Force Of Nature

by Peggy Webb

  “Clarice! Do you see that?”

  She hurried over, but by that time Michael had already stopped. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I couldn’t be imagining things. Not again.

  “Michael, can you hear me?” I squeezed his hand. “Blink, darling. Blink if you can hear me.”

  I held my breath while we both watched. At first there was nothing. I simply couldn’t take another disappointment. Any minute I was going to burst into tears.

  I leaned down and kissed his lips. “Michael, darling,” I whispered. “Please come back to me. Please.”

  His eyelids quivered again. Clarice and I both burst into tears, and she said, “I’m going to get the doctor.”

  “It’s late. I don’t think he’ll come.”

  “He’ll come if I have to drag him here by the hair of the head.”

  I don’t know what she said, but within thirty minutes the doctor was there.

  “It’s a very good sign,” he said after I told him what had happened.

  He stayed an hour, waiting for Michael to blink again, but there was nothing. (Lord, if I could afford it I’d send him a brand new Mercedes. That’s how grateful I am.)

  “Movement of the eyelids is usually one of the first signs that a patient is coming out of coma. Sometimes they come out quickly, and sometimes they take days.”

  “But he is coming out, isn’t he?”

  He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Anne, I wish I could say that for sure, but I can’t. Every case is different.”

  Clarice wanted to stay, but I told her, “I want to be with Michael alone.”

  “You call me if he wakes up. I don’t care what time of night it is.”

  He didn’t, though. I sat by his bed all night watching. Just in case.

  He didn’t blink all night. Not unless I dozed and missed it. And I don’t think I did.

  How can I sleep when my beloved is trying to return to me?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Anne, are you still there? You must be. I smell the fragrance of your perfume. Jungle gardenia. God, how I love it.

  Reach for my hand, my precious. Hold onto me. Don’t let go.

  I’m trying to come home.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The phone brought Hannah out of a deep sleep. The first thing she noticed was that Hunter was not there.

  The second thing she noticed was that the clock said five.

  She picked up the receiver, and, before she could even say hello, her mother said, “Hannah, he moved his eyelids.”

  “Dad?”

  “Yes! Last night. Right after ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.’ It was very late or I would have called you, but this morning I said to myself, This is the kind of news that can’t wait.”

  “Mom, slow down. Take a deep breath…now, tell me everything from the beginning.”

  Her mother told her about putting the music box on his pillow and sitting up all night in case Michael woke up.

  “What does the doctor say?”

  “He’s cautiously optimistic.”

  “I’ll drive down this afternoon.”

  “What about Hunter?”

  “I have good news, too. He’s talking.”

  “In complete sentences?”

  Hannah laughed. “I don’t see what’s so funny about that.”

  “Sorry, Mom, I’m not laughing at you. I’m just happy, that’s all. He’s very articulate. Remember, he has a brain that would be the envy of Einstein.”

  “I’m happy for you, darling, but I don’t want you to come.”

  “Why not? Hunter will be fine here alone for a few hours. I have to start doing it sometime, and it might as well be now.”

  “I know this is going to sound selfish, but I don’t want any of my children here.”

  “If you’re trying to protect us because you think it might be a false alarm, forget it, Mom.”

  “I told Daniel not to come, too. And I’m going to tell Emily the same thing… Hannah, I want to be alone with him when he wakes up.”

  A few weeks ago Hannah would have argued, but that was before she’d met Hunter. Now she understood her mother’s reasoning. A heart-connection such as her parents’ was a beautiful, private thing, almost sacred. Their reunion should not be shared.

  “I understand, Mom. Call me the minute Dad wakes up, no matter what time it is.”

  As soon as Hannah hung up, she grabbed her robe and went in search of Hunter. He was on the front porch curled in a wool blanket asleep on the floor.

  She started tiptoeing across the porch, but the minute her foot hit the planks his eyes flew open.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you up.” She knelt beside him, and he pulled her into the cocoon of blanket.

  “Did you really think you could sneak up on me?”

  She laughed. “Silly, wasn’t it?”

  “You’re never silly, Hannah.”

  “Hunter…you miss Denali, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Is that why you’re sleeping out here?”

  “Sometimes I feel trapped inside. Besides, luxury is making me soft.”

  “Not that I’ve noticed.”

  Laughing, he slid his hands under her robe and traced a line of fire down her inner thighs. Heat licked along her skin and she melted. It amazed her that one touch from him could do that.

  There were plans to make, things to say. She couldn’t keep getting sidetracked.

  “We have to talk,” she said.

  “We will.” He shifted, then caught her taut nipple between his teeth and began a gentle tugging.

  “We really have to talk.”

  “Go ahead, I’m listening.”

  His tongue flicked in hot little circles, and even as she said, “I mean it,” she wove her fingers through his hair and pulled him closer.

  “I’m so easy,” she murmured.

  “I’m so glad.”

  He lifted the blanket over them, and they didn’t come out for a long, long time.

