Miracle Man (17 page)

Lahra couldn't sit still.
She paced the waiting room, hospital blanket wrapped tightly around her,
keeping one eye on her watch and the other on the corridor that led to the
casualty ward. Her knee was stiff beneath the fresh bandage that had been
applied, but that was nothing compared to how she felt in general. There wasn't
a bandage in the world that could fix the way her mind and body ached.

Marcus was somewhere down
the corridor having his foot attended to. He'd cut it quite deeply during his
battle with the flood. He hadn't even been aware until he'd carried Wally into
casualty and left a trail of blood behind him.

"Ms Brook?"

Lahra swirled to see Doctor
Ayres standing there. The question she had been asking in her head over and
over again finally reached her lips. "Is he okay?"

"Walter's suffered a
mild heart attack and has serious concussion. He's stable, but we're not taking
him off the critical list just yet."

Lahra's relief was evident.
"Is he conscious? Can I see him?"

"He's very groggy. You
can see him, but only for a minute. It might do him some good to see a familiar
face before he rests up. Come on."

Doctor Ayres led Lahra down
the corridor to a dimly lit room, and ushered her through the door. Wally lay
in a bed, attached to all manners of machinery. His heart rate blipped on a
screen to one side.

Lahra took his hand, happy
to feel the warmth back in him. "Hi there, Wally," she whispered
through her smile.

Wally's eyes opened slowly
and found Lahra. His moustache, poking out either side of an oxygen mask,
curled upwards a little. "Hey, Doc," he said weakly.

"I sure hope they have
peppermint tea in this place. Looks like you'll be here for a little while. Are
you feeling okay?"

Wally's eyes rolled
sarcastically. "Fantastic," he strained. His grip on her hand
tightened a little. "Thank you, Lahra. Thank you for coming."

"Don't thank me. Thank
Marcus Dean. He was the one who saved you." Lahra could see the confusion
on Wally's face. "He was very brave. A regular hero." Yes, Lahra
thought. Marcus had been a hero for doing what he had done. If it weren't for
him, she wouldn't be speaking to Wally now.

Doctor Ayres gave Lahra a
silent signal. Lahra looked down at Wally and rubbed his hand. "I have to
go now. I'll come back tomorrow, okay?"

"Doc, wait," Wally
said with as much urgency as he could muster. "The Miracle. Go and
check..."

"Check?"

"The flood. See if the
Miracle's okay for me. Please."

Lahra smiled warmly at him.
No matter what Wally asked of her right now she would have done. "Sure.
I'll go straight away."

"Thank you," he
whispered. "Thank you."

His eyes drifted shut once
more, and Lahra let her hand linger on his for a few moments before leaving the
room.

She stood in the corridor,
suddenly not knowing what to do. The tension of the last couple of hours had
begun to ease. But now a new tension began to replace it. It was Marcus.
Everything had changed so much, so quickly. She had gone from complete rage to
absolute ecstasy to total anxiety, and now found herself stranded in an
emotional limbo.

She had been prepared to
sacrifice love to save the Miracle Cinema. But now Marcus had risked his own
life to save Wally. How could she bring herself to fight a man who had so
heroically saved the life of her most loved friend? His act had made it
impossible for her to win. She would not be able to oppose him. And because
that meant the end of the Miracle, she would also not be able to love him.

Something drew her further
down the corridor. She knew that Marcus was behind one of these doors, but she
didn't know which. She went to one, and carefully peered through the small
rectangular window into the room beyond. He was there. Lying back on a bench
while a nurse and doctor wound a bandage around his foot. She looked at him. At
the broad span of his shoulders. At the dark, boyish hair. At the fine lines of
his face. And though he couldn't see her, she looked into the magnificent eyes
that had first signalled the assault on her heart. A wry, sad smile tipped the
corner of her mouth.

"Goodbye, Cary,"
she whispered.

Then, knowing everything was
lost, she made her way to the exit. Her gratitude for saving the life of her
friend would take the form of her absence. Now, and during every moment of the
Miracle Cinema's demise.

The streets of Riverbank
were gone. The Doyle River, fed by the Severence River at River Fork, and a big
spring melt, had broken its banks and engulfed a vast region of the Charlotte
Valley. Most flooding had occurred to the north, but the south, and Riverbank,
hadn't escaped nature's unpredictable power. Water a foot deep coursed its way
along thoroughfares, between buildings, over parks and gardens. Townsfolk,
shocked by how quickly their world had changed, roamed the streets as they
tried to come to terms with the devastation.

It was still raining,
although not as heavily as before, as Lahra parked her car between two enormous
earth moving machines in front of the Miracle Cinema. This time she wasn't
afraid to step out into the water. She was more afraid of what she was going to
find inside the cinema.

In the dim light she could
see that the water level had reached the frosted glass doors along the front of
the building. The footpath she had walked upon so many times felt alien beneath
her feet as she made her way through the water to the side of the cinema and
down the alleyway that led to the rear. It was very dark and her progress was
very slow, as each step she took felt blindly for submerged obstacles. To trip
now could be harmful, even fatal.

