Hidden Truths

by Christina Dodd

  She tried to walk toward the door.

  Adhesive attached her to a monitor.

  She ripped herself free and knew alarms had gone off at the nurses’ station. She didn’t have much time before the whole medical staff would be in here.

  She hurried as fast as her feeble body could hurry, pushed the door open, discovered she was just in time.

  Harrison was walking past.

  She caught his arm.

  He tried to shake her off.

  No. She hadn’t come back from death to be ignored. “You can’t do this,” she said. Her voice creaked and cracked.

  He glanced down, did a horrified double take.

  She had stopped him in his tracks. Her battered and gruesome face and head were good for something. “You can’t do this.” Her voice gained strength. “You have a life. You have a wife. You love her. She loves you. If you kill yourself now, you’ll have plunged her into a lifetime of tears and guilt.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?” Now Harrison was horrified for a different reason.

  Kellen spelled it out. “You must not kill yourself.”

  He looked wildly around the corridor, at the medical staff, all of them who were running toward Kellen. “Shut up,” he said. “Shut up. Shut up!”

  Kellen shot a glare at Dr. Clift.

  He wavered, put out a hand. Everyone stopped. They exchanged amazed, concerned glances.

  Ha! Kellen still had that Army-officer command look. Now she tried her command voice. “Harrison, you can’t die now. Not after all you’ve gone through.”

  He tried to counter her Army-officer command voice with his own I’m an important man voice. “I don’t know you. I didn’t give you permission to call me by my first name.”

  “I know you. And I know Megan.” Kellen turned her back to the medical staff, excluding them from the conversation. She had Harrison’s attention, and she intended to keep it. “If you kill yourself, you’ll condemn Megan to a lifetime of remorse.”

  He told Kellen what he’d been telling himself. “She’s young. She’ll realize I did it for her.”

  “You don’t believe that.” Kellen concentrated on him to the exclusion of everyone and everything. “Better than anyone, you know her background. She’ll blame herself. Convince herself she wasn’t enough. She’ll lead a life to make you proud, and she’ll die alone.”

  Kellen must have hit a nerve, because he snapped, “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Captain Kellen Adams. I served in the Army with men and women who lost their legs, their arms, their eyesight. Every one of those men and women did what they had to do to go forward with their lives.” She pulled out all her experiences to try to reach him—and he was hearing her. “What kind of man won’t listen when the woman he loves wants to help him? What kind of man tells himself he deserves to die? A coward!”

  “You don’t understand. No one understands.” Harrison held up his hated prosthetic arms and shook them. “This is my fault. I wasn’t wounded in any noble cause. I worked too long at the office. I could have got a cab, but no. I was going home, and I was the man in control.” He laughed bitterly. “I was tired. I fell asleep, I crashed my car and I woke up half a man.”

  Of course. That made sense. He had created the problem, now he intended to fix it. “You’re not half a man. You’re simply not the man you were before.”

  “I won’t take less.”

  “Harrison Benchley, handsome, strong, self-made man, a philanthropist, a lover.” She mocked him. “You made yourself a person to be envied. Suddenly—no one envies you.” Not true, but she flung his thoughts at him, bringing them out to air.

  “They pity me. All they can see when they look at me are these.” He allowed his arms to sink to his sides.

  “What do you care what they think, what they see? Aren’t you the man who always says, ‘What they think of me is none of my business?’“

  His chest rose and fell as if he wanted to reply but had no words.

  Kellen asked, “Do you know what Megan does every day at this time?”

  “She’s at work.”

  “She works at this hospital.”

  “No, she doesn’t.” But for the first time, he looked around him and saw people: the doctors, the nurses, the med techs. He looked beyond them, too, and saw the woman, her face covered by a surgical mask, standing alone by the nurses’ station. The mask could no longer hide her from him; he knew her.

  Kellen told him, “She comes every day to watch you walk past. Just to see you.”

  “No.”

  Kellen drew on the knowledge she’d been given. “When you proposed, you swore you’d always be there for her. You promised you would love her in this life and the next. That’s how you convinced her to marry you. Harrison, you’re breaking her heart, and that heart, once broken, cannot be mended.”