  They were in the kitchen finishing breakfast. Hunter chuckled when she gave him a soft dreamy look over the rim of her coffee cup.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You’re easy to read.”

  “I like to think of myself as inscrutable.”

  “You’re not. You never have been. I could read you the first time I ever saw you.”

  Hannah was not the blushing kind, and it always surprised and delighted him when she did.

  “Anyone could have read me. What I was thinking was perfectly obvious.”

  He remembered the firelight on her skin, the crisp cold air and the pull of the moon. He remembered the quickening of his pulse, the rush of passion and the howl that rose in his throat.

  Instinctively he’d suppressed it. Instinctively he’d known…what? That she would change his life forever? That life as he knew it would cease?

  The prospect both excited and terrified him. He must not let his terror show. The wolves had taught him that. If he could keep the lessons of the wild, he would be all right. He would survive.

  But was it enough for him merely to survive? Once he would have said yes. Now he had no answers. Only questions.

  “Let’s talk outside,” he said.

  She understood that this talk needed to be made in his territory, not hers. She understood that the things they would say would surely end their idyll in the woods and that he needed to be free when he said them and not confined between four walls that sometimes felt like a prison. All these things she knew.

  And yet part of her rebelled. Part of her wanted to crawl back under the blanket and lose herself once more in the pleasures of the flesh. The world’s greatest panacea.

  She wanted to live in her pink cocoon of love and never come out. Instead she said, “All right,” then took his hand and followed him out the door and through the woods. He didn’t stop until he came to the bluff overlooking the river.

  Even then she couldn’t talk about the
thing that was on her heart, on her mind. She couldn’t bear to say the word, future. She had to hold onto the present a little longer.

  “I think my dad’s waking up.”

  “That’s good news, Hannah. Will you go to see him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You can go. I won’t leave.”

  “I didn’t think you would.”

  A breeze lifted her hair and whipped underneath her sweater. Hannah wrapped her arms around herself, but it wasn’t the wind that made it cold: it was the idea of losing Hunter. It wasn’t the simple fact that he no longer held her hand; it was the terrifying realization that she’d almost finished her job and now she had to let him go. She had to give him a chance to claim his birthright and make his own way in the world.

  I don’t want to.

  The truth whispered through her mind. Of course she didn’t want to, but unless she set him free the teacher/ protector would become the jailer; the safe haven would become a prison.

  “I think you are ready to face society,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I don’t plan to toss you out and see if you sink or swim. I thought I would introduce you to my family first, do a sort of test run.”

  “And if I pass the test?”

  “For starters I think we should look up the Wolfes and announce that you are alive…before we notify the news media.”

  “I think that’s a sound plan.”

  “Good.”

  They both faced the river. Why didn’t he look at her? Why didn’t he touch her?

  “You said we. Does that mean you’ll be with me when I announce that I didn’t die in the plane crash that killed my parents?”

  Hannah crammed her hands in her pockets. “I’ll be there.”

  “For how long?”

  Finally he turned, and she could no more resist the pull of his gaze than she could resist him.

  “For as long a you want me.…”

  The silence stretched for miles, and then he pulled her into his arms.

  “I want you, Hannah.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  December 3, 2001

  Everybody has been so good to me—Clarice, Jane, all the staff here at the nursing home. They’ve all helped me keep a round-the-clock watch on Michael. His eyelids quivered again yesterday for about two minutes as if he’s trying really hard to come back to me.

  Clarice is the one who set up the watch.

  “You can’t stay here twenty-four hours a day,” she told me yesterday when I refused to leave his side.

  “What if he wakes up and nobody is here? What if he decides just to go back to sleep?”

  “You can’t do it all, Anne.”

  “Maybe I was wrong not to let the children come.”

  “There’s no sense in all of them driving to Vicksburg when I’m right here with nothing to do. Besides, the more time I spend here, the more I can see Larry Baird.”

  “The nursing home’s director?”

  “Don’t look so astonished. He thinks I’m sexy.”

  “How do you know?”

  “A woman can tell, that’s all.”

  She’s right, but I didn’t tell her about my personal experience with him. Not that I think he’s sleazy. Now that all that’s behind me, and I don’t have to worry about going off the deep end with him—or any other man for that matter—I see Larry in a different light.

  He is kind of attractive in that off-beat way Clarice likes.

  She left about twenty minutes ago, but I notice her car is still in the parking lot. She said something about taking a peek into his office to see if he’s still here. Maybe he is. Maybe he invited her to dinner. I hope so.

  Clarice is one of the most loving, giving people I know. She deserves somebody to love her right back.

  While I was at Belle Rose I changed into a red party dress. For Michael. Because he has always loved this color on me. Because I want his homecoming to be a celebration.

  Clarice didn’t comment. I knew she would understand.

  I’m so tired I can hardly see to write anymore.

