Guarding Miranda (5 page)

The adult in her fought against her childhood fear of needles, inner conflict that it was it didn’t really show on the outside but she was on the losing end of the battle. 

The blond nurse pulled back her covers and Miranda felt a rush of cool air on her bare legs. 

She swabbed Miranda’s skin with a piece of alcohol-moistened cotton and inserted the needle in the flesh above her right buttock, with the blatant lie, “It won’t hurt a bit.”

It didn’t hurt as much as other needles she’d had in the past but Miranda still felt the pinch…

The next time Miranda awoke, her left shoulder was aching. 

Vaguely remembering the nurse’s words, she depressed the white button with her right hand and quick relief was soon granted her by the saccharine embrace of the morphine. 

She felt even more fuzzy than she had been before, as the drug took renewed hold.

These are some cool drugs
, she thought, amused in her state of drug stupor.
Very cool drugs
...

And so it was with amusement that she looked up at the transfusion stand that had been placed next to the IV machine. 

It was with amusement also that she watched the red of a donor’s blood drip slowly into the plastic tubing that led to the needle that disappeared into her flesh of the back of her hand. 

The needle there amused her some more.

She hated needles but his one didn’t hurt a bit, despite the different tubes that were attached to it, dripping their solutions into her veins...

She felt gratitude to the unknown donor.

“I’ve got to make sure I donate blood next time…”

Contrary to the young nurse’s claim that she was going to have to be on her stomach for a couple of days, the head nurse came with a helper in the afternoon and propped her into a sitting position.  The left side of her body was heavily bandaged, her left arm in a sling, to keep it immobile and promote healing.  They put a great number of cushions at the small of her back to ensure that there was no pressure being put on her shoulder and thus, she was able to sit up and sip water and visit with friends and family.

Around three o’clock, her Uncle Russ, Aunt Nancee and cousin Lynn came to visit her. 

They crowded Miranda’s small half of the hospital room.

It was with a sheepish smile that her influential uncle said, “We tried to get you a private room but the hospital was packed.”

She looked at her red haired uncle and wasn’t sure if she heard him right.

The drugs were playing tricks on her ears.

“That’s all right, Uncle Russ.  A room is a room.” She shrugged and smiled a dopey smile, elated by the morphine. “So, what happened to me, anyway?”

Her Aunt Nancee frowned and her cousin Lynn glared at her Uncle Russ.

Lynn was every bit as red headed as her father and had the Scottish temper to match. 

“Tell her, dad.” Lynn’s green eyes sparkled dangerously with unspoken threats as she went on to say: “Tell her the
truth
.”

“The truth.” Miranda agreed, with a big dopey grin for the family she loved.

Uncle Russ looked uncomfortable with whatever truth he had to offer.

“As the nurses told you, you were shot, Miranda.  We’re not sure by whom.  The police are hoping you could tell them...”

“Shot?” An array of images flashed through Miranda’s mind, too quick, too tangled for her to make sense of. 

She felt a surge of panic as she thought of Richard. 

Panic directed at his well being. 

Panic that brought her to fear the worst. 

Even in fear, she wore a half smile. 

Only morphine could offer her such detached bliss...

“Richard was with me, wasn’t he?”

Her tiny blond haired aunt seemed particularly uncomfortable, shifting from foot to foot. 

Nancee rubbed her small hands nervously, a gesture that told Miranda bad news was about to hit the fan.

“Well,” Nancee began and then paused, to let out her burden, a long, deep sigh. “Richard... well, Richard... he was shot too, sweetheart.”

Fragments of memories flooded Miranda’s mind full of waking dreams. 

She thought she remembered a gunshot, a voice – a gruff voice that was not Richard’s...

Say goodnight, princess
.

Miranda’s intelligent green eyes swelled with horror, as she remembered Richard’s body slumping to the ground before her, remembered the splash of warm wetness that had hit her face a fragment of a moment after the first gunshot.

Remembered the second gunshot, the one that had, no doubt, put her here, in the hospital.

“He was shot... Richard!” Her fearful green eyes turned to behold her Uncle Russ, who sported a frown beneath his red moustache. “Uncle Russ, is he all right?”

“No, my dear, he’s not all right.” Russ shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

In his pockets, the hands became tight, frustrated fists.

“Is he here?  Is he hurt too?”

“Richard is dead.” Russ told her and braced himself for the worst.

“Dead?”  Even though Miranda knew that it was true, she didn’t want to believe it.

“I’m so sorry..,” said Lynn, stepping forward. “Oh, Miranda, you don’t know how worried I was about you – how worried we all were.  When Mr. Logan called us and said you’d been shot...”

Lynn kept talking but Miranda was no longer listening. 

Richard, dead? 

That couldn’t be...

