by Sharon Sala
She turned toward the sound of his voice. For a fraction of a second it appeared as if she might recognize him, but the flash of cognizance was gone as he reached for her hands.
At that point, the doctor popped another staple into her head, and the frantic look in Annie’s eyes startled Charlie.
“She can feel that! You didn’t deaden it?”
“The pain of the needles is the same as the staples,” Dr. Baker said. “It’s just quicker for her in the long run to do it this way, and the cut was too deep to glue it.”
Charlie heard it, but he didn’t like it.
“Her right wrist is sprained and swelling,” the nurse said, cautioning Charlie not to hold her too tight.
“Yes, ma’am, I see,” Charlie said and slid his hands a little higher up her arms instead.
At first she fought his restraint just as she had the nurse, but Charlie was stronger, and he kept gently rubbing her hands and arms as he talked to her.
“My sweet Annie... I’m so sorry you fell and I wasn’t there to catch you, but I’m here now. Hold on to me. Hold tight. I know you hurt, but the doctor is trying to help. You cut your head, baby, and he’s fixing it. You’re going to be fine. I love you, baby. I’m so sorry you got hurt.”
And slowly the deep sound of his voice began to calm her. Her fingers slowly curled around his hand, and her agitation lessened.
“That’s the last one,” the doctor finally said.
Charlie breathed a sigh of relief. “How many staples?”
“Six, and we’ve x-rayed her to check for broken bones but we don’t have those results yet,” Dr. Baker said.
“Can you tell if she’s suffered a concussion?” Charlie asked.
“Not at this point, but from the depth of the cut, I’d say a slight concussion at the least would be likely,” Baker said.
Just then, the woman from Morning Light moved up beside Charlie.
“Mr. Dodge, I’m Rachel Delgado. I’ve seen you in Morning Light, but we haven’t officially met. I just want you to know that I’m here with Annie, too, and will be until she’s released and taken back.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you,” Charlie said, but his focus was on getting information from the doctor. “Are you going to admit her?”
“I can’t say until I see the X-rays. We need to make sure there’s no brain bleed,” the doctor said.
“Can you give her something for the pain?” Charlie asked.
“I’m sorry. Not yet. I need to wait and see the X-rays first,” Dr. Baker said.
But Charlie persisted. “Then can we clean her up a little?”
“Of course,” Dr. Baker said and nodded at one of the nurses, who quickly left the room to get the needed supplies.
Now that there were fewer people around Annie’s bed, she seemed less agitated. Charlie watched for changing expressions, but to his sorrow they were almost nonexistent.
“She’s just lying there as if nothing happened,” Charlie said, then glanced at Rachel. “Did she cry when she fell?”
“She cried out, but there were no tears. People with this disease forget so many things...even how to feel pain, or to be hungry. Showing emotions becomes rare. The most common reaction is usually agitation.”
Charlie looked down at Annie in dismay, seeing firsthand what Annie had feared most. The things that had made her unique in this world were already gone, and what was left of her was disappearing rapidly. He wanted to cry for her because she could not cry for herself, but it would have solved nothing for either of them, so he pulled a chair up beside her bed and laid his hand over hers, instead.
Where once her fingers would have intertwined with his, they now lay motionless and limp beneath his touch, her skin cold and clammy, probably from shock.
“She’s cold,” he said. He unfolded the extra blanket at the foot of her bed and pulled it up over the others, adding weight and warmth, then glanced at her again.
Her gaze was fixed on the television on the opposite wall. It wasn’t on, but it didn’t seem to matter. She just kept staring at it until her eyelids began to droop.
When the second nurse returned with a basin, soap, some towels and washcloths, Charlie moved out of the way. They began to clean her up, and she seemed to suffer the wiping and the drips without being aware they were happening.
Charlie watched it all without comment. After they’d finished, they put a clean, dry towel beneath her head and left the room, leaving Charlie and Rachel to wait for the doctor.
When Annie finally fell asleep, Rachel moved to the foot of the bed.
“Pobrecita,” Rachel said, patting Annie’s foot beneath the covers.
Charlie blinked back tears as he looked away. Annie was indeed a “poor baby,” but she was his to love, in sickness and in health, and he wasn’t the kind of man to forsake a vow.
Just as Charlie was about to go looking for him, Dr. Baker returned.
“Good news!” he said as he breezed in the door. “No signs whatsoever of internal brain bleeds, or for that matter, anywhere else on her body. She has no broken bones. She’ll have a black eye for sure. And without knowing where all she hurts, I’d advise keeping her on soft foods for at least a week, in case her jaw is sore.”
“Yes, Doctor,” Rachel said. “I will tell them. Can she be taken back to Morning Light now?”
“Yes. I’ll tell the nurse to order an ambulance, and you’ll ride back with her, yes?”
Rachel nodded.
“Then I’ll give you all the paperwork.” At that point he shifted his focus to Charlie. “Mr. Dodge, you have my sympathies. I don’t see a lot of cases of early-onset Alzheimer’s, and I can only imagine how hard this must be for you.”
