by Sandra Brown
"Thanks," she said as she buckled her seat belt and the helicopter lifted off the ground.
The morning was routine. Her earliest report came at six fifty-five when she reported that traffic was still light and that all ramps leading onto the freeways were clear of congestion. It was proving to be a beautiful morning, so weather wasn't a consideration.
It was while she was joking with the disc jockey during her second report that she heard the loud bang that sounded like a car backfiring, then a still silence when the helicopter's motor died an instant death.
"Godamighty!" Joe cursed.
Keely spun her head around and saw that his hands were busy at the controls. She broke off midway into her sentence about an upcoming rock concert. Panic rose in her throat like scalding bile. "Joe!" she shouted, wanting him to sit back and smile and relax those frantic hands and tell her that everything was all right and under control.
"Hey, Keely, what's happened up there? Did you burst a balloon?" She heard the disc jockey's joking voice in her headpiece, but it no longer seemed real to her.
"Joe!" she screamed as the chopper began to spin crazily, like a top off its axis.
"Sit tight, Keely," he said with amazing resignation. "We're going down, baby."
* * *
Chapter 16
«^
Keely looked out and saw that the ground and horizon were no longer level, but tilting at an alarming slant. The blades of the helicopter were still rotating, but there was no sound from the engine. Around and around the small craft was spinning, even as the ground rushed up toward it.
"No!" she screamed. "No, please." As the chopper pitched forward she felt the seat belt biting into her abdomen, but it wasn't enough to hold her. When it let go, her head struck the bubble windshield with a sickening thud and suddenly she was fighting nausea and pain.
"Help me!" she cried, but didn't know if anyone heard or if she had even said the words out loud. "Oh, no, please. No!" She tried to open her eyes, but couldn't against a blinding light. Out of it an image took form.
Mark! She saw him, beaming proudly, reassuringly. He was the smiling, guileless, exuberant boy she remembered. His eyes lighted up with happy surprise at seeing her and his smile was as jovial as ever. Mark! her mind screamed, you're alive. He wasn't in pain.
He wasn't a nameless skeleton in a jungle on the other side of the world. His spirit was very much alive in this sphere into which she had been hurled.
Or had she? The light was growing dimmer. His image was becoming unfocused. She wanted to speak to him, but he waved jauntily and turned his back on her. Gradually his image receded as he rushed back from where he had come. A giant drapery was being pulled closed behind him, separating them. Darkness was fast closing in and she was losing her battle with it. She longed for the warm and light place where Mark was.
But the darkness wouldn't go away. Just before it swallowed her, Keely realized with startling clarity that her heart knew a peace it hadn't known in years. In this flash of time, suspended between two worlds, she had shared, even experienced, Mark's death. Now she could lay him to rest. Seeing him living in a brilliant and shining light, she could accept his death in this world and let him go.
Peacefully, with a surrendering sigh, she let the darkness engulf her.
* * *
"Easy now, just lie back. No, Miss Preston, lie down. Everything is all right. You're in the hospital."
Strong yet gentle hands kept her shoulders anchored to the bed, though she strained to raise them. "Adjust that bandage, Patsy. She loosened it." While hands still held her, others tampered with something just above her brow. "She needs to wake up. Miss Preston, wake up. Come on. Open your eyes and say hello to us."
She struggled to obey but her eyelids felt like lead and she couldn't lift them. But the voices coming at her out of a dense fog were insistent and she kept trying until she could see a slit of light.
"Well, hello. We didn't think you were going to be a very friendly guest. Gracie gets her feelings hurt if her patients don't speak to her."
"That's right, I do. Especially if the patient is a celebrity. How do you feel?"
The nurses' white uniforms hurt her eyes. A thermometer had been poked under her tongue. Her blood pressure was being taken.
Where … when … how? The questions bounced inside her brain, jousting with the pain already there. Then she remembered the spinning helicopter and struggled against the restraining arms again.
"Joe," she croaked and didn't even recognize her voice. "Joe."
