SEALed with a Ring

by Mary Margret Daughtridge

  She peeled the giant red bow off the fabric cylinder and stuck it on the center of her chest, over her heart. "Take it or leave it."

  Chapter 52

  HERE SHE STOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SPARE BEDROOM, bed and other furnishings shoved against the wall to make room for a contraption that pressurized air for the purpose of squeezing oxygen into people's bodies, with a red velvet bow blooming on her chest.

  She had no idea what time it was or what she was scheduled to do next. This was life in all its confusing, chaotic, engrossing, heart-wrenching glory. And she was in the thick of it.

  Before her stood the man who was her heart's desire. And in the confusing, messy way of love, all she wanted was to give him his heart's desire. She had begun only knowing that if the HBOT helped him, and he got his life back, he might decide he didn't want her at all.

  And the next thing she knew, she had a bow on her chest and was offering, not her help, but herself.

  The thing was, whatever was going to happen, how ever this was going to turn out, was in the future, and life wasn't lived in the future. Life was now.

  Irrelevantly, she noticed that having shoved the fur niture all around but having left the paintings hanging as they were, the paintings now looked unbalanced and haphazard. She thought that was a metaphor of some kind, demonstrating that life is all about relationships, and when one thing shifted, everything else did, too, whether it moved or not.

  After what might have been forever or might have been no time at all, David's clear brown eyes lit. The corners of his mouth lifted. With one beautifully mod eled arm, he reached out and plucked the bow from her chest.

  "I'll take it. I'll take you and whatever comes with you."

  "For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, whether it makes you richer or poorer?"

  "Yes."

  "Together in sickness and in health, meaning your sickness and your health, as well as mine?"

  "You drive a hard bargain, lady." He kissed her sol emnly. "I do."

  Chapter 53

  RAUL, THE SEAL, HAD RECOMMENDED SESSIONS OF ONE hour twice a day for at least forty sessions. Every brain and every brain injury was different. There was no telling what improvement there would be—or when they would see it—or even if there would be any improvement at all.

  The experience of being in the HBOT wasn't unpleas ant. There was a sense of pressure in the ears, much like diving, and in fact, the slang for HBOT sessions was dive.

  David almost postponed the first dive because the nerve pain in his face was worse that morning. He wanted to give the process a fair chance.

  In fact, the dive didn't make it worse. The pain was considerably better afterwards and didn't return for several hours. After the second dive, the pain was gone for longer. After the third, he ran. The pain returned but was much less severe and didn't last for hours as it had before.

  He didn't get too excited. Though his wasn't typical trigeminal neuralgia, nerve pain of its type could go into remission for unknown reasons and return for equally obscure ones. He'd had a couple of days without pain before. And days when there were only a couple of very short episodes.

  Like a lot of SEALs, he was obsessive about keep ing statistics on his performance. At the end of a week, he checked his notes. There had been no pain at all for forty-eight hours. By the end of the second week, the nerve pain had not appeared for nine days. It never returned.

  "Who knows?" was Raul's diagnosis. "Maybe there was inflammation or swelling. The hyperbaric oxygen does help reduce both. Maybe something needed to heal, and the dive speeded the process."

  The dull, always present ache around his eye was less dramatic but steady in its improvement.

  On Saturday, JJ came home to the cottage with pres ents for his brothers and Elle that she wanted to show him. After a few minutes she said, "You act like you're really enjoying hearing about this."

  "I am," he said, and meant it. Thinking back, he could recall several conversations lately he had found enjoy able and entertaining. He had always been gregarious, extraverted. He had no idea how much of the pleasure of hanging out and talking he had lost until it was restored. Talking with JJ was the best. Sometimes they talked late into the night. He couldn't put his finger on why it was better. It was simply more interesting.

  Numbers started to make sense again. They were just there, no fumbling around, the way they were supposed to be.

  He and JJ drove to Riley's school to bring him home for vacation. On the way home, Riley announced he had decided to become a neurologist and talked non-stop for an hour about brain chemistry, brain structure, and nanotechnology, which he informed them was the future of neurology. Trying to focus for so long would have made David frantic even a couple of weeks ago. Instead, he enjoyed his younger brother's chatter and drew him out further with questions.

  "Is everyone in your family medically oriented?" JJ laughed when there was a lull in their talk. "Did you ever want to go to medical school?"

  "I had four semesters of premed," David admitted. "Then I wanted action. Excitement."

  "Would you like to finish med school when you get out of the Navy?"

  "I think I'd like to work with kids," he told her. "I love kids." He read the surprise on her face. "What? I never told you that?"

  "David," Riley, who had been silent for a while, in terrupted, "do you think I could try a dive? I have read about it on the Internet. Some people say it helps autistic kids. I read about one kid it made less sensitive to noise. Do you think I would be scared?"

  "I'll do it with you. We'll play cards."