  I need to rewind the music box. Ever since the first sign that Michael was trying to wake up, I’ve had “Wonderful Tonight” playing. I want him to have that constant reminder of our remarkable love.

  I’ve talked to him almost non-stop, too. Over and over I say, “Michael, I love you. I love you, darling. Come back to me.”

  I’ve talked so much my voice is hoarse, and now I’m talking with my heart.

  “Wake up, my darling,” I’m saying. “Wake up and come home. I’m waiting.…”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Anne? I hear you, my precious. I feel the weight of your head on my chest. I smell the fragrance of gardenias in your hair.

  I want to touch you, but my hands won’t move. I can feel them, though. I can feel my whole body. I feel the blood flowing through my veins and hear the sound of my own breathing.

  I’m holding onto these new sensations, and I’m holding on tight.

  The darkness keeps trying to draw me back. It’s a seducer, this deep, dark sleep. It’s a curtained room untouched by the mundane and filled with treasure chests that hold the answers to all the great cosmic questions.

  Down here I know the secrets of the sea, the truth of the stars and the lessons of a single dewdrop. I converse with kings and Caesars and pharaohs. I am wise beyond Solomon.

  I would stay in my safe cocoon except for one thing: you are not here.

  I want to see the way you bite your lower lip when you’re thinking and the way you toss your hair when you know I’m in the room. I want to watch you knotting a towel around your waist when you emerge from your bath and putting perfume on the pulse spot behind your knees.

  I want to come home, Anne.

  My eyes are too heavy to open, but I’m trying… I’m trying.…

  Is it morning, Anne? Is that sunlight I see coming through the window.

  I can see!

  “Anne?”

  I touch your hair, caress your cheek, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the entire universe is contained in your slender body.

  You lift your head and look at me. “Michael…oh, God, Michael, you’re awake.”

  We reach for each other, and I can taste your tears. I promise myself I will never make you cry again.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Hannah was at her computer typing while Hunter bent over a notebook writing his name. How long had it been since he’d held a pen in his hand?

  In Denali, he’d used a rock to scratch marks on the cave walls. At first it had been a way of keeping track of the days, then later it had become a method of keeping track of his life. First he’d used words. Then as the sound and the cadences of language faded, he’d turned to pictures.

  Now as his mind wandered over the past, he began to doodle, and then to draw. When he’d filled one page he turned to the next.

  Hannah looked up at him and smiled. “How is it coming over there?”

  “I’m getting the hang of it,” he said. “How about you? How are you doing with your story?”

  “This piece on the wolves is probably the best thing I’ve ever written. It helps to have the source sitting on my sofa.”

  The way she looked with her head tilted and her hair sliding over one cheek stole Hunter’s breath. His pen began to move rapidly over the paper.

  “Don’t move,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Just don’t move.”

  Suspicion leaped into her eyes. “Hunter, what are you doing?”

  “Just a minute and you can see…don’t move.”

  “Are you drawing?” He was too busy trying to capture her on paper to answer. “Hunter…you’re sketching!”

  She jumped out of her chair, and when she looked over his shoulder she gasped.

  “It’s just a doodle,” he said.

  “It’s magnificent.”

  She reached over and took the notebook fro
m him, then carried it to the window where she would have natural light. As she studied his drawings, Hannah got more excited by the minute.

  She hadn’t slept well for days. Ever since Hunter had started talking, really. Her thinking had ranged from guilt to absolute terror. Squirrel-like, the thoughts whirled round and round in her mind: I’ve brought him out of the wilderness and civilized him, and now what will he do?

  His education had stopped when he was nine, never mind that he was a genius. His skills were suited to the wilderness (and the bedroom) instead of the boardroom, and he was as unfamiliar with the ways of commerce as he was with the ways of Martians.

  Now she saw a faint glimmer of hope.

  She sat beside him on the sofa. “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Since I was a child.”

  “Before the plane crash?”

  “Yes.”

  That made sense. To all accounts, his mother had been a gifted musician. He had strong artistic genes.

  But these were not childlike drawings, nor the sketches of someone who hadn’t drawn since the age of nine. These were powerful and sophisticated in ways that Hannah couldn’t explain.

  Still, she had to remember that she was dealing with a man with a giant IQ.

  “Did you take lessons as a child?”

  “No. My mother thought they would stifle my natural style. She believed that artists should be mature and confident in their own talent before they let someone else try to teach them. Musicians are the exception, of course.”

  “And you haven’t sketched since then, since childhood?”

  “I didn’t say that… I kept it up over the years.”

  “How?”

  “Cave drawings. I used a sharp rock.”

  “Oh my God…the cave…that day you tried to get me to follow you inside. That’s what you wanted to show me.”

  “That, among other things.”

  The way he smiled heated her blood and stole her breath.

  “If we don’t focus on the issue at hand, we’ll never come to any decision about your future.”

  His smile ratcheted up her libido several notches. And when he leaned over and whispered in her ear, the notebook slid to the floor.