"He's fine," she was told. "He landed that helicopter on the Superdome parking lot just like he always does."
"Landed it?" The words seemed to roll around in her mouth, trying to find an exit. "But…"
"Don't worry about that now. The details will be filled in later. You were the only casualty. Now, do you think you can sip on a 7-Up without throwing it up all over that glamorous gown we've got you in?"
She shook her head no, but they brought her the cup with the bent straw anyway and she took a few obligatory sips before she fell asleep again.
The way back to complete consciousness was long and fuzzy. Confusion blurred the times she did awaken and her sleep was so heavy that she seemed never to come completely out of it. She knew she had an IV needle in the back of her hand and every time she moved it, she felt the pull of the tape.
Her parents moved in and out of her dreams until she realized that they were actually there. Her mother wept softly. Her father looked uncomfortable and awkward, but he kissed her on the forehead when she managed to smile at him in a moment of lucidity.
Once she awakened to see a man's face bending over her. It was a comical face with frizzy blond hair ringing it like a wreath.
"Hi," he said cheerfully. "Just looking at my handiwork."
She stared up at him in confusion and he must have read the question in her eyes. "Dr. Walters. Call me David. Your friend called me in when she knew you had to have your forehead stitched. I'm a plastic surgeon. You'll have a tiny scar right at your hairline, but I'm so damn good, it will hardly be visible to the naked eye."
She smiled.
"Are you feeling all right otherwise? Need anything?"
She shook her head and closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
Then, as if by magic, the cobwebs had been swept away, and when she awoke, everything was clear. Her head ached abominably, but that was understandable. A debilitating weakness made her limbs tremble, but the nurses made her get up and walk around her room before allowing her to fall dizzily back into bed. She managed to drink a whole can of apple juice and keep it down, so the nurses took the hateful needle out of her hand. It left a blue bruise.
The rest of that day she napped intermittently and her sleep was no longer heavy and drugged. By nightfall she was able to read the accounts of the near-disaster in the newspapers the nurses had saved for her. Her room was filled with flowers she hadn't been cognizant enough to appreciate before. The nurses oohed and aahed over each bouquet and hovered nearby as Keely read the cards aloud to them.
One card wasn't signed and the nurses mourned over that fact since it went with the largest and most beautiful bouquet of yellow rosebuds. Keely didn't think the unsigned card was an accident. She plucked off one of the perfect blooms and kept it on her pillow. It caught her tears as it would dewdrops.
The next morning she was able to get up, shower, dress in her own negligee, and make up her face. A small bag with her things in it had miraculously appeared in her room overnight. When asked, her mother denied knowledge of it.
Both the doctor who had first treated her at the hospital and her own physician examined her and agreed that she could receive visitors. The manager of KDIX came in and she was touched by his concern and relief that she was still among the living. He brought her cards from the rest of the staff that were generally ribald and irreverent. They made her laugh until her head ached.
Joe Collins came in later. Tears mad
e him look watery as he leaned down and hugged her tight. "Joe, thank you," she said. After his concern about her condition had been eased, he explained what had happened.
"Something, a tiny particle of something, blocked the fuel line and the engine conked out. Luckily I stabilized the chopper and managed to land with what is called auto rotation. The blades keep rotating for a while, you see. We were almost directly over the Superdome when it happened, so…" He shrugged modestly. "I was busy trying to keep us up and at the same time I was worried as hell about you. All I could see of your face was covered with blood."
"You saved my life, Joe."
He seemed suddenly shy and embarrassed so she switched subjects. She rested after he left and the nurses persuaded her other waiting visitors to come back later.
After dinner that evening she was propped up in bed watching television when there was a timid knock on her door.
"Come in," she said. Nicole and Charles walked in. Nicole looked meek and anxious. When Keely held out her arms to her, she lunged across the room and flung herself at her friend.
"Keely, I'm so sorry. Did you do this on purpose to pay me back for the terrible way I talked to you? Oh, God, when I heard you up there screaming, I thought I'd die."
