in the waiting room if you need me.” His voice sounds choked and I raise my eyes to look at him, but he has already
walked through the sliding door.

             
I spend three more days in the ICU before the doctor thinks that my irregular heart beat has returned to normal. I get a private room filled with several flower arrangements and cards wishing me well. And on the bed is a stuffed brown bear with a heart in his hands.

             
I know it is from Keith. And even though I want to sling it’s giver out the window I cuddle it close when I am alone in my room.

             
Over the next two
week
s
I slowly get my strength back. I have to have some physical therapy because I of the length of time I had been in the coma. My legs are shaky from lack of use and I slowly have to build the muscle tone up again. My head doesn’t throb now. Instead I have a constant ache that I have learned to cope with.
My chest isn’t nearly as painful and thankfully the tube that had been in my lung to keep it clear of fluid after it had collapsed ha
s
been removed.

             
My father, who was supposed to be in Turkey for business still comes to see me twice a day. The day after I had woken up in the ICU ward he had come to see me with his right hand wrapped in a bandage. It seems that he had found old man Brice and found the type of vengeance only a father could express. Baxter was lucky he hadn
’t landed himself in jail, but
then again, I doubted the old man had wanted to press any charges considering my father’s reasons for beating the hell out of him.

             
The hardest part of it had been when my father had apologized to me. He felt like it was his fault. He blames himself for constantly being away from me on business when I was younger
and not being much of a father. I hate that he should think that way. I have always felt that he has been a great father and I understood that he had to work when I was a kid. I tried to explain all of this
to him but I wasn’t sure I got
through to him.

             
Christian has come to visit me several times and each time we have avoided any talk of the accident, Bianca and Keith. Instead we focus on what is going on outside in the real world while I am cooped up in my small hospital room.
He seems a little more carefree than he had been before the accident and I wonder if maybe he has been talking to Bianca, but never ask.

             
Hunter drops by from time to time and keeps me company while I am doing my physical therapy. I enjoy the time spent with him and he makes me laugh when all I want to do is
scream
at the therapist. Thankfully, for the therapist at least, Hunter is there to keep the peace.

             
I have already had my therapy for the day. Visiting hours are over and I am sitting up in bed going over some work from Winthrop Charities. Rachel, my secretary, has been handling everything at the office spectacularly but there are a few things that only I can deal with.

             
I have paperwork spread all around me in a neat mess that only I can understand the logic of, there is a pen clamped between my teeth
,
and I am frowning down at some estimated figures for an Easter brunch that is being planned to raise money for the homeless when the door opens. I don’t have to look up to know who it is.

             
Keith has developed a set routine. He sits with me in the morning and
reads
t
he
paper. When I go for therapy or Dr. Hayes comes in for a chat he leaves to catch up on work. Around mid-afternoon he returns and sits by my bed with his iPhone in hand going through e-mails until my father arrives. I’m not all together sure what he does between then and seven thirty but that is the usual time he returns and camps out in the chair once more with his phone out until I fall asleep.

             
During the time he is here we rarely talk, but I feel oddly at ease with him here. The one night he had left early I had found it incredibly hard to fall asleep. When I had
,
I had nightmares of him going home to Bianca and making love to her.
When he
arrived the next morning I had puffy, red eyes with dark circles under them. He had set and stared at me for the longest time while I picked at my horrible breakfast.

             
“Are you alright?” He had asked in that deep voice that makes me
shiver
.

             
I only shrugged. “I’m fine.”

             
The quiver in my voice must have given me away, but he just stared at me a little longer and went back to reading his paper. He hasn’t left early like that since.