Charlie glanced down. If it wasn’t for the steady rise and fall of her chest, he would think she was already gone.
“I love her. It’s hard to be a witness to this, and it’s so damn sad. If I only knew she was unaware and not in pain, it would be easier to bear.”
Dr. Baker shook Charlie’s hand and walked out, passing a nurse walking in.
“An ambulance is on the way to pick her up,” the nurse said. She handed all the paperwork to Rachel and checked Annie’s vitals.
“Everything is stable. We’ll remove the IV and blood pressure cuff right before we load her up, okay?” She left without waiting for an answer.
Once more, Charlie and Rachel were alone with Annie, and Rachel wanted to give him some private time with her before they took her back.
“Mr. Dodge, I’m going to step out for a few minutes. I won’t be long. Ring the buzzer if you need a nurse.”
Charlie nodded, glad he was going to have a few moments alone with his wife, and when Rachel left the room, he leaned over the bed and kissed her.
“Hey, sweetheart, it’s me, Charlie. The doctor said you’re going to be okay. I love you, baby, so much. I miss you. I miss your laugh. I miss making love to you, but I’ll never quit you. I’m here for you always.”
The ache in his chest was old, but familiar. It was the “losing Annie” ache that came when he let down his guard, but by the time Rachel returned, he had his game face on.
He stayed until the paramedics came into her room and transferred her from her bed to the gurney. She roused briefly, frowning her discontent, and then looked around in confusion as they began wheeling her out of the room.
Charlie walked beside her, still holding her hand, and Rachel followed. Then he stood outside, still watching as they loaded Annie up and Rachel climbed in beside her.
He waited until the ambulance drove away, then went back to his car and started it up to let it cool off before he left.
His heart hurt, his stomach was in knots. The ache in his chest was growing, swelling with every breath he took. Tears welled and rolled silently down his face, but he didn’t move. His cell phone rang, b
ut he didn’t answer. He wondered what was going on at the new office, but he knew he was in no shape to go back there. Not yet. He also knew Wyrick would be waiting for news. She was the only other person on earth who still cared about Annie’s welfare, so he finally sent her a text.
Nothing was broken. No internal bleeding. Six staples in her head. Bruises galore. They’re transporting her back to Morning Light. I’ll be in later. Text if you need me.
He hit Send, then put the Jeep in gear and drove away.
Two
Wyrick was unpacking books and putting them on the shelves in Charlie’s office when she received the text. The message was terse, but the news not as bad as she’d feared. He wasn’t coming back because he was upset and she couldn’t blame him. The only thing she could do for Charlie right now was get the final bits of the office set up, so she kept working, getting the hard copy files that had been boxed up in Charlie’s apartment into the new file cabinets.
There was an unopened bottle of Irish whiskey in the wet bar, along with a good bourbon, a bottle each of vodka and tequila, some sparkling water, club soda and some mixers. The ice maker was humming along, freezing cubes, and the glassware was sparkling.
It was just after 4:00 p.m. when Charlie came into the office carrying a file folder and a cup from Starbucks.
Wyrick looked up.
“I need you to file this in the folder with my will. You like caramel macchiatos, right?”
Wyrick nodded as she reached for the folder.
He set the cup down on her desk. “Good. It’s what I brought to make up for abandoning you on the day we were moving in. Sorry. Shit happens.”
She looked up. His face was expressionless and his sarcasm was verging on bitter.
“Thank you,” she said. She set the cup aside to look at the paperwork in the file and then responded with a false sense of calm. “You bought burial plots and made funeral arrangements. I thought you said she was going to be okay. What happened?”
“Let’s just say I saw her future today. She’s forgotten everything that made her my Annie. She’s getting worse so fast it makes my head spin. She’s forgetting how to walk. She’s not going to remember that she’s in pain, and one of these days she’s going to forget how to breathe. That’s what happened.”
Wyrick gripped the folder with both hands as she got up, then moved to the file cabinet and slipped the new info into his personal file, and made herself focus on anything but what he’d just said.
“I sent notes to your laptop regarding new clients. Let me know which ones you want to represent and I’ll schedule appointments. Go home. Don’t get drunk. You’re miserable to be around when you have a hangover...and I’m thinking about moving.”
Before Charlie had time to be pissed about her ordering him around, her news startled him.
“What happened?”
She shrugged. “Right after we got back from the Dunleavy case, I took worldwide Universal Theorem down to the bones and left them in ashes for three days without them knowing what the hell had happened. It was something I’d been planning for a while, and when the time was right, I pulled the plug. After the three days had passed, I put them all back online and sent Cyrus Parks a text telling him to leave me the hell alone or I’d destroy them. I’m sick and tired of running, and they won’t be bothering me again, so I’m thinking about buying a home.”
Charlie blinked.
“Cyrus Parks?”
“He created UT and calls himself my father.”
“Calls himself your—Never mind. Not my business. What do you mean, shut them down?”
“Shut down every aspect of technology at all of their locations worldwide, at all of their homes, their banks, their means of communications...their personal phones, all the files containing years of research, etcetera, etcetera.”