"You heard?"
"Yes, we all did," Charles said; "Remember, you were in the middle of your conversation with the DJ. I'm afraid he didn't react with the quick skill he should have and cut your mike. Your radio audience heard the whole thing."
Keely covered her mouth and closed her eyes. "I didn't realize. How awful that must have been."
"Well, it made you a heroine," Nicole said with resilience since she knew she had been forgiven.
"Are you responsible for the plastic surgeon and my bag being here and everything?"
"Charles and I."
"Thank you." The women locked hands and stared at each other with understanding.
"About the other night, Keely—"
"It's forgotten. About many things you were exactly right."
"And many things were none of my damn business too."
"Yes, they were. You're my friend."
"That I am." They were both perilously close to tears. Charles saved them an emotional scene.
"Darling, you haven't told Keely your news," he said in a bland voice.
Keely was so shocked by Charles's calling Nicole "darling" that for a moment she stared at him before turning to Nicole and asking, "What news?"
Nicole twisted around from her seat on the edge of Keely's bed to glare at him. "You just love to gloat over it, don't you?"
"Yes," he said, rocking up on his toes and smiling broadly.
"Well, I don't think it's funny. Not one damn bit."
"Would the two of you please let me in on the mystery," Keely interrupted. "What news?"
"I'm pregnant," Nicole mumbled.
Keely looked at the top of Nicole's bowed blond head as she picked at the covers of the bed. Keely's eyes then moved beyond Nicole to Charles, who was managing to look both sheepish and smug at the same time. Her gaze came back to Nicole. Had her friend just announced that she was going into a convent, she couldn't have been more stunned.
"You're what?"
Nicole vaulted off the bed, jarring Keely's aching head. "You heard me. Pregnant. With child. Knocked up. Whatever the hell you want to call it and he" – she pointed an accusing finger at Charles – "did it." Keely began chuckling softly, then the laughter built until she was convulsed with it and tears were coursing down her cheeks. It made her head throb, but the laughter felt good and she milked it for all it was worth. The corners of Nicole's mouth quirked until she was smiling and then she too was laughing.
"I can't believe it," Keely said, wiping the tears from her eyes. "When did—"
"The night we went with you and – and Dax to the Café du Monde. Charles took me home, remember? I used every feminine wile I have and finally lured him into bed. He got his revenge!"
Charles winked at Keely. "You're not too upset over it, are you, Nicole?" she asked intuitively.
Nicole bent down and whispered loudly, "Who would have thought it to look at him? Keely, he's hell on wheels in bed."
That started Keely's laughter all over again and she was weak by the time it subsided. Nicole had finally met her match and neither of them looked unhappy about it. Charles had pulled her against his chest, his arms folding across her midriff. "Well, are you going to let this child be born out of wedlock?"
"Oh, Keely," Nicole began on a wail and turned her face into Charles's shoulder.
"I'll tell her, darling, since I was the one who insisted." He kissed the tip of her nose. "We were married yesterday, Keely. Of course we would have loved to have you there, but I didn't feel it was proper for us to wait any longer."
Keely smiled at them and tears of a new kind came to her eyes. "I'm so happy for both of you. I couldn't be more pleased. I've always thought the two of you belonged together."
"So did I," Charles said. "She took some convincing."
"You have a most convincing manner," Nicole purred and turned into his embrace.
"May I at least kiss the groom?" Keely said impatiently when their kiss lengthened with no sign of letup. Charles pulled himself out of Nicole's possessive arms and bent down to kiss Keely's cheek with his usual reserve. When he straightened, he said, "I'll be out in the hall. Don't hurry, darling." Tactfully he withdrew, giving the two women some time alone.
"Nicole," Keely said, catching her friend's hands. "You love him, don't you? And the baby? You're happy about it, aren't you?"