  He wasn’t really listening to Kellen anymore.

  Because Megan had pushed the mask down and off her face, and stood staring at him.

  He took a step toward her. In the silence of the corridor, his voice carried. “Why are you here?”

  Megan answered just as clearly. “You can reject me, but you can’t make me stop loving you.”

  “I didn’t reject you because I don’t love you. I did it—”

  “For my own good?” Megan gave a laugh that broke in the middle. “Don’t lie to yourself, Harrison. Our whole relationship was built on what you could do for me. I tried to tell you it didn’t have to be that way, but you didn’t listen, and this!” She pointed at his arms. “This changed everything.”

  “I know. I know.” He held up his hands and looked at them in revulsion. “Mechanical. Unfeeling. A lousy substitute for real flesh. I don’t even have two arms to hold you.”

  Kellen could see desperation and determination radiating off Megan, could hear her thinking, One last chance. I have one last chance.

  Megan walked straight at him.

  He retreated one step.

  She kept walking. She slammed her body against his and caught him in a fierce hug. “I have two arms. Let me hold you.”

  There it was. The precipice. Harrison balanced there between acceptance and rejection, between a new relationship with the woman he loved—and a scalpel to his throat.

  Kellen held her breath.

  Everyone in the corridor held their breath.

  The tension peaked.

  At last, Harrison wrapped his artificial arms around Megan and laid his cheek against her hair. He didn’t say anything of importance. Of course. But what he said meant everything. “You changed your shampoo,” he whispered.

  She buried her head in his chest. “Do you like it?”

  “As long as it’s your hair and your head and your body, I like it fine.”

  Like that, they were united…

  All at once, the Herculean efforts she had made caught up with Kellen.

  She staggered.

  As if on cue the medical staff surrounded her. Someone caught her arm. Someone pushed a wheelchair under her behind. Someone took her pulse, her temperature. Dr. Clift announced he wanted her in an examining room with “every damned gadget we’ve got.”

  Kellen closed her eyes and smiled. “Every damned gadget” must be a medical term she wasn’t familiar with.

  Everyone was speaking to her, asking for symptoms, for pain level, and when she had answered those questions, they asked, “How did you know?”

  Kellen opened her eyes and looked at Harrison and Megan, still standing in the middle of the corridor, still holding each other tightly. “About him? About them?”

  Heads nodded.

  She tried to remember. She had known everything—but how? Why? A recollection of traveling the hospital corridors flitted through her mind and disappeared behind a mist. “I don’t re
member.”

  They got her into the room with all the damned gadgets, stuck electrodes on her chest and head, an IV in her vein, took her pulse—again, her temperature—again, listened to her heart. They asked her questions about whether she could see, hear, recall her name, the year.

  She heard the word miracle tossed around like a badminton birdie, and she was pretty sure this gang didn’t use that word too often.

  Finally, with a sigh, she said, “Guys, I’m pretty tired. Could I go back to—” Abruptly, she couldn’t recall the name for that thing, long, narrow, with sheets, blankets, pillows. How could she remember all the other words except that one?

  “To bed?” Dr. Clift said. “You bet. Whatever you want.”

  Bed. That was the word. So simple. How could she forget it?

  As they wheeled her toward her room, Dr. Clift asked, “What’s wrong with your hands?”

  Kellen looked down. Her fingers on both hands were tightly curled. “I don’t know.” Another wave of fatigue hit her. “I suppose they’re the price that I paid for coming back to life.”

  “We’ll get you help,” Dr. Clift promised. Someone paged him. “Emergency,” he told her, and peeled off.

  The staff was falling away, returning to their jobs, excited and enlivened.

  In the end, one RN held the door to Kellen’s room, an LPN pushed her through, and one nurse followed.

  Kellen held up a hand, and they halted.

  Max stood in the room, staring down at the empty bed with such desolation Kellen’s heart broke for him.

  He thought his mother’s prophecy had come true. He thought she had died while he was gone.

  “Max?” she whispered.

  He lifted his head as if afraid to believe. He turned. He looked.