“Etcetera?”
She shrugged.
“Holy shit, Wyrick.”
She arched an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure they did not consider any part of that holy. The only downside is now they know a bit more about what I’m capable of.”
The hair stood up on the back of Charlie’s neck. “A bit more? How do you know that stuff?”
Wyrick’s eyes narrowed sharply. If it had been any other time, she would have cut him off at the knees for asking, but he needed a distraction from what he’d suffered today, and she was full of shocking information. So she took a deep breath and unloaded.
“Surely you know by now that I’m something of a freak. I am a Universal Theorem experiment that worked, and they’ve been trying to recreate me since the day I was born, but it hasn’t happened. Most likely because they also fucked up and killed the woman who was my biological mother. It was likely a combination of a lot of things, but she is the continuing difference in all of their later experiments...so there’s that.”
Charlie gasped. “They killed her...as in murdered? Jesus Christ! Why?”
“According to the file I found a few years back, it’s because she wanted to keep me. She didn’t want to give me back to them.”
“Yes...mothers have a way of disagreeing with people who want their children,” Charlie said.
“Except, I wasn’t ever supposed to be hers. I wasn’t supposed to belong to people. Just to UT. I don’t identify with normal people. I don’t even know what that means. Now thank you for the caramel macchiato, and we’re officially open for business.”
He stared at her a moment and then frowned.
“I don’t know what kind of reaction you expect me to have, but beyond admiration for your brilliance, I don’t even need to know why you are who you are. I appreciate you, Wyrick, and I’m glad you work for me. See you tomorrow.”
He turned on his heel and walked out.
Wyrick had been holding her breath, wondering how he’d react, but she should have known Charlie Dodge was shockproof...except for his beloved Annie, who was his Achilles’ heel.
She went back to her desk and ordered takeout to be picked up on her way home, logged off her computer, gathered up her bag and her Starbucks drink, and left.
* * *
Charlie’s apartment was back to normal when he walked in. It appeared his cleaning service had been here today, which was good. They’d sanitized the rooms as always, right down to making a little V-shaped fold on the toilet paper in the bathroom.
He tossed his keys on the table as he went to his bedroom to shower and change. He thought of Annie as he stripped, but not from the time of making love. She’d never been in this apartment, so there was no memory of her in this room, or in this bed. It was the staples in her head and the bruises on her body that were still fresh in his mind. He would call and check on her before bedtime to see how she was doing, but he knew that if something happened, Morning Light would let him know.
He turned on the shower to allow the water to get warm, then grabbed a clean towel and washcloth from the linen closet and shut the bathroom door. After so many years in the military, privacy was a luxury he did not take for granted.
After he was finished, he dried and dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, then went barefoot into the kitchen.
One quick check of the refrigerator, and he was calling in an order of Chinese food. He grabbed a beer and settled down to check the messages Wyrick had sent to his laptop.
He made notes as he read through them but knew, the moment he read the request from a mother with a missing child, that this would be the next case he took.
* * *
Wyrick drove through the madness of quitting-time traffic on the Dallas loop, sipping her caramel macchiato and keeping an eye on her rearview mirror to make sure she wasn’t being followed. She got off the loop and drove straight to White Jasmine to pick up her dinner, then zipped back on it again. The next time she left the loop, it was to go home.
The aroma of Thai food rode
with her as she wound her way through the old elegance of her landlord Merlin’s neighborhood, and then just for the hell of it, she gunned the Mercedes as she took the turn into the estate to let him know it was her. She parked at the entrance to her basement apartment and carried her things inside.
The scent of the morning coffee she’d made before daylight was little more than a faint memory as she dumped everything on the kitchen counter, then headed for her bedroom in long, hurried strides, stripping as she went.
The water was still running cold when she stepped into the shower, and she was already soaping when it began to run warm. The need to wash off her public face was always crucial before she could be at rest in her own place, and this time she was hurrying so she could get back to her food.
There was something to be said for never having to worry about shampooing her hair, so she concentrated on removing her makeup, then rinsed the soap off in record time. She turned off the water and grabbed a towel as she got out. Within minutes she was dry and went commando as she dressed, then went back to the kitchen wearing a pair of gym shorts and a tee and began taking boxes out of her to-go bag.
After plating up what she wanted to eat, she grabbed a wine cooler from the refrigerator and carried it into her living room. As soon as she sat down, she turned on the television, then scooped up a forkful of jasmine rice.
“Heavenly,” she said, settling in to eat.
It didn’t take long for her mind to shift from the evening news to Charlie and work, and wonder if he was looking at the notes she’d sent.
In the weird way of how she’d seen Annie’s fall before anyone told Charlie, she’d known as soon as she saw Tara Bien’s name that she would be Charlie’s next case. In fact, she’d been so certain he would pick it that she’d penciled Tara in on his desk calendar.
Charlie would confirm it tomorrow, and Wyrick could call her then. According to Tara Bien’s message, her daughter was missing, she was desperate, she wasn’t far from their address, and she would take any time they could give her.