"Keely, I'm so happy, I feel I'm about to burst. There will never be a mother more loving or attentive. Not a day will go by that this kid doesn't know he's loved. And Charles. Charles," she said wistfully, lovingly. "I was afraid to love him, afraid of his rejection. But wonder of wonders, he loves me, Keely. He truly does. For myself, not for— Well, you know. Despite all the – the other men and my reputation, he loves me."
"I knew he did. I'm glad he finally convinced you."
"So am I." She smiled the smile that melted the hearts of thousands of television viewers every night. But the classic smile faded when she looked down at Keely's wan complexion and saw the haunted, lonely expression in her eyes. Her taut body couldn't hide the tension within. "What about you, Keely? How do you intend to solve your affair of the heart?"
"I think it's been solved for me." She looked sadly at the yellow roses, then back to Nicole, who was watching her closely. "I realized when that helicopter was going down that Mark is dead. He belongs in the past. Dax is the present, could have been the future, but … I love him, Nicole. I love him more than my life. But he will never forgive me for mistrusting him."
"How do you know? Have you asked him?"
"No, of course not."
"Then why don't you? He's right outside."
Eyes that had been dulled by weariness and despair flew to Nicole's face to see if there was any deceit there. "He's … Dax is…"
"Outside. He beat the ambulance to the hospital, Keely. He was listening to you on the radio. He's not left the hospital since you got here. I've seen raving maniacs with better dispositions than his, snarling at anyone who— Keely, what do you think— Get back in that bed!"
"No." She pushed off the covers and swung her legs to the side of the bed. "I'm going to him."
"Keely, for godsakes, let me—"
"No," she said, using her last strength to shake off Nicole's helping hands. She had to go to him on her own.
Halfway to the door she stretched out her arms in an effort to keep the room from reeling, but she wasn't about to give up. She had to see Dax, to tell him…
The door was too heavy for her, so she did allow Nicole to pull it open. Her bare feet on the cold tile floor were silent as she stepped through the door and looked down the hallway.
He was sitting in a chair, his knees wide-spread, his hands clasped between them, his head bowed. He had assumed that positi
on the night he had told her he was on the subcommittee. Dejection was evident in the slump of his shoulders, the mussed hair, the stubbled cheeks, the rumpled clothes. He had never looked more beautiful to her. He was speaking softly to her parents, who shared a short sofa in front of his chair.
"Dax."
His head snapped up at the sound of her voice and swiveled around to look down the sterile length of the corridor to where she stood, so frail, yet so courageous.
Shakily he rose to his feet. He stumbled on a small magazine table as he took a step toward her. Then he was rushing, his long strides eating up the distance between them. His eyes, always compelling, were even more so with the shine of tears glossing them. Fiercely he gathered her to him and wrapped his arms around her as though he'd never let go.
The power of his embrace robbed her of breath, but she gave it up gladly. Her arms folded around his waist. "Keely, Keely," he repeated into her hair.
They were unaware of the spectacle they were creating in the corridor, but Nicole wasn't. To protect them she placed a hand on each of their shoulders and backed them into the room, closing the door behind them. Dax and Keely were unconscious of ever moving.
He combed through her hair with frantic fingers. Anxiously he scanned her face. Lovingly he touched her features. "I thought you were going to die. I was listening to you on the radio, loving the sound of your voice, loving you, wanting to see you. Then I heard that engine die. I've been in too many helicopters not to know what happened the instant it did. My heart stopped beating. My screams matched yours, my darling. I thought you were going to die. Oh, my God, Keely…"
"Shh," she comforted him, stroking his hair as he nuzzled his face in the hollow of her neck. "I didn't. I didn't. I'm alive. Here with you now. Shh."
Her fingertips fanned across his lashes and picked up the moisture clinging to them. "When you learned the St. Christopher medal proved Mark was dead, why didn't you come to see me, Dax?"
"Did you really want me to?"
She laid her cheek against his chest and groaned softly, "Yes, I wanted you. I cried for you, but I was afraid. After what I said to you I didn't think you'd ever want to see me again. Will you forgive me for doubting you, Dax? I'm sorry."
