What Doesn't Kill Her

by Christina Dodd

  “Okay. Thanks for clearing that up.” Still, he tapped his fingers. “You were telling me why you didn’t think you were fit to have a child.”

  “All those things I said!” This felt like an interrogation with too many questions and not enough answers. “And, and, I wasn’t ready to have a child.”

  “My mother says no one’s ever ready to have a child.” He stopped tapping. “I can’t argue with that.”

  “Maybe not, but you’re an awfully good father.” Kellen meant it, too. He was so giving of his time, so patient, so openly affectionate.

  “Thank you. I make terrible mistakes all the time. If you could love Rae, you’d understand what real guilt is. Children make you guilty for every mistake, every cross word—and they don’t even try. Rae loves me no matter what.” He leaned back, shoved his hands through his hair. “She loves you, too.”

  “Even though I don’t deserve it.”

  He sighed. “Deserve is not in her vocabulary. You’re her mother. Her whole life, I’ve told her about you, and to find you at last! She’s thrilled. Yes, she loves you.”

  “But I haven’t bonded with her.”

  “No.” He sounded sad. “It’s not your fault.”

  “What’s the solution?” she asked.

  “When...if we’re convinced this isn’t going to work, we can do things differently. She can live with me. You can visit.”

  Kellen wanted to whimper so badly it almost seemed as if she heard a whimper.

  Max continued, “She knows, of course, most mommies and daddies don’t live this way, but the divorced ones do, and it’s not until she’s older that she will realize that you, perhaps, are not ThunderBoomer.” He walked toward the door.

  Tears leaked from beneath Kellen’s closed lids. She turned on her side, pressed her face into the pillow and thought out loud. “It’s not so much that I’m stifled by Rae, or by domesticity. I need a task, a focus, to help me sort out my new role.” She took a quivering breath. “I need a job.”

  Behind her, she heard the door open. A pause. Then it shut.

  He was gone, along with any hope she had of ever having a family. She wanted to cry, she wanted to be awash in tears, but she couldn’t keep awake. She slept.

  And came awake on the sound of her door closing again. Her eyes were wide, her ears strained to hear. But there was no further sound, and as she drifted to sleep once more, she decided she must have been mistaken before.

  That second time must have been Max leaving the room.

  * * *

  When Kellen woke the next morning, on the foot of her bed she found a drawing of Daddy, ThunderBoomer and LightningBlast. It was signed by Rae. Kellen held it and smiled. Max really had raised a cute, kind kid. Good for him.

  5

  The doctors and nurses had an attitude that grated on Roderick. They were nothing but glorified servants, but the way they behaved, they thought they were his masters. He told them he was in pain, and they told him he had had as much morphine as he was allowed. He couldn’t have more for another half hour. No matter how he yelled and cursed, they allowed him no more.

  After the first day, they put him in a soundproof room and left him alone. The nurses only answered his call button once an hour. Every half hour, he got a nurse’s aide. The biggest outrage—he got a doctor once a goddamn day, and half the time it was a female and sometimes not even white. If he could, he would kick their asses, but the fall had shattered his legs and after the surgeries, he was in traction. He couldn’t move, he was ignored, and he was in pain.

  He wanted drugs. Now. If he couldn’t have morphine, then a pain patch, and Oxycontin.

  He twisted the self-medication button, trying to break it open and bring the rest of the morphine into his system, then punched the nurse’s call button once, twice, three times, four times, five...

  Persistence finally produced results. A male nurse came in, one Roderick didn’t recognize. He wore a surgical mask. Everybody who came in wore a mask; the hospital was terrified Roderick’s compound fracture would result in infection and he assured them he would sue if it did.

  The nurse stopped by the bed. “What can I do for you, Mr. Blake?”

  “I want pain reliever. I want more morphine. I want Oxycontin. I want it all. I’m in pain here and no one in this goddamn place cares.”

