Once More With Feeling (12 page)

The door hissed quietly behind Dr. Roney.
Casey strolled to her bedside. His gaze traveled slowly over her.
"You're looking better."

The room seemed to heat up perceptibly. She
could swear her skin sizzled as his gaze swept her. She had yet to
grow accustomed to the instant sensual electricity that always
entered the room with him. "I wouldn't know. They still refuse to
let me see a mirror."

"I don't know why. You're a big girl. You
know you got pretty banged up. You can take it."

"A plastic surgeon came by this afternoon to
examine me. He doesn't think there'll be any real need for his
services. Offered me a tighter neck when I'm thirty-five and left
his card."

"Do you want me to find a mirror?"

She nearly said "yes," then she paused to
consider. She was sure she could have seen herself in the mirror by
now if she'd pushed the staff to find her one. But she had been
torn. Over the weeks she'd had to accept that angles and lighting
tricks hadn't changed the way she perceived her body. The body was
not hers. The voice certainly wasn't. It followed that the face
wouldn't be, either. She would look in the mirror, and Gypsy Dugan,
or a badly bruised version thereof, would stare back at her.

"We'll do it some other time," he said.

"No." She could shake her head now. She
could sit up, eat by herself, complete sentences without feeling
exhausted. And several days ago she had taken her first tentative
steps. When the cast came off, she would take more.

She could do this, too. Because none of it
was real. None of it. Seeing her face wouldn't change anything.

She took a deep breath. "Let's get this over
with."

"You're sure?"

"I might as well face the inevitable."

He gave a crooked smile that looked like it
ought to have a cigarette dangling out of one corner. "I'll be
back."

By the time he returned she had convinced
herself not to fall apart when she lifted the small hand mirror to
view her face. She was dreaming, and whatever she saw couldn't
change that. If she saw Gypsy, as she supposed she would, it meant
nothing. If she saw Elisabeth, it might be the first step toward a
return to reality.

"Before you look, just remember that you
already look a lot better than you did when they brought you in
here. And you're going to recover completely. Believe me, Desmond
made sure of that, right from the beginning."

"Hand it over, Casey."

For a moment he looked as if he were
reconsidering. Then he gave her the mirror. She lifted it slowly,
until it was dead even with her face. Somewhere on the long ascent,
she squeezed her eyelids shut.

"Go ahead, Gyps. You can take it."

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes.
"Oh, God." The mirror dropped to her lap.

Casey picked it up. "You okay?"

Green eyes had stared back at her. Green
eyes surrounded by short dark hair and separated by a sassy little
nose the likes of which no Brookshire or Vanderhoff had ever
produced.

He stroked her hair awkwardly, like a man
who was not accustomed to giving comfort. "You should have seen
yourself right after the accident. They should have made you look.
Then you'd know what an improvement this is."

She couldn't care less about the swelling
that still hadn't gone down, the bruises that marred one cheek, the
puffiness around those green, green eyes. "Oh God, I'm Gypsy
Dugan."

"Right. You are, no matter what. You're
still Gypsy, and before too long, you'll look exactly the way you
used to. So just remember that, and you'll be fine."

This was no dream. She knew that now.
Somehow the image in the mirror was indisputable proof. "I'm living
a nightmare!"

"Oh come on, Gyps, get hold of yourself.
Even the plastic surgeon didn't think you needed him, for Pete's
sake. And those guys will operate at the drop of a hat."

She was shaking. She was inside a body she'd
only seen on television, behind the face of the woman she once had
wished to be. She lifted her hands to her cheeks. These were not
her cheekbones. They were Gypsy's. She was not going to wake up and
find Owen and Grant waiting at her bedside. She would never again
write articles for Attila, host dinner parties for beloved old
friends, take long walks on the beach with the retrievers, or work
in her garden. That life wasn't hers. It didn't even exist.

She hadn't really been prepared. No matter
what she had told herself, she hadn't really been prepared!