  Later that evening, after seeing Riley settled in with Lucas, David and JJ returned to the cottage.

  "What are you thinking about?" JJ asked David when she found him sitting in the darkened living room, look ing out the sliders at the night beach, Brinkley at his feet. It was a question she wouldn't have asked him a couple a weeks before. He would have said, "Nothing," or in some way let her know he didn't want to go into it.

  "I remembered something today when we were with Riley. I remembered waking up in the hospital, and Mom was there. I remember being real confused but not wanting to let her know."

  Seeing he was disposed to talk, she sank down beside him on the sofa. "Why not?"

  "I think it was what you said. I thought I had failed her in some way. I wasn't supposed to worry her."

  "You were trying to protect her from knowing you were hurt?"

  "I think so. Anyway, I didn't want to tell her I didn't know where I was—because that might worry her—so I asked her if she knew where she was."

  He let his head loll on the thick back cushion of the sofa, his teeth showing white, laughing at the memory. Then he sobered. "I wanted to ask her about Riley and Harris and Elle, but I couldn't say their names. It wasn't that I didn't remember. I couldn't bring their names from the storage place. Does that make sense?"

  "Yes, I think so."

  "I asked her where were her babies. And she said," his voice thickened, "'you're my baby.'"

  JJ took his hand. His hard, masculine, long-fingered hand. "You were her first baby."

  "I kept trying to tell her about the dream I had in Afghanistan."

  "The one in which you dreamed you died?"

  "Yeah. I could tell I wasn't making any sense. What I wanted her to tell me was if that really happened, but all I could say was 'I dreamed I was dead and then I was awake.'"

  "Do you think maybe you did die, or had one of those near-death experiences?"

  "I think I came real close. Maybe I did and came back. Who knows?"

  "I'm glad you came back." She lifted the hand she held to her lips. It was the kind of affectionate gesture he would have avoided a couple of weeks ago. Now he smiled.

  "Me, too." He returned to his story. "I wasn't mak ing much sense, and she kept saying 'It's okay, you're awake now,' and I was babbling on about dying and her being there, crying, and trying explain that she didn't have to cry because it was okay.
If I died, it was okay… and she started sobbing."

  "Then, you mean? In the hospital?"

  "Right. I asked her why she was crying. She said because she was so happy I was alive."

  "Was that the last time you saw her?"

  "What happened when is still kind of confused, but I don't think so. I think she was there a couple more times."

  "Why do you think you remembered this now?"

  "I'm remembering a lot of things now. No, it's not so much that I remember. It's more like I can put things together now. I thought for a long time the wrong one of us died."

  "You don't think that now?"

  "No. She was glad I was alive. That's what I needed to remember."

  "I'm glad you told me that. I like knowing more about your family."

  "Yep." He stood and picked up Brinkley's leash. "Come on, Brink. Let's go out and water some bushes so we can go to bed."

  Chapter 54

  FOR HIS LAST TRIP OUTSIDE BEFORE BED, DAVID USUALLY took Brinkley to the street-facing side of the cottage, so they could walk along the traffic-less blacktop. The dog couldn't get the hang of wiping sand from between his toes. Walking on the blacktop instead of the beach saved the need to rinse him before he could come back inside.

  Fog had rolled in. It blew in wispy chunks between nearby street lamps and turned the ones that receded into the distance into little more than glowing reminders of civilization's presence.

  On the ocean side of the cottage, the sea kept up its ever-present murmurs. On the street side, every jingle of the dog's tags fell into emptiness of noise so profound that silence itself was an entity. It was so quiet David could hear himself think.

  JJ had said she liked hearing about his mother. She might want to see the picture of his father, Carl. Carl had given David's mother the diamond JJ now wore. The shoe box of odds and ends was still in the trunk of his car where he had tossed it when he left his apartment in Virginia Beach.

  While Brinkley sniffed bushes to make sure no other dogs had been marking his territory, and if they had, making sure they understood whose turf this was, David opened the trunk and retrieved the memories of love his mother had stored for him.

  He heard JJ running water in the bathroom when he shut the redwood door on the damp, dark, deserted street. The cottage was warm. He inhaled deeply of the fragrance of contentment and JJ.

  With Brinkley settled in his bed for the night, lamps in the living room turned out, and the lock on the sliders checked, he carried the box into the bedroom and laid it on the beach color-splashed bedspread.

  In the closet, dropping his discarded jeans into the hamper, he suddenly wondered what had become of the jeweler's box the ring had been in. He'd like to keep it with the mementoes, since his mother had saved it all those years.

  The last he remembered, he had put it in a pants pocket. He began going through his dress slacks. He didn't find the box, but in one pair of slacks he found a silk pouch with "It's all about the ride" embroidered on it.

  He chuckled at the memory of purloining it from JJ's bedroom at Lucas's house. He probably ought to sneak it back where he'd found it and never admit to anything. He tugged at the tiny snap closure. Yep, that's what he ought to do—not that there was a chance in hell he would—not until he'd discovered what it contained first.