  “That’s true. No one does care. You’ve made yourself so obnoxious everyone will be glad to see you die.” The nurse fiddled with the morphine drip.

  Roderick had put up with a lot of insolence since he’d come to this godforsaken country, but this was the worst. “You impertinent nobody. I’m not going to die! I’m going get out of here and sue the hospital and you—”

  The nurse released a stream of morphine into his system. “No, you’re definitely going to die.” He pulled his mask down.

  Roderick was in such a froth of rage, he didn’t notice the man’s features. He screamed, “Cover your face. You’re worthless. You’re incompetent!” Then the morphine hit. The pain was suddenly a minor annoyance, something to be contemplated from a distance. “That’s better,” he grunted and looked up at the nurse.

  Recognition dawned.

  “I expected better of you,” the nurse said. “You assured me you could watch her and kill her and make it look like an accident. You assured me you were the best.”

  Roderick was aware his senses were rolling away on a tide of morphine, that he should be alarmed. But he wasn’t. “Don’t kill me.”

  “You should have thought about that before you failed.”

  “I never failed before.” Roderick slurred his words.

  “Once was all it took.”

  Roderick saw the nurse’s cold implacability. His hand moved in slow motion to push the call button.

  The male nurse watched with coldly cynical encouragement. “Push it all you want. You’ve used up their goodwill. Not that they ever had any toward you.”

  Roderick was dying. He knew he was dying. He thrashed. He tried to scream, but a huge weight rested on his chest. Morphine. Morphine depressed the respiratory system. He knew this. He’d killed with it before.

  The nurse watched the life fade and blink out from Roderick’s eyes. “It would have been so much easier if you’d done your job. Now—it’s on to plan B.” He pulled up the mask and left.

  6

  Three weeks later, Kellen kicked at the boxing bag in the gym. One side kick, two side kicks, slow and easy. These movements were half balance and half making sure she warmed up the muscles in her hip and tore nothing loose in the healing tendons and veins. They were nothing like her usual rigorous workout and ferocious fighting attitude. She believed Dr. Brundage and her warnings; this healing would take time.

  Next to her, Rae kicked at the bag, too, imitating Kellen’s reach and her speed, if not her strength.

  Kellen grinned at the intensity of the child’s concentration. Rae so badly wanted to be Kellen. Flattering as hell—and worrisome. After Max’s lecture, Kellen was very, very worried.

  The door opened.

  Max stepped in. “Rae, your grandma’s looking for you. It’s time to get ready to go to day camp.”

  Kellen stopped kicking and made conversation with the child. Her child. “What are you doing at camp today?”

  “We practice our play. We have Bible study. We swim in the lake. The water’s cold. We have lunch in the tree house. We go down on the zip line. We get to buy one snack candy... I’m getting coffee brownie bites.”

  “Coffee brownie bites?” Kellen was horrified.

  “They make my lips vibrate.” Rae’s eyes got wide with awe. “What are you going to do now, Mommy?” Unlike Kellen, there was real interest behind her question.

  “When I finish kicking the bag, I’m going to do a yoga routine. It’s good for stretching and balance, it includes meditation,
and it will help me heal.”

  “I like yoga! Can we do yoga now?”

  Verona Di Luca stuck her head in. “Rae, come on. You’ll be late!”

  “We can’t do yoga if you’re going to camp.” Kellen could not imagine Rae sitting still long enough to meditate.

  “We can do it later!” Rae flung her arms around Kellen and kissed her.

  Kellen patted her head.

  Rae flung her arms around Max and kissed him.

  He picked her up and smooched her neck, gave her a big hug and a pat on the behind as she ran from the room.

  That was the problem in a nutshell. Kellen didn’t feel compelled to hug and love on Rae, and she didn’t meet Max’s gaze while he judged her. “Coffee brownie bites?” Kellen asked. “Does that kid need more energy?”

  He could, and did, ignore her. “I’ve found you a job.”

  She blinked. “You did?”