He couldn’t be dead.

They were going to be married. 

She loved Richard and Richard loved her. 

The Fates would not be so cruel, as to part two lovers about to be married, would they?

Yet over and over again, in her mind’s eye, she could see Richard’s head jerking back after the first gunshot, saw the hole left there, saw his body slump to the ground, saw the man with the menacing gun, saw-

“Miranda,” began Nancee, “I know that words cannot-“

“
Barry
.” Miranda said suddenly, snatching the name from the painful vision in her head, interrupting her aunt. “A man named
Barry
shot us.  Richard knew him by name.”

“And you’re sure it was
Barry
?” Russ asked, though the name was familiar to him for reasons he was not about to disclose. 

It was bad enough that his wife and daughter had forced him into confessing to them the private investigator he’d hired. 

He was not about to tell Miranda everything. 

Not now, in her drugged state. 

He knew that she was on a high dose  of morphine – as her next of kin, he had spoken to her doctor himself. 

From the way Miranda was behaving, he just knew that it wouldn’t do her any good to overload her with too much too soon. 

He would tell her everything, in due time. He would tell her about his discoveries, about the private investigator he had hired.

Now was just not the right time to discuss Brian Logan...

“I’m certain of it.” Miranda felt the first of many tears well up in her eyes. 

She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat and sought her glass of water. 

The morphine was cushioning the shock of the news but only just. 

To hear that Richard was gone still hurt her – the loss was a horrible, crushing weight on her chest, an ache in her heart that she was sure no drug could fully ease. 

She had come to know loss quite well through her twenty seven years.

This loss didn’t hurt any less because of the morphine.

She considered her losses for a moment.

First, there had been the untimely death of the Fowlers, her mother, Simone, father, Eric and brother, Dennis, when she was only sixteen.  Then, when Miranda was twenty, she suffered the loss of her grandmother, Serena, a woman she had loved with all of her heart.  Now, as painful as all the others, was the loss of her fiancé, the man she had loved with all of her being, all of her soul.

He was gone. 

Dead. 

Miranda knew only too well what dead meant. 

She was no stranger to Death.

Dead meant lost, lost to her forever.

Abandoning pride, she sobbed freely and loudly before the Gundys, spilling her glass of water in the process.

Chapter Three

Brian and Miranda were hardly alone. 

The hospital’s hall was full of people and the nurses’ station was right outside the door. 

The sickeningly chipper blond haired nurse with whom Brian had pleaded for a few moments alone with the patient would be back any minute. 

Despite all of this, Brian could not shake the feeling that the entire world had been reduced to just the two of them and the two of them alone.

Her roommate was gone, transferred to another room, so at least Miranda now had some privacy in which to heal.  The dozen coral colored roses he had brought her were swallowed into insignificance by the horde of flowers and get well cards that adorned every inch of the ledge and small table that was in her half of the room. 

A few bouquets of flowers had been placed in the second half of the room, now vacant.

She had many well-wishers but none so devoted as he.

He stood near the doorway, watching her at rest. 

In spite of his best efforts to keep his attention fixed on her lovely face, so serene in the dark, so content, his gaze was drawn again and again to her chest.

Not to her breasts, which he had always been attracted to but to the bandaged wound that he knew he was in part responsible for.

He watched her breathe and was grateful to God that she was alive.

Had she been shot a few inches lower, she would be dead, the nurse had said. 

Her heart, other vital organs. 

If she had been shot any higher, as Richard had been, well…

Brian didn’t want to think about that.

Miranda was alive.

Alive and stable, healing satisfactorily.

That was what mattered most.

Her breaths came slowly and evenly, the only noise in the room, besides the soft beeps coming from the intravenous pump and the hum of activity drifting from the nursing station outside. 

She was deep in sleep. 

Recovering, to the best of the hospital’s ability to ensure it.

Even at rest, in the dark, Miranda was beautiful, with a body that could tempt the saints from heaven. 

He knew her lithe body well, in watching her from afar and in treating her wound... 

As he looked at her, he felt a myriad of emotions. 

He wanted to protect her, as had been – and still was – his job. 

He wanted to hold her, to tell her that everything was going to be all right, that the doctor was sure she’d regain full use of her left arm, that good things happen to good people...

Brian knew, looking at her, that it just wasn’t right, that a girl so lovely, so full of life could be reduced to laying so helpless in a place so stark and antiseptic.

She belonged to the world outside of the hospital, the world of gala openings and parties and performances and the long list of men, young and old, who would be lining up as candidates waiting to take the place of Richard Alba.

Richard. 

How Brian hated the dead man, hated how close his criminal ties had come to getting Miranda killed.

Brian looked again at Miranda, at the ivory face that seemed nearly as white as the pillows she was propped up on.