  Through the months of Kellen’s long, slow, excruciating recovery, when she was discouraged by the atrophy in her hands, by the problems with her speech, she remembered how the most wonderful smile had broken like dawn across Max’s face, and how he had whispered, “Kellen. My miracle.”

  * * *

  Don’t miss the next Kellen Adams novel, Strangers She Knows, by New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd! Read on for a sneak peek…

  Strangers She Knows

  by Christina Dodd

  Yearning Sands Resort

  Washington’s Pacific Coast

  This Spring

  RAE DI LUCA stacked up her Level Three lesson books, opened the piano bench and put them away. She got out the Adult Course Level 1A book, opened it to “Silver Bells,” and put it on the music rack. “Mom, you have to practice.”

  Kellen didn’t look up from her book. “I know.”

  “When?”

  “When what?”

  “When are you going to do it?”

  “I’m at the good part. Let me finish this chapter.”

  “No, you have to practice now. You know it helps with your finger dexterity.”

  When had their roles reversed, Kellen wondered? When had ten-year-old Rae become the sensible adult and Kellen become the balky child?

  Oh yeah. When she had the brain surgery, her right hand refused to regain its former abilities, and the physical therapist suggested learning the piano. But there was a reason Kellen hadn’t learned to play the piano earlier in her life. She loved music—and she had no musical talent. That, added to the terrible atrophy that afflicted her fingers, made her lessons and practices an unsurpassed agony…for everyone.

  She looked up, saw Rae standing, poised between coaxing and impatience, and the Rolodex in Kellen’s punctured, operated-on and much-abused brain clicked in:

  RAE DI LUCA:

  FEMALE, 10YO, 5’0”, 95LBS. KELLEN’S DAUGHTER. HER MIRACLE. IN TRANSITION: GIRL TO WOMAN, BLOND HAIR TO BROWN, BROWN EYES LIGHTENING TO HAZEL. LONG LEGS; GAWKY. SKIN A COMBINATION OF HER ITALIAN HERITAGE FROM HER FATHER AND THE NATIVE AMERICAN BLOOD FROM KELLEN; FIRST PIMPLE ON HER CHIN. NEVER TEMPERAMENTAL. KIND, STRONG, INDEPENDENT.

  Kellen loved this kid. The feeling was more than human. It was feral, too, and Kellen would do anything to protect Rae from threat—and had. “I know. I’m coming. It’s so much more fun to listen to you play than practice myself. You’re good and I’m…awful.”

  “I’m not good. I’m just better than you.” Rae came over and wrapped her arms around Kellen’s neck, hugged and laughed. “But Luna is better than you.”

  “Don’t talk to me about that dog. She howls every time I sit down at the piano. Sometimes she doesn’t even wait until I start playing. The traitor.” Kellen glared at the dog, and once again her brain—which had developed this ability after that shot to the head—sorted through the files of identity cards to read:

  LUNA:

  FEMALE, FULL-SIZED POODLE/AUSTRALIAN CATTLE DOG/AT LEAST ONE OTHER BREED, 50LBS, RED COAT, BROWN EYES, STRONGLY MUSCLED. RESCUED BY RAE AND MAX WHILE KELLEN RECOVERED FROM SURGERY. FAMILY MEMBER. RAE’S FRIEND, COMPANION, PROTECTOR. MUSIC LOVER.

  Luna watched Kellen in return, head resting on her paws, waiting for her chance to sing a solo protest to Kellen’s inept rendition of “Silver Bells.”

  “Everybody’s a critic.” Rae set the timer. “Come on. Ten minutes of scales, then you only have to practice for thirty minutes.”

  “Why do I have to practice ‘Silver Bells’? Christmas isn’t for seven months.”

  “So you’ll have mastered it by the time the season rolls around.”

  “I used to like that song.”

  “We all used to like that song.” Rae took Kellen’s left hand and tugged. “Mom, come on. You know you feel better afterward.”

  Kellen allowed herself to be brought to her feet. “I’m going to do something wild and crazy. I’m going to start learning ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’ It’s the next song in the book, and I like it.”