  “You said you wanted one.”

  So he had heard her sleepy murmur. “Great. Here at the winery?” Because as she’d learned when she worked at Yearning Sands Resort, a career in the Army had not prepared her to work well with the public.

  “No. I called Uncle Leo and Aunt Annie—”

  Kellen’s heart jumped. For her, in the months she had lived at Yearning Sands, the place had become her home. She had brought her military friends to be employed there, and rejoiced when they found their homes there, also. She had enjoyed supervising the huge resort, and more important, there was something about the wild rugged coast that appealed to her in a way that the tamed land of the Willamette Valley could not match.

  But Max continued, “Aunt Annie said Brooks called. He was searching for you.”

  “Nils Brooks?”

  “He is the only Brooks we know, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. One is more than enough.”

  Awkward.

  Nils Brooks was the top dog at the newly re-formed government agency Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives. In World War II, the MFAA had been formed to rescue and restore the art stolen by the Nazis. Art historians and experts had saved towering cathedrals, priceless paintings, irreplaceable books...but so much more had been lost when, in their retreat, the Nazis burned everything in their possession.

  After the war, the MFAA had been disbanded, and only recently through Nils’s efforts been revived to halt the flow of contraband antiquities that were financing the world’s terrorists.

  Nils Brooks was understaffed, underpaid and a sneaky lying bastard who the previous winter had almost got himself—and Kellen—killed tracking down the notorious serial killer and smuggler Mara Philippi, aka the Librarian. Kellen had saved Nils, Max had saved Kellen, and Max cordially hated Nils for dragging Kellen into her near encounter with death, and for leading Max to believe Kellen was romantically and passionately involved with Nils.

  Max might not be sleeping with her, but he didn’t want someone else to, either.

  So having Max drop Nils’s name was both unexpected and required delicate handling. “What’s up with Nils?”

  “He’s got a problem with a shipment.”

  Patiently, she asked, “What kind of problem? What kind of shipment?”

  “There’s some kind of head coming this way.”

  “A head?”

  “A mummy’s head. Or something. There’s something about an authentication and a recluse and protection. But the upshot is, somehow the head made it to the airport, got put on the conveyer and is in baggage on the airplane.”

  “The head is boxed up?”

  “It’s in a suitcase. Nils suspects someone intends to lift the head—as it were—and he wants security for it when it lands in Portland.”

  “Let me see if I’m following this. The head is currently on an airplane flying to Portland. It needs to go to a restorer who is...where?”

  “Somewhere in the Olympic Mountains. He’s the recluse. He’s going to authenticate the head. Or not.”

  She wasn’t confused, exactly, but she still wanted clarification. “Nils wants me to go and get the head and deliver it to this guy?”

  “That’s about the sum of it.”

  “Did you tell Nils I was recently injured?”

  “Yes. He said, ‘What? Again?’”

  “God forbid he should inquire what happened or if I was all right!”

  “That’s what I told him, but he said if you were dead I would have led with that.”

  “What a prick.” She wasn’t sure she was talking about Nils.

  Max didn’t seem worried. “I’ve thought so all along. Nils wears a tie to keep the foreskin from flipping over his head.”

  She gave a gasp of laughter, then put her hand to her hip. Apparently she could do kicks, but laughter was out.

  Max continued, “Not the point, though. You’re merely backup. He has a specialized moving firm coming to get the head from baggage claim. Apparently, these guys move precious objects all the time for wealthy patrons and are experienced in protecting the goods. Nils says they’re the best, they’ve got a reputation to maintain, and they’re on their way here now to pick you up.”

  “What? Now?”

  “The mummy’s head, or whatever this precious thing is, is landing in Portland at 1:23.” Max tapped his watch. “That’s two hours and forty-three minutes from now.”

  She gaped at him, then snapped, “Thanks for finding me employment,” and stalked away. Sure, she felt 300 percent better, but to take on a security job with no briefing and no time to prepare—what the hell?