Casey sat on the bed and captured her hands
in his. "Just take a deep breath. You're going to be fine."

"That's not me!"

"Who else could it be?"

She knew exactly how far she'd get if she
told him. "Casey. . ." Her voice was almost a whisper. "You've got
to do something for me."

"Anything." He frowned. "I take that
back."

"I want you to go down the hall and find
Elisabeth Whitfield's room."

"The woman in the other car? Why in hell do
you want me to go down there?"

"I have to know . . ." She took a deep
breath, then another. She was in danger of hypervenilation. "I have
to know if . . ."

If what? What could Casey tell her? That she
was also down the hall? That she was in two places at once? Did she
honestly think he could look at Elisabeth Whitfield's unconscious
body and draw any sane conclusions?

Then she knew. "I want you to see if her
husband is there. Or her son. Or any of her friends. Then I want
you to come back here and tell me what they look like."

"Get a grip, Gyps. What possible reason
could you have for that?"

"Casey, please . . ."

He kissed her hands and dropped them back in
her lap. Then he stood. "You've had enough stimulation for now.
It's nap time."

"Casey, can't you please do this for
me?"

"I can't and I won't. You're tired. You're
upset, and you're not making any sense. You need rest. Maybe I
shouldn't have shown you your face."

"The hell with my face! Can't you just do
this one thing for me?"

"No." He crossed his arms. "Want me to lower
the bed and turn out the lights?"

"Fu--!" The whole word nearly sprang from
her lips before she realized what she'd been about to say. She put
her hand to her mouth and made a fist. Tears filled her eyes.

"Well, you're sounding more like yourself,"
he said wryly, "only with some interesting self-restraint. Go to
sleep, Gyps. Please? I'll be back tomorrow. We'll talk again." He
bent over and kissed her forehead.

The door hissed as it closed behind him.

Where had that come from? Elisabeth
Whitfield had never used the "f-word" in her entire life. Men and
women made love, dogs mated, elephants copulated, even prostitutes
simply screwed their clients. No one in Elisabeth's proper world
did otherwise.

She put her head in her hands. Casey had
refused her request, but now it didn't even matter. She knew what
he would have found if he'd done as she asked. He would have
brought back descriptions of people she'd never seen, people she
wouldn't recognize if she passed them on the street.

Because this wasn't a dream and it never had
been. The green eyes looking out of Gypsy Dugan's face were her
eyes. She wasn't Elisabeth Whitfield at all. She was Gypsy Dugan,
who had, after all, been suffering from an injury-induced
delusion.

She was Gypsy Dugan. And Elisabeth Whitfield
was nothing more than an unfortunate stranger.

Gypsy was staring at the ceiling when the
door opened and a narrow wedge of light split the darkness. "Sweet
potato, you awake?"

Gypsy didn't have to turn to know who was
there. "Yes."

"Good." The wedge disappeared as the door
closed, but in a moment the soft light of the bulb over the sink
spread its glow through the room. Perry bustled over to the bed. "I
brought you something."

"Razor blades? Sleeping pills?"

"Girl, you got it bad tonight, don't
you?"

Gypsy--sometime in the hours since dinner
she'd begun to think of herself by that name--didn't answer.

"Marietta called and told me you were down
in the dumps."

Marietta was the head nurse. Gypsy knew all
the nurses intimately, too. "Just because I asked her to put a
pillow over my face and sit on it?"

"What's up? That man of yours find someone
else?"

For a moment Gypsy thought Perry was
referring to Owen. Then she remembered that Owen was not her man,
and he never had been. Owen and everything that went with him had
all been manufactured by her bruised and battered brain. Sure,
there was an Owen Whitfield, any social climber who read the
society news had heard of Owen Whitfield, but he was a stranger to
her. And still, inconceivably, she was mourning his loss.

"You mean Casey?" Her voice sounded as if
she'd been through the heavy-duty cycle of a Maytag.

