Love, Like Water (28 page)

They’d tried to tend to Joshua during the first night: apparently his face was swollen and bruised from the blow to his cheek, but he waved them off. It was just superficial; he didn’t even hurt that much. Now, when he glanced into the mirror in the bathroom, he saw that it had faded to a purplish-yellow. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t the one who was hurt.

About nine thirty, the young male nurse came in to change one of the bag things that were hanging over Eli. He saw Joshua watching him and smiled. “Either he’s one important witness or he really means a lot to you. The other nurses said you haven’t left his side once since he came in.”

“And I won’t.” Joshua’s voice was scratchy and hoarse from disuse.

“I don’t blame you.” The kid—what was his name? Right, his nametag said Alex—said. “He looks pretty bad.”

Something about the way he said it made Joshua look at him sharply. “‘Looks’?”

“Yeah. Really? He looks a lot worse than he is. He’s healing really well, under the circumstances.” Alex frowned. “Hasn’t the doctor given you an update?”

“He talks, but I don’t understand half of what he says. He says that Eli’s doing as well as can be expected. All I know is that he won’t wake up.”

“Didn’t the doctor tell you about the coma being medical?”

Joshua frowned. “Yeah, but I have no idea what that means.”

“That means they’re keeping him unconscious on purpose.” Alex stepped back, alarm on his face. Joshua realized he’d stood up, his hands fisted. “Whoa…! I’m not the bad guy, mister. And neither is the doctor. He probably thought you understood what he meant, and if you didn’t ask any questions, he wouldn’t know any different.”

“Why would they keep him like this?”

“A lot of reasons. But I’d say in Mr. Kelly’s case, it would
be
for a lot of reasons. He’s got multiple injuries, including internal and cranial, so keeping him quiet would be the biggest one. If he were conscious, he’d be moving around a lot, especially since he’d be in quite a bit of pain. And he’s
got
to stay still so that they can track any additional bleeding, which is the biggest danger for him right now. But according to the charts, his scans have been coming back clean, so they’re pretty sure he won’t spring any new surprises on them.”

Joshua sat back down, his heart pounding. Eli wasn’t unconscious. He wasn’t dying. He wasn’t slipping away from Joshua every second, the way he thought, the way he felt. This was all medical. He closed his eyes a moment.

A hand settled on his where it rested on the edge of the bed. “They had you really scared, didn’t they? I’m sorry. I guess everyone thought you knew what was going on.”

“I don’t know anything about medicine.” Joshua’s throat felt raw. “I don’t even watch TV.” He opened his eyes to look up at the sympathetic face. Alex seemed to understand his convoluted thinking.

“Well, most of the TV shows get at least half of it wrong at any one time,” Alex said. He squeezed Joshua’s hand in a comforting way, then moved over to check the chart again. “I’d be willing to bet they’ll be bringing him around in a day or so. So if you want to really get a good night’s sleep for once, I think you’ll be okay to do it. I’ll keep an eye on him tonight—it’s pretty quiet on the floor. And he’s wired to a whole bunch of things that will go screaming crazy if he so much as twitches.” Alex smiled again. “I think you could use the sleep.”

Joshua shook his head. “Can’t sleep. Bad dreams.”

“You want something to help?”

“No!” He took a deep breath, then said again, more sanely this time, “No, no thanks. I’m good.”

Again, the look of sympathy. “No problem. Well, everything looks good, so I’ll leave you guys to sleep. We’ll try not to disturb you tonight.”

Joshua barely heard him go, just acknowledging it in that part of his brain that was always alert. Instead, he leaned over and rested his head on the side of the bed, his fingers stroking over Eli’s arm above the cast. “You’ll be okay, Eli. You’re going to be okay.”

Yo nunca dejaría que nadie te hiciera daño.
Eli had promised he wouldn’t let anyone hurt Joshua. Joshua had been off his head when Eli had been talking to him, but that had stayed in that quirky little corner of his brain. He’d thought it was his grandfather.