  Right before she made her grand exit, Max said, “Kellen.”

  She turned to face him.

  “Brooks asked if you could hike. I said I thought you were good for a couple of hours, and I think... I think some time away might do you good. Take your hiking boots—it sounds as if the recluse is back in the woods somewhere.”

  “Right. Thank you.” She hustled out of the gym and toward Max’s house. In a fury, she texted Birdie, Men are asses.

  I know, honey. Any particular one?

  If he wanted to get rid of me that badly, he could have simply told me to go. Which he wouldn’t do, because she was the mother of his daughter. Maybe he wanted her eliminated without any trouble to him.

  Immediately, she felt ashamed.

  Max is getting rid of you? Birdie ended with a shocked face emoji.

  No. Never mind. Later. Maybe he hadn’t found an ideal job for someone who wasn’t yet recovered from an injury and infection, but why should he have to? She should have found her own job, but she’d been trying to stay close to Rae.

  Okay. Try not to do anything stupid. Birdie had a way of being wise about people. Thank God, because for all Kellen’s smart Rolodex cataloging of personalities, she got it wrong an amazingly large part of the time.

  Turning on her heel, she marched back toward the gym. She stepped in, intending to confront Max, ask the name of the restorer guy, how long this job was supposed to last and if Max expected her to come back when it was done.

  Max stood in the middle of the gym, punching the bag with blinding speed and terrifying force.

  Left, right, face the mirror, kick the inflatable stability ball.

  Ball slams the wall.

  Left, right, face the mirror, kick!

  Ball slams the wall.

  Left, right, face the mirror, kick!

  He scowled every time he punched. Smiled when he kicked and the ball slammed into the mirror. Left, right, kick...

  This time he was too slow. The ball smacked him. He staggered backward. Kicked again. Left, right...

  His knuckles left a red smudge on the punching bag. Blood. He’d torn his knuckles open. Clearly, he was a man in the throes of vivid brilliant Technicolor frustration.

  Kellen backed out the door, shut
it softly behind her and tiptoed away.

  She wasn’t exactly sure what had angered Max—her, her inability to bond with Rae, her way of leading Rae into danger by encouraging her to climb to ridiculous heights? Or it was nothing to do with her, maybe his mother’s tendency to burn oatmeal butterscotch cookies until the bottom was black and he had to scrape them off with a bread knife?

  Maybe he didn’t care what happened to Kellen. But probably he did, and maybe he was angry the way everything was falling out. And not that she didn’t feel the same way, but—damn.

  She didn’t know how to make this work. As far as she knew, there wasn’t a manual that explained how, while in a coma, to push a baby out of her loins and seven years later bond with it. She felt so stupid. Cows produced calves and bonded with them. She had unknowingly produced a child and couldn’t bond. Was she less than a notoriously dumb barnyard animal?

  Maybe.

  No wonder Max was kicking and punching.

  Across the miles, Birdie must have sensed the tangle of Kellen’s emotions. She texted, Everything okay?

  I’ve got a job. So yes. Everything’s okay. It’s good to be busy.

  What kind of job?

  Security.

  A pause.

  Last time you worked security, you almost got killed.

  Shouldn’t happen this time.

  Make sure it doesn’t!

  Kellen headed back to her bedroom in the old farmhouse and pulled her duffel bag out of the depths of the closet. She stared into the dark interior.

  The clothing basics: underwear, toiletries, poncho, three pairs of socks—a change of socks made every day better—and a change of clothes for rugged terrain. Her hiking boots. A cap.

  Emergency basics: compass, flashlight, waterproof matches, nylon rope, knife, nylon zip ties.

  Those items were always in there.

  She needed more. She added ammunition, her sleeping bag and an all-weather blanket. She assumed this would be at most two nights, but one thing the military had taught her—things go wrong, people lie, and a mission schedule wavers according to those two things.

  Okay, that was three things the military had taught her.