In Your Dreams (15 page)

         
He muffled a curse with a whiff of exasperated breath. “That they’re testing
me. I should have known. I
did
know. Samantha in Reception tried to warn
me.”

         
“Oh, it’s more than a test, sugar. They’re playing games. With you, with
Isabelle, with me. And nothing as fun as this orb ball. I don’t know what they
want from us, but whatever it is, we’re all in it together. Like we’re linked
somehow.”

         
Which explained what Verity had said during their last consult. Something he
should probably warn Xavia about. “My EC told me if I tried to contact Isabelle
outside the normal channels, the Board would not only punish me, but you, too.”

         
To her credit, she didn’t freak out. At least, not in a frightened way. No, she
got downright pissed. So pissed, fire blazed in her eyes and turned her aura
lava red. “See what I mean? That’s not the way things usually go down around
here. And I, for one, don’t appreciate playing somebody’s lab rat.”

         
Was she right? Was there something going on they didn’t know about? Well, hell,
yeah, that much he knew was true. But, what else was happening? Were they
linked somehow? All three of them?

He
remembered how Luc and Jodie had shared some kind of link he’d never
understood. But unlike Luc and Jodie, Sean could meld with Xavia without
getting sucked into the Afterlife’s version of sex—a fusion of souls. Too bad,
now that he considered it. Luc, although tight-lipped about personal stuff, had
let slip that his melds with Jodie were damn near nuclear in power and scope.
He could easily believe that kind of fusion with Xavia was what ultimately
created the cosmos. Talk about a Big Bang.

         
“None of this makes sense,” Xavia announced, drawing Sean’s thoughts back from
fantasy to the reality of the situation at hand. “I don’t know about you, but
I’m constantly getting shit from my counselor for refusing to take
responsibility for my own actions, for always looking for shortcuts to avoid
repercussions. So, how am I supposed to react to this?”

         
“Is that your big flaw?”
          “No.” She smirked. “My
big flaw is I tend to take matters into my own hands.”

         
“No shit,” he retorted.

         
“What’s
your
big flaw?”
          “I have a pissy
attitude.”

         
“No shit,” she rejoined with the same emotionless tone. His laughter mingled
with hers for a minute or two before she sobered. “What are we gonna do now?”

         
“Toe the line, I guess.” He shrugged. “I don’t have much of a choice. I don’t
give a shit what they do to me, but I won’t risk you or Isabelle.”

         
“Touching, but don’t play nice on my account,” she replied with a wave of her
hand. “They’ve already taken away my only reason for going on: my son. Without
him, I’m damned anyway. And I don’t care what happens to me now.” Crouched on
the floor, she folded into herself, back against the burned wall. “You worry
about Isabelle, not me. I’m a hopelessly lost cause.”

         
Well, there was
one
link they had in common. Him, Xavia, and Isabelle:
three lost causes.

         
Isabelle was pissed. Not that he blamed her. The limits Verity had placed on
him made it impossible for him to speak directly to her. Oh, he still watched
her—awake and asleep. And when she was awake, every once in a while, she
stopped whatever she was doing to listen in silence. She obviously still felt those
prickles on her neck that told her he was around.

         
In fact, one afternoon, while she sat at her kitchen table, poking on her
laptop—there was an amazing device!—she paused and stared at the ceiling.

         
“You know, if you’re not going to talk to me, you may as well stop coming
around, Sean. These impromptu visits aren’t as anonymous as you think. And the
last thing I need these days is a creepy stalker.”

The
pain of betrayal sharpened every word, and he winced.

“For
the record,” she continued her diatribe, “I’m working on my will. You’re not in
it. Not that I could leave you anything anyway. But I want you to know that,
even if I could, I wouldn’t. I’ve met some shady characters in my life, but you
really suck. All that bull about how you wanna make sure I don’t kill myself so
I don’t wind up like you, and where are you now? Off with some other angel?
Hanging out in the Maldives, laughing about me, the idiot you fooled? Hey! I
have an idea! What if I strolled into my bathroom right now and emptied all the
pill bottles into my throat? Think you’d talk to me then?”