Finally she arrived at a
door near the very end of the alley—the emergency exit located in the stalls
beside the screen. She knelt, plunging her hands into the water and reaching
downwards, until her fingers hooked under the inch of space beneath the door.
It had been at least ten years since Wally had shown her this trick, and as she
grasped the bottom of the door firmly and lifted with all of her strength she
prayed that it still worked.

There was a clunk from the
other side, and with a slight pull, Lahra swung the door open.

The sensation of opening a
door in water was a strange one, but once the slight current got hold of it the
door opened itself. Inside it was black, but Lahra ignored the trepidation she
felt and shuffled forward. She found the steps that led down to the next door,
thankful that there were only three of them. The water rose to her knee with
the first step, her thigh with the second, and her hips with the third.

Her outstretched hands felt
for the swinging doors that opened to the auditorium as she moved slowly
forward in the pitch darkness. Memory told her that she should have hit them by
now. When at last she did, her heart slowed a degree with relief. She hooked
her fingers between the doors, and pulled them open.

An eerie green light fell
across her from within, radiating from the exit light above the door. She waded
into the cinema, almost not believing the surreal scene that greeted her. The
front row of seats was completely under water bar an inch or two. The gradient
of the auditorium revealed an extra inch of seat for every row going back. Exit
lights burned above the foyer doors downstairs and in the balcony, bathing
everything in the same dim, green glow.

Lahra turned to the giant,
blank screen behind her. The screen that had given her her love for the movies.
From
Dr Zhivago
to
Out of Africa
. From
Adam's Rib
to
When
Harry Met Sally
. She had seen hundreds upon hundreds of films played up
there, their magical sights and sounds enveloping audiences time and time
again. But now there was only silence. And the only things enveloping the
theatre were floodwater, and the ghostly, green light.

She made her way through the
still water toward the foyer on the other side. As she walked up the aisle the
water became shallower, and when she stepped into the foyer it was only ankle
deep. The staircase rose to her left with the promise of dryer surrounds, so
she went to it, leaving the wetness behind her.

She didn't feel the cold.
She wasn't aware of her drenched clothes. As she stepped onto the balcony and
looked out over the watery stalls her only feeling was one of surrender. The
last glimmers of hope that despite everything there still might be a way to
save the cinema were well and truly banished by what she saw here now.

Then, as if the water that
had overrun all in her life wasn't enough, she felt tears gathering at the corners
of her eyes. This time there was no holding them back. Never again would she be
so foolish to believe that life had happy endings.

"Lahra!"

The call, reverberating
urgently through the auditorium, made Lahra jump. The acoustics of the
auditorium made it impossible for her to gauge where the voice had come from,
only that it was downstairs. Nor could she tell precisely whose voice it was,
though logic suggested it could be only one person. She waited breathlessly in
the semi-darkness for the caller to show himself.

"Lahra, where are
you?"

It
was
him! It was
Marcus! How had he known where she was? How did he get here so quickly? By the
sound of it he was down in the emergency exit, which meant he'd be inside any
second. The thought crossed Lahra's mind to hide before he saw her. To avoid
the confrontation that would mean having to admit defeat to his face. To avoid
letting him see the tears that flowed freely down her cheeks. But it was too
late. As blurred as her vision was, and as dim as the lights were, she could
see Marcus wading into the auditorium below.

His eyes caught her
immediately. "Lahra, why did you run off like that?" he asked, half
out of breath.

"How did you know where
I was?"

Marcus pulled himself out of
the water onto the small stage in front of the screen. "I checked on
Wally. Lahra, why did you go without saying anything?"

"Because," she
began, trying desperately to not let her voice tremble, "because I
couldn't bear to face you. I just couldn't. Why did you have to follow
me?"

"Why?" Marcus
echoed back to her. "Because I love you, Lahra! I'd have followed you to
Timbuktu if that's where you were headed. I didn't fully realise it until last
night, but it's like nothing I've experienced before. You probably didn’t
notice it, the day I was siphoning petrol for you… our hands touched. And
something lit up inside me. I knew something very different was happening. You
probably don't even remember..."

Oh, but she did remember.
How could she ever forget? It was a moment of affirmation, of certainty, a
moment which said loud and clear that all the feelings that had begun to stir
the moment she'd looked into Marcus’s eyes weren't just simple physical
attraction. Perhaps she didn't recognise it at the time, but when their hands
had brushed together it signalled the workings of a powerful binding force over
which she had absolutely no control. Yes, she remembered. The feeling had
surged through her heart like a subterranean river, and it had only taken a
matter of days to flood her entire soul.

"I don't want you to
love me," Lahra said sternly, backing away instinctively. This was exactly
what she had wanted to avoid. Now not only did she have to abandon her love for
Marcus, she had to endure the knowledge that he felt the same way about her.
"You can't love me."

"Lahra, didn't you hear
what I said?
I love you!
I hadn't planned on telling you quite like
this… but I guess it’s kind of fitting."