  “You can learn anything you want after you practice your scales and work on ‘Silver Bells’ for fifteen minutes.”

  No one wanted to be inside today, certainly not Rae Di Luca, certainly not Kellen Adams Di Luca, certainly not upstairs in their private quarters in the Yearning Sands Resort. Not when spring had come to the Washington state Pacific Coast. April and May’s drenching rains turned the world a soggy brown. Then, on the first of June, one day of blazing sunshine created green that spread across the coastal plain.

  Kellen made her way through the ten minutes of scales—the dog remained quiescent for those—then began plunking out “Silver Bells.”

  As she struggled with the same passage, her right hand fingers responding only sporadically, Luna started with a slight whine that grew in intensity. At the first high howl, Kellen turned to the dog. “Look, this isn’t easy for me, either.”

  Luna sat, head cocked, one ear up, one ear down, brown eyes pleading with her.

  “I would love to stop,” Kellen told her and turned back to the piano. “How about a different tune? Let’s try ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’”

  She played the first few notes and out of the corner of her eye, she saw the dog subside. Then, as she worked on a tricky passage, made the same mistake, time after time, the dog sat up again, lifted her nose and howled in mourning for the slaughter of the song.

  Rae giggled, and when her mother glowered, the child controlled herself. “Come on, Luna, I’ll take you outside.”

  The dog didn’t budge.

  “She thinks she’s helping you,” Rae explained. “Come on, Luna. Come on!” She coaxed her out the door, turned back to Kellen and said sternly, “Twenty more minutes!”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Kellen struggled on, trying to make her recalcitrant fingers do her bidding. Even when she finally got the notes right, it wasn’t a piano tune so much as jack-in-the-box music. When at last the timer went off, she slumped over the keyboard and stared at the fingers of her right hand.

  They wer
e trying to atrophy, to curl in and refuse to do her bidding ever again. But the physical therapists assured her she could combat this. She had to create new nerve ways, train another part of her brain to handle the work, and since two hands were better than one and her right hand was her dominant hand, the battle was worth fighting. But every day, the forty minutes at the keyboard left her drained and discouraged.

  Behind her, Max said, “Turn around and let me rub your hands.”

  She noticed he did not say, That was good. Or even, That was better.

  Max didn’t tell lies.

  Kellen sighed and swiveled on the piano bench. Again that Rolodex in her brain clicked in:

  MAX DI LUCA:

  MALE, 38YO, 6’5”, 220LBS, ITALIAN-AMERICAN, FORMER FOOTBALL PLAYER. HANDSOME, TANNED, CURLY BLACK HAIR, BROWN EYES SURROUNDED BY LONG BLACK LASHES. ONCE HIGH UP IN THE DI LUCA FAMILY CORPORATION, STEPPED DOWN TO RAISE HIS DAUGHTER, NOW DIRECTOR OF THE FAMILY’S YEARNING SANDS RESORT ON THE WASHINGTON COAST. KIND, GENEROUS, RESPONSIBLE, LOVING. A STICKLER FOR DUTY. FAR TOO MUCH WILLPOWER, WHICH WAS IRRITATING TO KELLEN IN MATTERS RELATING TO THEIR MARITAL STATE.

  He took her right hand gently in both of his and, starting at the wrist, he massaged her palm, her thumb, her fingers. He used a lavender-scented oil, and stretched and worked the muscles and bones while she moaned with pleasure.

  He listened with a slight smile, and when she looked into his face, she realized his lips looked fuller, he had a dark flush over his cheekbones and his nostrils flared as he breathed. She looked down at his jeans, leaned close and whispered, “Max, I’m done with practice. Why don’t we wander up to our bedroom and I’ll rub your…hand, too.”

  He met her eyes. He stopped his massage. Except for the rise and fall of his chest, he was frozen in that pose of incipient passion.

  Then he sat back and sighed. “Doctor says no.”

  “Doctor said be careful.”

  “Woman, if I could be careful, I would. As it is, nothing is best.”

  “I am torn between being flattered and frustrated.” She thought about it. “Mostly frustrated.”