by Sharon Sala
“I can’t see. You see for me,” she mumbled.
“I’m looking right at him and he looks like a very nice man.” Jack saw the name tag on his lab coat. “His name is Justin.” Then Jack gave the lab tech a pointed look. “She’s dehydrated. The medics had a hard time finding a vein in her arm.”
Justin nodded, then started talking.
“Shelly, I’m Justin. I’ve been a lab tech for almost fifteen years. My hair is growing gray and I’m a bit overweight, but I do know my stuff. I’m going to put this band around your arm for just a minute to see if we can find a vein. If not, we’ll try elsewhere. So there will be a little stick. I will try my very best not to cause you more pain.”
She pressed her face against Jack’s chest. “You’re watching?”
“I’m watching,” Jack said.
“Okay,” she said, and didn’t move.
A few moments later, a doctor walked in. He eyed the lab tech and motioned for him to continue, then focused on Jack.
“I’m Dr. Habib.”
“I’m Jack McCann, Shelly’s husband. What can you tell us?”
“I just saw her X-rays. She has a cracked rib and a concussion. She is very dehydrated. The good news is that the cut on her chest is shallow enough that it will heal without stitches. As soon as we get the area cleaned up, we’ll glue it together. She has rat bites, so we’ll clean and treat them accordingly. She has a couple of loose teeth, but I think they will reseat themselves. We also need to put some stitches in her upper and lower lip.”
Shelly shuddered.
Jack kept rubbing her arm in a slow, gentle motion. She was silent, so horribly silent, and he wondered if she was reliving how she got the injuries as the doctor named them.
“I wanted to ask if there was anything in her medical history that we should know,” Dr. Habib said.
“She had a severe heatstroke when she was younger, and has never been able to tolerate extreme heat since,” Jack said.
The doctor nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, that is good to know. We’ll start pumping fluids and keep an eye on her organs.”
Jack wasn’t satisfied. “What about her eyes...and her face? Her jaw isn’t broken, right?”
“No bones broken in her face, but she was badly beaten, as you can see. We’ll have to wait and see about her eyes as the swelling goes down, and as soon as we get her mouth stitched up, we will be admitting her, at least for a day or so.”
“Okay,” Jack said, “but I’m requesting a private room with a place for me to sleep. I’m not leaving her alone again.”
Dr. Habib didn’t hesitate. “I will let them know. I was filling in at ER for a colleague tonight, so she will still be my patient in the morning as I resume my normal duties. I make rounds in the mornings around seven.” He moved a little closer to Shelly and gently touched her hand. “Shelly, you will be safe here. I am so sorry about what happened, but we’re going to take good care of you.”
She didn’t answer, but she also didn’t flinch from his touch.
“Thank you, Doctor. How about pain meds?” Jack asked.
“I left orders,” he said. “We’ll keep her comfortable as she heals, have no worries about that.” Then the door opened behind him. “Ah, here comes the nurse. She’s going to clean you up, and as soon as she has finished, I’ll be in to take care of closing up those wounds.”
The doctor went out as the nurse came in. Jack saw the washbasin and washcloths. He was going to have to turn her loose.
“Shelly, I need to lay you back down so the nurse can clean you up, okay?”
“You’ll stay?” she asked.
“Right beside you.”
The nurse glanced up at Jack. “I’m going to have to remove her clothing.”
“She’s my wife,” Jack said. “Do what you have to do, but I’m not leaving her.”
The nurse pulled the curtain around her bed. “We need to get her clothes off first. I can cut them—”
“No knife. Jack can do it,” Shelly gasped.
“It’s not a knife,” the nurse said. “They’re scissors, and they do not have sharp points.”
“Jack can do it,” Shelly said again.
“Please,” Jack said. “It won’t take long. I’ve been doing this for years, but for a much better reason, right, babe?”
Shelly sighed. “You do it.”
And so he did. They raised the head of the bed up enough so that she was reclining, and then he removed her blouse and what was left of her bra.
“Okay, honey, now we’re gonna lower the bed so I can pull off your pants without you having to stand up.”
So he pulled the sheet loose from the end of the bed and covered the top half of her body before he undid the zipper in her pants.
“I’m going to pull them down now,” he said, and began to ease them down her hips and out from under where she was lying.
As he pulled her clothes, the nurse pulled one end of the sheet with them so that Shelly would not feel exposed. Within a couple of minutes she was completely nude beneath it.
“Thank you,” Jack said.
The nurse nodded and then touched Shelly’s arm to let her know where she was.
“I’m going to give you a bath. We’ll start with your face and clean up the dried blood, then I’ll work my way down. If at any time I hurt you or frighten you, just say stop, okay?”
“Okay.” Then her arm suddenly flailed outward in a frantic motion. “Jack?”
“Right here,” he said, and laid a hand on her hair. “Feel that? It’s me. I’m trying to stay out of the nurse’s way, but I’m right here.”
Shelly sighed again. “Awful feeling...can’t see.”
He patted the top of her head. “Let the nurse do her job so the doctor can finish his.”