Lahra didn't want to hear
any more. His words were hitting her like arrows. Why did he have to follow her
here?
Here
, of all places! She moved further away, up the steps to the
very back of the cinema. "Please don't say any more. Just leave me alone.
I just want to be alone."

Marcus obviously had other
ideas. "I was going to wait, to surprise you, but there's no point now.
When I went to see Bob Moses today, you're right, I was asking him to make sure
he didn't take any action on the Miracle Cinema. Because he didn't have to. I
told him that the planned redevelopment wasn't going ahead. I'd changed my
mind. I told him I wasn't going to demolish the Miracle. I was going to restore
it."

The words floated up to
Lahra so easily that she was certain she'd heard them wrong. A dizziness struck
her, and she slumped into a back row seat and closed her eyes.

"Lahra? Lahra, wait
there!"

She heard a splash, followed
by movement through water. Then sloshing footsteps, and those same feet
bounding up marble stairs three at a time. When she opened her eyes again,
there was Marcus, walking onto the balcony and striding up the steps directly
towards her, his shirt and pants clinging to his masculine outline and
glistening in the dim light. He sat in the seat beside her and took her by the
hand.

"Are you alright?"
he asked softly.

Words failed to reach her
lips, so she nodded instead.

"Lahra, I know I've
hurt you more than anybody deserves. But believe me when I say I felt every bit
of your pain. The closer I came to starting work on the Miracle, the more I
realised I couldn't do it. Because from that first meeting on Valley Bridge I'd
started to fall in love with you. And the stubborn fool that I am, it took me
this long to wake up to myself. I only hope that you can forgive me. There's
nothing I wouldn't do to ensure your happiness. There's nothing I wouldn't do
to keep from losing you."

Lahra let his words caress
her as she searched his beseeching eyes for any trace of deceit. Surely none of
what he was saying was true. Surely this was just another one of his tactics,
somehow taking advantage of her vulnerability. Surely...

But she knew. She knew that
every word of what he said was straight from his heart. She could hear it in
his tone. She could see it in his face. She could feel it in his touch.

And a moment later, she
could taste it in his kiss.

Before that moment, Lahra
had never truly known what tenderness was. She could barely feel his lips on
hers, but she knew she was being kissed. She knew from the way her stomach
revolved uncontrollably inside her. She knew from the way her heart seemed to
beat in every part of her body at once. She knew from the way her abdomen
sparked and erupted, engulfing her in a heated desire.

Their arms encircled each
other simultaneously, and they embraced as if there would never be another.
"I love you," Lahra whispered, holding him closer still. "I
can't believe how much I love you."

Marcus kissed her neck
lightly, his lips plotting a path along the soft skin beneath her jawline. She
bent her head back, inviting his kisses to take a wider path, and when they
did, a shiver of anticipation ran across her from head to toe. Her hands ran up
and down his back, and across the broad shoulders that all but surrounded her.
His lips came to her ear lobe, his soft breath sending fresh ecstatic quivers
through her.

Her hands found the expanse
of his chest. So many times she had wondered what it would be like to run her
hands over his hard body, but no amount of imagination could prepare her for
the sublime reality. She let her hand roam freely over his neck, then down
across his chest, inside his soaking shirt, to the hard jut of his nipple.

As if she had found a hidden
trigger, he suddenly pulled away from her, running his hands up through her
hair, staring needingly into her eyes. How beautiful his eyes were! The
shortness of her breath grew even shorter as he slipped her jacket from her
shoulders, removing it altogether and flinging it across the seats in front.
The rapid rise and fall of her chest called out to him to discover her wholly
as a woman.

With barely any effort he
lifted her out of the seat, and sat her astride him. He kissed her firmly on
the mouth, then softened a little to let his teasing tongue explore her lips
with slow, deliberate caresses. She seemed to be trapped in a constant shiver,
despite the heat that burned deep in her abdomen like a furnace, fuelled by his
every contact. Goosebumps contracted her skin in waves, tightening her breasts
into sensitive points and arching her back.

She knew that they were
rapidly approaching a decisive moment. They could stop any time until then.
Stop, and attend to practical matters such as dealing with the flood,
organising accommodation for the night, or even simply finding something to
eat. Then Marcus began to unbutton her shirt, slowly, deliberately. She ran her
fingers up through his hair and felt the cool air touch her exposed skin as he
opened the shirt completely. In one quick movement he pulled her close to him
and pressed his cheek against her chest. The moment had arrived. And in the
next split second, she happily let it pass.

She released him long enough
for him to slide her shirt effortlessly off. Only her bra separated her
swelling breasts from his touch. A touch she so desperately wanted, so
desperately needed. He kissed her across her chest, burning kisses that sent
flushes up over her neck. She threw her head back in delight as his tongue
began tracing her skin along the cups of her bra, stopping every few seconds to
nip at the soft flesh. His large hands felt their way up her tingling spine as
his tongue teased the firmness of her nipples through the lace. His fingers
flicked behind her, and suddenly her breasts fell free of their containment.