Oh,
Christ! She wouldn’t. Would she? Because he couldn’t guarantee he’d get
permission from the Elders to get to her before it was too late. Frantic, he waved
a hand toward Xavia’s office, hoping to catch her attention while still
focusing on Isabelle. “Don’t do it, Belle. Please. Don’t take out your anger at
me on yourself.”

A
grim smile appeared on her face. “Don’t sweat it, Sean. Before I was allowed to
come back here, Justin and Tony went through my house like the safety patrol,
removing any item I might use to harm myself. They even took my dental floss.”

On
a sigh of relief, Sean relaxed. Thank God for Justin and Tony.

Her
mirthless chuckle came out as a choked sob. “It’ll be just my luck that I
survive the brain tumor and then die from some virulent form of gingivitis.”

“What’s
up?”

Xavia’s
sudden intrusion made Sean flinch in his chair.

He
pulled himself together and pointed to the image on his board. “Isabelle. She’s
really hurt that I’m not communicating with her.”

“So?”

“So...I’m
worried she might try to kill herself again just to gain my attention.”

“Is
she hinting she would do that?”

“Hinting?
Yeah, you could say that. She just came out and threatened to swallow all the
pills in her medicine cabinet.”

“Shit.
You think she’s serious?”

“Ssh!
Just listen.”

On
the screen, Isabelle sniffed. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she swiped them
away with a balled fist. “I really liked you, you know. I might have even loved
you. Which not only makes this whole situation laughable, but it also confirms
I’m a frickin’ moron when it comes to picking men. You’re just the last in a
long line of selfish pricks who took advantage of me and left me on my own
after I’d given you what you needed.”

“Wow,”
Xavia remarked on a shaky breath. Pulling up an empty chair to sit beside him
at the desk, she repeated, “Oh, wow. She’s hurting bad.”

“I
know.” He scraped fingers across his scalp. “And I can’t tell her she’s got it
all wrong. Even if I could reach her now, she’d never believe anything I say.
And if she decides to try to kill herself again? How the hell am I supposed to
stop her when she thinks I used her?”

“Well,
don’t worry about me,” Isabelle told the ceiling. “I’m gonna be fine without
you. So do me a favor. Go away. Stop hovering over me. Leave me alone.” She
bent her head toward the laptop again and typed at a rapid pace.

Xavia
tapped her ringed fingers against the edge of the desk. “I think she just gave
you the blow-off, Sean.”

For
the first time since Isabelle started talking to him during this session, he
took his gaze off his screen to narrow his eyes at Xavia. “Gee, ya think?”

She
clapped a hand on his bicep and squeezed. “Don’t worry. She’s angry now. But
that’s good. It means she’s coming to terms with her situation. She’s gonna be
okay. She’s on her way to getting along without you.”

“Yeah,
great,” he growled.