“Yes,” she whispered, and then lay perfectly still for about three minutes. Then out of the blue, she jerked and reached for Jack’s hand. “I didn’t tell,” she said again, unaware she was repeating herself.
Jack lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the bruises on her knuckles. “I know. You are so very, very brave.”
She relaxed again and was completely silent until the nurse pulled the sheet up to her chin, then uncovered the lower half of her legs. The moment the washcloth touched her skin there, she screamed.
“Get it off! Get it off!”
The nurse jumped and pulled back the cloth. “What’s wrong?”
“There were rats,” Jack said. “I think she thought it was them again.”
The nurse stared at Shelly’s face and then the wounds on her legs while the water from the cloth she was holding dripped onto the floor at her feet.
“Who did this to her?” she finally asked.
Jack sighed. “A very bad man.”
The nurse nodded, then started over by talking. “Shelly, I’m going to wash your legs. What you feel is me and a washcloth dipped in warm water, okay?”
“Yes. Sorry. Okay.”
“Honey, you don’t owe anyone an apology,” she said. “Now here we go. Starting on your upper thigh and working down to the bottom of your feet.”
“Yes,” Shelly said.
And then there was a knock at the door.
“Hang on, Shelly, I need to see who that is.”
“Don’t leave!”
“No, baby. I’m just going to the door. You can hear my voice.”
“Your voice,” she echoed.
The nurse made sure that Shelly was completely covered up now except for the one leg.
Jack pushed the curtain aside and went to the door. When he saw it was Wainwright, his heart sank.
“Was I right?” Jack asked.
Wainwright nodded. “He didn’t even try to cover it up.”
Jack scrubbed at his face with both hands, unable to accept
this was happening. “I don’t get it.”
“We are guessing desperation, with a touch of greed. It appears he was in debt in a lot of places. We had to notify his wife. She came undone. We stayed until her parents arrived.”
“Man, he isn’t ever going to get out of prison. He’ll never see that baby grow up.”
Wainwright put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “He won’t go to prison. He’s dead. Shot himself before we could disarm him.”
Jack shuddered and then looked down at a spot on the floor for a very long time, before he looked up.
“You told Alicia what he did?”
“You know how this stuff goes. It will be in all the papers. We had to.”
Jack nodded. “And Ito?”
“He’s undergoing surgery, then straight to lockup facility until he can be sentenced by the court. We recovered a gun in the bunker. I’d lay odds it’s the one he used to kill his brother. Houston’s Homicide Department will be handling that. Murder on their turf and all. And thanks to you, we have him dead to rights on all the black market gun running. As for running, he’ll be lucky if he ever walks again.”
“Good,” Jack said, and then turned and pulled the curtain back so Wainwright could see. “That’s what he did to Shelly, then left her tied to a cot beside his brother’s body. He left them both for the rats to eat.”
Wainwright blanched, then made the sign of the cross. “Sick bastard,” he said softly.
Shelly jerked and then grabbed at the sheets, looking for Jack.
“Jack! Jack!”
“I’m right here,” he said, and then reached out and shook Wainwright’s hand. “Thank you for telling me in person. And just so you know, I’ll be resigning from the Bureau in the coming weeks.”
Wainwright was shocked and it showed. “You don’t have to do that, Jack. Forget the undercover work. You can go back to—”
But Jack interrupted. “No. No more.”
“What will you do?” Wainwright asked.
“Something else,” Jack said. “Anything else. But for now, Shelly has a long way to go with healing from this, and I need to be there for her.”
Then he turned away, pulling the curtain shut as he went back to her bed.
Wainwright was saddened as he left the hospital. This was going to be a hell of a report to write up. He didn’t lose just one man today. He was losing two.
Fourteen
They moved Shelly to a room around midnight. They’d wrapped her rib cage to reinforce the cracked rib. She had two stitches in her upper lip and four in her lower. The rat bites were being treated and she was getting meds to treat the infection. Her eyes had been cleaned and doctored, and her body was regaining some normal readings as rehydration continued.
Several nurses had found fleas in her hair and had offered to shampoo and treat the scalp before moving her upstairs. Shelly was so horrified throughout the process that she couldn’t stop crying.
Jack stood by her side, holding her hands and talking to her throughout the whole process about the stakeout he’d been on when he got bedbugs.
He had the nurses laughing about all the treatments he did on the rooms trying to get rid of them, and how he finally gave up, shaved his head and walked out of the stakeout apartment, leaving everything behind. He elaborated enough about some guys from the Bureau picking him up and dropping him off at an ER wrapped up in a sheet one of them had brought from home that they were all laughing in hysterics.
Shelly was even distracted enough by the story that the nurses were completely through with the third shampoo and the scalp treatment before she knew it.
She squeezed Jack’s hand. “You never told me about that.”
“I was afraid you’d never let me back in the house,” Jack said.
Shelly moaned, stifling laughter, as Jack lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.
Now they were upstairs, and the overstuffed recliner the orderly just brought to her room was for Jack. They added a pillow and a blanket and showed him how it reclined all the way back for sleeping.