Eli had promised to watch out for Joshua. But Joshua had failed to look out for Eli. His blood still ran cold every time he thought about how much worse it would have been if he’d been five minutes later. He regularly kicked himself for talking just that couple of minutes longer with the shrink.

Oh hell, even going to the shrink had been a mistake of epic proportions. And it was all because Joshua was such a
complete
fuckup. He had to go to the shrink because he had pulled that stupid stunt of walking out into the desert. He’d done that because of the stupid addiction. He’d gotten addicted because he’d been stupid enough to question ’Chete’s decision.

He dreamt about a dead girl because he hadn’t questioned his decision sooner, or harder. Because he was supposed to follow orders. Was that stupid? He rubbed his temples with both hands.

He’d killed the men ’Chete had marked, following ’Chete’s orders. They were far from innocent themselves, and it had just been part of his job. And the therapy he went through in rehab helped him come to terms with it.

But the girl…. That was different….

And Eli…. Eli was different too. He’d nearly lost Eli because of his actions. He bent his head and kissed Eli’s fingers beneath the edge of the cast. Eli was too good to waste his time with Joshua.

He thought about what the FBI agents had said—not for the first time since they’d said it. The Bureau wanted him back. He could go back. Not to Chicago, of course, but Cincinnati maybe. Or somewhere, anywhere else. Robinson would go to bat for him. He could go back to work, and Eli could go back to his life, without a fuckup there to fuck
him
up.

Yeah. Maybe he’d do that. He’d think about it.

He fell asleep thinking about it.

E
LI
was dreaming.

It was a weird dream, and it seemed to go on forever, but it wasn’t one of those ones you think is real until you wake up. No, Eli knew it was a dream, but he wasn’t quite sure how to wake up out of it.

He was riding across a white landscape with his dad. It wasn’t winter, because he wasn’t cold, and the trees had leaves, but they were white too. Pretty much everything was, except Eli and his dad and their horses. That was another way Eli knew it was a dream, because he was riding Midnight, the horse he’d had as a kid, and his dad was riding Pete, the horse that he’d had to shoot when he got bit by a rattler when Eli was nine. “I’m dreamin’, ain’t I?” he asked his dad.

Dad had laughed. “Sure you are, son. I been dead for years.”

A jackalope went bounding past, the antlers making its head bob with every bound. Eli watched it with interest. “So how come you’re here?”

“Hell if I know.”

“That’s helpful.”

Dad laughed again. “It’s your dream, son.”

They drew up to let a herd of white buffalo thunder by. Eli admired the long white curving tusks and the lacy wings. “Never knew buffalo had wings.”

“Learn something new every day.” That had been one of his dad’s favorite sayings.

There was a beeping sound, and a large red fly, glowing against the white landscape, shot across the horses’ noses, but the horses didn’t startle; they just kept walking. The fly beeped after them for a while, then stopped. “Am I dead?” Eli asked.

“Hell if I know.”

“That’s helpful.”

“It’s your dream, son.”

“Yeah, I got that. Dad, did I ever tell you I was gay?”

“For Pete’s sake”—Dad patted his horse’s neck—“of course you are. You think I didn’t know? You never showed the slightest interest in any of the girls that were throwing themselves at you. I figgered it out by the time you were thirteen. But that was okay. You took care of your ma, and the kids, and I figger that makes you a man by anybody’s standards. I like your new sweetheart, by the way. He’s a little crazy, but that’s okay.”

“I like him too.” Eli ran his fingers over Midnight’s coarse mane. “I love him, Dad.”

“That’s okay, son.”

They drew up again, this time to let the UNM marching band through. They were all built more like the football players, but were all wearing Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders’ outfits, even the guys. Dad snorted and elbowed Eli. “Good one,” he said with a smirk. “Never did like Dallas. Bet you like seeing them guys in those shorts?”

“Er… not really.” They did look bad in the short shorts. They rode up the guys’ butts and made their butt cheeks look really… stupid.

Then a shot rang out. Eli looked around wildly, but Dad put his hand on Eli’s arm and a finger to his lips. “Shh,” he said. “Let the boy deal with this….”