How
was
he
supposed to go on without
her
?

~~~~

         
Seven days later, Isabelle lay in a hospital bed in the pre-op area while two
white-coated torture specialists attached an aluminum box to her head. One of
them lifted his arms and, at the first whiff of his body odor, her nostril
hairs burned. Great. Dozens of people working this department, she got stuck
with the cretin who didn’t believe in personal hygiene. Not exactly an
auspicious beginning.

Fear
took hold, slamming her heart against her ribs and stealing rational thought
from her malignant brain. The discomfort of the stupid frame pressed to her
head couldn’t compare to the terror taking hold of her from the inside out.

She
shouldn’t have come here. This was a mistake. What the hell did she expect? A
miracle? She’d already been given a guardian angel. An absentee guardian angel.

         
God, how she wished Sean was here. After she made the phone call to that girl’s
mom, he’d showered her with praise and cheers. And then...nothing. Like a
jilted prom date, she sat around at night, waiting to hear his voice or have
him pop up in her dreams. But he never showed.

         
Oh, he sent her dreams: visions of herself laughing with Tony and Justin, a
particularly sensual image of sunshine warming her bare skin on a private
beach, and one night, she swam with dolphins in a moonlit sea. All very...
nice
.
Pedestrian. Truistic. None of the messages were personal. And none of them
calmed her the way one lousy conversation with him could.

Whatever
happened to his promise to stay with her every step of the way? Because, now,
she really needed someone by her side.

Some
guardian angel he turned out to be. Just like everyone else in her life, once
she’d outlived her usefulness to him, he’d flown into the ether.

         
The tag-team tormentors stepped back, smiling. “All set,” the more
pleasant-smelling of the two said. “Just relax, Ms. Fichetti. The doctor’ll be
here in a bit to go over last-minute stuff with you, and then we’ll be back to
wheel you into radiology for the MRI. Okay?”

         
Panic thickened her tongue, dried her throat, and she nodded. Was it too late
to back out? The cream-colored walls closed in on her, stealing the available
air in the room. Gripping the bed rails, she struggled to pull oxygen into her
lungs. Her chest tightened, and the thin mattress beneath her swayed, as if on
a storm-swept sea.

The
what ifs bombarded her yet again. What if the MRI showed it was too late? What
if something went wrong? What if the machine malfunctioned and burned her face
off? What if the hospital suffered a power surge while her brain was being blasted
with gamma rays? The idea of her brain exploding like a hot dog cooked too long
in the microwave bolted her upright.

         
“I changed my mind,” she exclaimed, her hands clawing at the metal box on her
head. “I don’t want to do this. Get me out of this thing.”

         
“Take it easy,” the sweaty intern said, leaning over her again to check the
screws above her eyebrows. “Relax. It’s okay.”

         
“It’s not okay. I don’t want to do this.” Tears pooled in her eyes and streamed
down her cheeks. “Get me out of here. Tell them I’m not coming. I’ll pay them
for their time if they want, but I’m not sticking my head into that machine.”
She continued yanking on the frame, but the metal wouldn’t budge. “Get me out
of here!” Like a trapped animal, she howled her outrage. “Let me go! I don’t
want to do this! I changed my mind. Let me go. I wanna go home.”

         
A team of people burst into the room and set upon her, grabbing her hands,
pinning her down, shushing her.

And
while she heard all of them, she refused to heed their instructions. Only one
person could calm her now. “Sean! I want Sean! Please. Get Sean. Tell him to
take this cage off my head!”

         
“Belle, stop.”

         
Justin’s voice permeated the haze of strangers, and she reached out blindly,
grabbing his shirt hem. “Justin. I changed my mind. I can’t do this. Tell them
to let me out of this box. Please. Take me home. Don’t make me stay here. I
don’t care if I die tomorrow. I just wanna go home.”

         
“Hey, come on, Belle.” A soothing hand brushed across her cheek, but had no
effect on her terror. Even when she recognized the familiar scent of Justin’s
after-shave. In fact, the sweet, spicy cloves on his neck roiled the nausea in
her stomach. No wonder they ordered her not to eat before the procedure:
between the intern’s body odor and Justin’s cologne, any food she’d ingested
would have roared up and onto the floor by now. “I’m gonna vomit,” she
announced. “You have to get me out of here.”  

         
“Stop,” Justin scolded. “You’re okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of. You can
do this.”

         
“No. I can’t. Not by myself.”

         
“You’re not by yourself. I’m going to be right outside the exam room the whole
time. Tomorrow, you’ll come home with me, and you’ll be in the best of hands.
Tony and I are going to take good care of you. You know that. We love you. You
know we would never let anything bad happen to you.”

         
No. She didn’t know any such thing. If he really meant what he said, he’d take
her out of here right this minute. He wouldn’t let all these people hold her
down so they could inject some weird nuclear energy into her skull. “I can’t,
Justin. I can’t do this. Please don’t make me do this.”

         
“Don’t be afraid, Belle. It’s going to be okay. It’ll be over before you know
it. You’ll see.”

         
She struggled against the strong hands pressing into her shoulders. “I want
Sean. He can come inside with me.”

         
“Sean who? Is he a doctor?”

         
“No. Sean. He’s my—” She stopped short. Even in her dread, she realized she
couldn’t explain the existence of her guardian angel. “He’s my friend.” Or, at
least, he had been until he stopped spending time with her.

         
“If he’s not part of the medical team,” Mr. Body Odor interjected, “he won’t be
allowed in the room with you, miss.”

         
“It doesn’t matter,” she said on a defeated sigh. “He doesn’t care anyway. He’d
only come back if I tried to hurt myself again. And since I made that deal with
Tony, Sean doesn’t think I need him anymore. But he’s wrong.” Another sigh
while another tear slipped down her cheek and she whispered, “He’s
dead
wrong.”