  He studied the colorful scraps of lace and elastic thongs that fell into his palm, aware of that déjà vu tickle of memory, except, he realized, this wasn't déjà vu.

  He had seen a thong like these, and recently.

  JJ found him sitting on the foot of the bed, a Nike shoe box open beside him, when she padded barefoot from the bathroom. He was naked. JJ thought she was comfort able nude, but she'd never seen anyone who got naked as readily or as unself-consciously as he did. The lamp light gilded his powerful shoulders, noticeably browner these days since he often ran shirtless.

  JJ unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it. "What do you have there?"

  "It was you." His eyes were dark and full of pain when he raised them. "Why, JJ? Why didn't you tell me?"

  "What was me?" She had never seen him like this. Never heard him sound like this.

  He opened his fist. A little silken pouch slid from his fingers to the peachy-gray carpet.

  She dropped the skirt on a chair and knelt to pick up what he had dropped. "This was a gag gift from Bronwyn. Where did you find it?" She laid her hand on his dark, hair-roughened thigh. "David? Tell me what's wrong."

  Slowly he reached into the shoe box at his side. "Remember this?" He held out another thong, ecru. He stretched it between two fingers so she could see the Mustang logo.

  For a minute, she didn't make the connection. Then she did.

  She sat back on her heels. "You found that? And you've kept it? All this time?"

  "Why did you lie? Why did you tell me we 'met'? Like it was no more significant than a handshake."

  She rubbed her forehead. "If you will recall, you strolled up to me and said, 'Do I know you from some where?'" She rose to her feet. Trying to master her anger, she stalked to the closet and jerked out a skirt hanger. She rounded on him. "Give me a break, David! What did you expect me to say? 'Yes, I know you, but only in the Biblical sense.'"

  She inserted the skirt waistband into the hanger clips with short, jerky movements. "The question was some thing less than flattering, you know."

  "I'm still waiting to hear why."

  She hung the skirt in the closet and returned. "'Why?' Do you really think I should have greeted you with open arms?"

  "That's not the question. The question is, why didn't you tell me the truth?"

  "All right. You want to know? For one solid year I had felt disgusted with myself every time I remembered that night. I had sex with a total stranger. I didn't even know his last name." She turned her eyes heavenward. "Talk about wasting my upset on nothing. A turning point in my life—my absolute all-time low—was a non-event to you. You didn't even remember it happened! Do you really believe I had any reason to want to reminisce?"

  He squeezed the thong in his fist, then opened his fingers and watched the flesh-colored elastic rebound.

  "Your absolute all-time low was an evening with me."

  "I didn't mean it like that."

  "I didn't know your name. That was my all-time low."

  "What? How?"

  "In hindsight, I could see that something had been bothering you. I didn't know what was wrong, but I had only made it worse. But had I paid attention? No, I ignored it because I wanted you. And if I wanted a girl—hey, what other consideration was there?"

  "Well, you offered to beat somebody up for me. That's got to count for something."

  He smiled at her attempt to lighten the moment but shook his head. "Nah. I was careless. I was living way too fast. I thought getting to know someone just slowed me. And why should I have to ? I was so wonderful that girls were honored to spend an evening with me. God, I was an arrogant bastard. It was pathetically easy for me to believe you had been overcome by my charms." He snorted with disgust. "You set me straight. You de fended yourself with a shoe. You said, 'Don't make me regret sex with you more than I already do.'"

  "That really bothered you."

  "Yeah. I dreamed about you. Dreamed I was looking for you everywhere. And when I was awake, I did look for you. I'd see a woman with hair the brown of yours." He lifted a lock of her hair. "For a minute, I'd think it was you—even when I was in—" He laughed apologeti cally. "Well, a really unlikely place for you to be." He stoked her cheek. "Didn't you have any idea how glad I was to see you? Or how crazy it felt?"

  "I thought… I don't know… maybe you had so many notches on your belt, you'd lost count. At first I didn't know whether to be insulted or relieved, but once I thought about it, I was mostly relieved. I thought you could and would take any relationship we had lightly."

  "You thought I was that shallow. I was. The only time I wasn't was when I was operating."

  "No, David. I look back
on it now, and I think I was the shallow one. I was the one who expected nothing real or meaningful from a relationship. I thought someone who cared about me would just be a burden. You kept saying there was more and expecting more of me. I haven't been deliberately withholding the truth about that night. When I got to know you, the truth is, I kind of forgot, myself. Whatever had happened didn't matter anymore. You were a different person by then, and so was I."

  "I never forgot you, even though my brains were scrambled. Every time I touched you, I'd have this crazy feeling like I know her. You want to know what else? The thong? I'd come across it and think, I ought to get rid of that. I'm not one to keep souvenirs. But I couldn't make myself do it."