Unbroken Connection (30 page)
“Somewhere beautiful with you.” She pats the mattress beside her.
I slide down next to her. She puts her hand on my chest and drifts away.
I watch that little hand the rest of the night.
MORTALITY
LEESIE’S MOST PRIVATE CHAPBOOK
POEM #68, THE WHOLE TRUTH
Pain mounts and rolls, wakes me from a nightmare.
Michael is stretched out beside me,
my dream made flesh.
“How’d you get here?”
“Time portal.”
“Got to get me one of those.
I think I totaled the pickup.”
“You remember?”
Crashing, smashing. I close my eyes.
“You’re in the hospital. You’re going to
be okay. Don’ try to move much.”
“Why are you here?”
That hope I found on the mountain
ridge tries to rise through layers
of plaster and gauze, needles and
machines, drugs and hot
knives of pain.
Michael slips a gold chain over his
beautiful, perfect, messy-haired head,
opens the latch, and slides
a familiar gold solitaire ring off the links.
“To give you this.” He puts
the ring on the half of my third finger
of my left hand
that isn’t covered in a cast.
The smile I can’t stop hurts my lip.
“You think I’ll say ‘yes’
now that I’m helpless.”
He swallows hard and looks away.
“I just wanted to see it on you.”
“Right.” The flickering vision
that sparkled in my
heart like that ring on my finger
in the dawn’s cold rays
dies. “You have her.”
He looks at me with so
much love I can’t breathe.
“Would you say yes?”
There’s intense pain and
betrayal in his voice
that I don’t understand.
My eyes break away
from the promise in his.
“Not anymore.”
He takes my hand,
cradles it in his,
bows his head over
the cast like it’s sacred.
“There is no her.”
Dear, dear Lord I want
to believe this.
“That’s a huge lie
made up out of nothing.”
The burning in my soul ignites
struggling mountain top hope
and lights my smile again.
He kisses me—fat lip
and all. “Freak, I love you.”
I touch his face to make sure
he’s real, rest my head
back on the pillow, relaxing
as my stone ice heart melts,
in the warmth of Michael’s.
He tells me my injuries like an on duty nurse.
Nightmare images emerge in horrible confusion.
I interrupt. “Where’s Phil? Is he hurt, too?
I hunted post crash and—”
Dreams? Nightmares? They have to be.
“He’s okay—like me—right?
They patched him up, too?”
Michael’s eyes tell me before his mouth
has a chance.
“No.”
That memory isn’t real.
A drug-induced hallucination.
I didn’t kill my brother.
No, no, no.
Michael holds me
best he can. “He’s gone.”
“No. I don’t believe you.”
“You have to.”
Sobs attack, ripping raw throbs
through my wounded body.
Dear God, no! I killed him?
Guttural sounds I didn’t know
I could make come from a place
of terror I’ve never been.
“Please, no!”
I scream,
scream,
scream
into Michael’s shoulder.
A girl I don’t know runs into the room
waving a needle.
“No!” I scream at her.
I break from Michael,
lunge forward.
Nausea induced
by the jagged blades
ripping through my chest, right
shoulder and arm rock me.
I vomit on Michael
and the sheets—still
screaming,
“No,
no,
no.”
Michael’s arms return, his chest
supports my body, his neck pillows
my head.
I clutch his arm, with fingers
I can barely use.
“Don’t leave.”
He strokes my cheek
and neck, soothing, soothing,
and whispers,
“Never.”
STONES
MICHAEL’S DIVE LOG—VOLUME #10
D
IVE
B
UDDY
: Leesie
D
ATE
: 04/25
D
IVE
#:—
L
OCATION
: Kellogg, ID
D
IVE
S
ITE
: Shoshone Medical Center
W
EATHER
C
ONDITION
: overcast
W
ATER
C
ONDITION
: no rain yet
D
EPTH
: way, way over my head
V
ISIBILITY
: doesn’t matter
W
ATER
T
EMP
.: doesn’t matter
B
OTTOM
T
IME
: the rest of our lives
C
OMMENTS
:
I’m still holding Leesie when there’s a commotion outside the door.
“I’m sorry.” The nurse speaks so loud she’ll wake Leesie. “You must be mistaken. Her fiancé is already here.”
“Leesie Hunt?” a guy says. “I’m her fiancé.”
Freak.
A dark-haired guy I should remember pushes past the nurse into the room. “Who the hell are you?”
Oh, yeah. It’s coming to me. I point at him. “Hold it. Brazil? Right? You’re home?”
And obviously not into the friend thing, either. “Let go of her now.”
I frown at him. “She told me not to.”
He eases up to the other side of her bed. “Well, I’m telling you to get your hands off her.”
I shift my grip. “I’m Michael. Is it Jason? Jared?”
“Jaron.”
“That’s it.”
The nurse follows him and glances at me—kind of freaked. “Did you lie to me?”
I glance down at the ring on Leesie’s finger. “A little. He’s lying, too. They’re not engaged.”
“How would you know anything?”
“She’s wearing my ring.”
The nurse grins at me and gives Jaron a dirty look. She hears Leesie’s parents in the hall asking about her and leaves us to it.
Jaron and I endure a strained testosterone moment of mutual loathing. Leesie’s mom rushes into the room. “Michael! You made it. We spoke to your grandmother.” She sees Jaron, too, and hugs him.
Her dad comes around to the left side of the bed where I’m sitting with his daughter in my arms and puts his hand on my shoulder. “The nurse told us you’ve been here all night. Thank you, son.” He looks toward Jaron. Holds his hand out to him. “Leesie will need everyone who loves her close.” His eyes go from Jaron to me and back.
Leesie’s mom walks around the foot of the bed. “The nurse says she was awake in the night.”
I nod. “She asked about Phil. I told her. She took it hard.”
Her mother’s face disintegrates. She turns away, hides in Leesie’s dad’s chest. He holds her, rubs her back, stares out the window—fighting for control. “Thank you, son. That must have been heavy going.”
My eyes burn, and I focus on the top of Leesie’s half-shaved head and the fresh-stitched wound that slices across it. It glistens with ointment and blue plastic sutures. She’ll have a bad scar on her forehead.
The nurse returns, needs Leesie’s parents to sign something. Her mom throws some kind of inner switch, swallows the emotion, and gets ready for business. They go out into the hall.
Jaron sits in the chair.
I don’t move. “So I guess you finally came to your senses.”
“Same to you.”
“She backed off—not me.”
“Phil told me about you.” He stares at my sandaled feet. “You can’t understand what infidelity means to us.”
I’m not going to deny lies to this guy. It’s none of his freaking business. “That’s one thing I get.” I try really hard not to let my voice reveal how badly I want to rip his toenails out. “Kind of a universal instinct, bud.”
He leans back and crosses his arms. “Why aren’t you still in Thailand?”
“An old guy at your temple in Hong Kong kicked my butt into gear.”
He sits up. His arms open. “What?”
“I had this feeling something bad was happening.”
He nods. “The accident.”
“No.” I stroke Leesie’s arm. “You.”
He drops his face into one hand and rubs his eyes.
“Tell me.” I’m crazed for asking the enemy, but he’s an expert. “You’ve been converting people for two years. Am I a hopeless case?”
“The Spirit converts. We just find, teach, and love the people along.”
Love? Right. “The Elders I met seemed more concerned with protecting the flock.”
He shakes his head. “Sorry, but I can see that. You don’t look like the average Joe Mormon.”