Nurses came and went. The pain meds they had given Shelly finally began to take effect as she fell asleep. Finally the room was in shadows, except for a small light on the far side of her bed, and the lights on the machines hooked to her body.
Jack shoved the recliner close enough to the bed that he could hear her breathing, and only then closed his eyes.
* * *
Shelly’s kidnapping was on the early-morning news, along with an interview of their neighbor Barb Hightower, who’d witnessed it happening. No one knew Jack’s part in her recovery. Only that she’d been rescued by members of the FBI. There was mention made of closing the case on the stolen military weapons, and the last man connected to the case being in custody and charged with his brother’s murder.
It was the subject of conversation for many Houstonians over their breakfasts, but no one was more horrified than Mitzi Shaw.
After the mess their daughter had gotten them into, she was certain their life was never going to be the same. And now this happened. Suddenly, their troubles seemed petty and small.
She called her boss, Willard Bates, to tell him what she’d learned.
“Thank you for the heads-up,” Willard said. “But I’m already on it. Her husband actually called me this morning. Can you believe this? He’s actually a federal agent! He survived being shot and went into hiding, trying to find the man who got away from that weapons bust last week. The man wanted revenge against Jack and kidnapped Shelly to draw him out.”
Mitzi gasped. “Oh my God! That sounds like something out of a movie. Not a thing that happens to people we know.”
“Life always imitates art. This is no exception,” Willard said. “I’ve already called in a temp to cover Shelly’s clients, but from what I understood, her healing involves time and way more than physical injuries.”
Mitzi started crying. “I’m so glad this is over and they’re both still alive.”
“Yes, well, I’ll see you at work?” he asked.
“Yes, of course. I’ll be there,” Mitzi said, then hung up and went to blow her nose.
Then she called the hospital, only to learn there had been a No Visitors order put on Shelly’s care. Mitzi cried all the way to work and kept thanking God that her husband sold shoes in a department store for a living.
* * *
Angelique heard about the arrest on the news as well and was greatly relieved to know that Adam Ito would be in prison for the rest of his life. She would not have wanted him to know she had anything to do with getting him caught.
She was also thrilled to find out that Jack McCann’s wife was alive and in the hospital. It pleased her greatly that she’d helped make that happen.
So she began the day in her office by removing Adam Ito’s name from her records, along with expunging all of the information she’d kept on him. She didn’t trust the law or the government, and she feared if they found out she’d done any kind of business with him, that it wasn’t above them to somehow include her in the indictments against Ito, just because they could.
By noon, she was puttering about in her kitchen, making herself a cup of tea to go with a cold shrimp salad, when her doorbell began to ring. She wiped her hands and then fluffed up her hair as she moved through the penthouse apartment. Once she got to the front door, she peered through the peephole. It was Henry, the downstairs doorman, holding a huge bouquet of flowers.
She turned the dead bolt, removed the chain and then opened the door. “Good afternoon, Henry. You shouldn’t have.”
He grinned. “Afternoon, Miss Angelique. This just came for you, and the instructions from the florist said to put these in your hands only.”
Angelique smiled and grabbed a ten-dollar bill from a jar of money on the hall table that she kept for tips.
“Thank
you for bringing them up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Henry said, then handed her the vase and pocketed the tip. “Have a nice day,” he added, and went back down in the elevator.
Angelique kicked the door shut behind her, turned the dead bolt and put the chain back on the door.
“Now, let’s see what we have here,” she said, as she carried them to a side table in her living room to remove the card.
Thank you, lady.
J.
Angelique smiled. It had been a while since anyone had called her a lady.
“You are so welcome, Jack McCann.”
* * *
On the morning of Shelly’s second day in the hospital, the phone rang in her room. The swelling was going down in her eyes enough that she could see a little bit from one eye, and even more from the other, and when Jack didn’t immediately appear, she managed to answer the phone.
“’Lo,” she said, then winced as the skin pulled around the stitches on her lips.
There was a brief moment of silence, then a voice in whispers, sounding as raw as hers felt.
“Shelly? This is Alicia. Please don’t hang up.”
The skin crawled on Shelly’s head. She was still trying to come to terms with how horribly their friend Charlie had betrayed them, when it dawned on her that he had betrayed his wife and child even worse.
“I...here. Can’t talk much...stitches.”
Alicia moaned. “Oh my God, I am so sorry, Shelly. I don’t even know what to say except that my heart is broken for what you and Jack endured. I need you to know that I didn’t know this was happening. I would have told. I would never have been a part of such treason.”
“Unnerstood,” Shelly said. “Not your fault.”
Alicia was crying softly now, trying to talk through tears.
“I’m moving back home with Mom and Dad for a while. They live in Pasadena. I doubt we’ll ever cross paths again, but I couldn’t bear for you to think I just skipped out on you guys without calling. It would seem like I didn’t care about what happened, and at the same time, I am ashamed to show my face.”
“So sorry,” Shelly said. “No...blame.”