And they were suddenly in a dark space. The horses were gone, and Dad and Eli were sitting on a hay bale watching three men beat up on someone. Joshua came riding into the area on a white horse and holding a shiny six-shooter in his hand. “Well, ain’t that special?” Dad said. “Your very own Lone Ranger.”

“Jesus, Dad!”

“I’m going to shoot you all dead,” Dream-Josh said, “because that’s what I do. I shoot the bad guys.”

“Jesus, Eli. At least give the poor kid some decent dialogue.”

“Shut up, Dad!”

Dream-Josh turned and fired, but at Eli, not the men, and flames burst from Eli’s chest. He cried out in pain, but there was no one there—he was alone in the dark space, with his body on fire.

H
E
BLINKED
, and sandpaper rasped over his eyeballs. The light was fluorescent, and too bright. He closed his eyes again.

“Eli? Can you hear me?”

He tried to say yes, but his mouth was dry and his throat was sore. He tried for a nod instead. Something cool and wet touched his lips and he licked them, grateful for the moisture. “Unh…?”

“You’re in the hospital,” the voice said again. Eli was pretty sure he didn’t recognize it. “You’ve been unconscious a while. That’s why it’s hard to talk. Just nod if you can’t say anything. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Nod.

“Is your name Elian James Kelly?”

Nod.

“Can you open your eyes?”

Nod. He didn’t though. The light was so bright he could see the blood vessels on the inside of his lids.

“Oh. Is the light too bright? Nurse, lower the lights a bit, please.”

The brightness behind his lids faded. Eli opened his eyes.

“Ah, that’s better.” The voice belonged to a small man with Indian-from-India features and a white smile. “It’s good to meet you at last, Elian Kelly. You’ve had a lot of people worried about you.”

“Josh….” His mouth formed the words, but no sound came out. He licked his lips and tried again. “Josh.”

“Yes, your partner was here the whole time. We couldn’t pry him away from you with a crowbar.” The man’s voice was nice, kind of singsongy, like music. “He’ll be back in a little while. We sent him away while we woke you up. We need to do some testing first.”

They put Eli through a series of questions, then some physical movements that hurt like the very demons of hell. He learned he had a broken arm and wrist, and his shoulder hurt because it had been dislocated, and his leg hurt because he had torn ligaments, and his chest hurt because he had broken ribs and after a while he got tired of hearing what was wrong with him and tuned out. He didn’t understand half of it anyway. He figured he’d ask Josh or Tucker—they were both smart men and probably knew all that.

The doctors had told him that he’d been unconscious for six days. He didn’t know why, but he knew this wasn’t the hospital in Miller, so it probably wasn’t because of an injury on the ranch. Though he felt like he’d been run over by a herd of wild mustangs. He tried to think what he was supposed to be doing, last he knew, and wondered if Josh had gotten to that shrink’s appointment he had last week. If it was last week and not this week. He tried to figure it out, but his head hurt, so he let it be.

But when the doctors and nurses all left, and Joshua came into the room, quiet and sober and gray with fatigue, Eli remembered the dream, the Dream-Josh on the white horse and the men beating the shit out of someone. “Hey,” he rasped warily.

Josh stopped just inside the door, closed his eyes a moment, then opened them and smiled. “Hey. How you doing?”

“Just fine. A little sore.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Joshua dragged the chair from across the room next to the bed. Eli noted that it had a pillow and a blanket folded over the back. Josh moved the pillow and sat down.

“You been sleeping here?” Eli asked curiously.

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” Then something occurred to Eli. “For
six days
?”

Joshua said dryly, “Don’t worry—I took showers in the bathroom. I just… I didn’t want to leave you alone, in case you woke up and didn’t know where you were.”

Eli nodded. His eyes were getting heavy again and he let them close. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Eli?”

“Mm.”

“Welcome back.”

Eli smiled to himself. He felt the gentle touch of Joshua’s fingers on his right hand, the one with the tubes in it, then drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 25