Perry raised the head of the bed. "He's your
main man, isn't he? Course, there's a list at the desk about as
long as your arm of all the others."

"Other what?"

"Men. Nurses are keeping a roster. Got a bet
going it'll top thirty before you go home."

"Thirty? Cripes, don't I do anything but . .
." She couldn't make herself say that word, no matter who she was.
". . . screw?"

"Well, last I heard you had a successful
news show. You don't need to feel too sorry for yourself, sugar
babe. Most people'd die a time or two just to have what you
got."

Perry had meant the words casually, but they
set off sirens in Gypsy's head. The Elisabeth she had invented in
her fantasies probably would have died a time or two to have what
Gypsy did. Her life had been far from perfect.

She wanted to hear those words again. "What
did you say?"

"I said most people--"

"I heard you." Gypsy sat up. She still had
to struggle, but her strength was coming back.

"But maybe you don't want to hear how lucky
you are. Maybe you want me to feel sorry for you. Let me see what I
can dig up." Perry had been bustling around the room, but now she
pulled up a chair to the bedside. "Open your mouth."

"What?"

"Open your mouth." She held up a paper
plate.

"What's that?"

"You'll see."

"I can feed myself."

"Mood you're in, I'm not about to let you
have a fork."

Gypsy opened her mouth. Something luscious
melted against her tongue. "Cheesecake." She rolled her eyes.

"Got everything in it you're not supposed to
have."

"Lord, that's heavenly."

"When I was a little girl and nothing was
going right, my mama would take me down to the corner deli and sit
me down. Then she'd order up the biggest piece of cheesecake you
ever saw and we'd work on it, a bite at a time. And by the last
bite, I'd spilled whatever was bothering me, she'd wiped it up
good, and I was ready to face the world again."

"I wish this was that easy." She sniffed
back tears.

"I was going to feel sorry for you. I'm
still working out why." Perry offered another bite of cheesecake,
and Gypsy took it gratefully. "I know. George Clooney didn't call
or send flowers."

"I don't know George Clooney." She stopped.
Maybe she did. "I don't know if I know George Clooney."

"Yeah, there is that. Your memory's giving
you fits. Can't be fun. On the other hand, not a person out there's
going to be upset if you can't remember a name or a date for a
while. And there are a lot of folks willing to help you out."

"It's like somebody exploded a bomb in my
head. I didn't even recognize my own mother when she visited. I
don't remember her. I couldn't tell you who my father is or any of
my brothers and sisters."

"You talked to your mother since the day she
came?"

"No." Mrs. Dugan--Gypsy didn't even know her
first name--had never returned after their brief encounter. It was
as if she'd needed to be sure Gypsy was still alive, and that was
all. "Something tells me we're not close."

Perry held out another bite. "She told me
God brought you back from the dead for a purpose." She chuckled,
started to say something, then clamped her lips shut.

"What? Tell me."

"Then she said she thought maybe God got the
wrong person."

Gypsy choked.

Perry handed her a napkin. "Too bad we don't
get to choose parents, who we're going to be, stuff like that. I'd
a had my eye on Beyoncé's face, for starters."

Gypsy was silent. This conversation was
going somewhere, but the destination was still just out of reach.
"Was I really dead?"

"As a doornail."

"Then why am I sitting here eating
cheesecake?"

"You're asking me? I haven't been to church
since the day our pastor laid his hands on my head, then moved them
on down to places a pastor's hands shouldn't be."

"You're kidding."

"Sometimes I find a church that's open and I
just go sit there. Doesn't matter what kind it is. God doesn't
care, just people with no God inside them."

"Church was always my favorite time of the
week. The one time I could sit quietly and think about something
besides--" She stopped. Besides Owen and their life together? Had
she really almost said that?

"I didn't figure you for the churchgoing
type."

Gypsy Dugan wouldn't be. Elisabeth Whitfield
had been, at least the Elisabeth she had invented.

Most people'd die a time or two just to have
what you got.

"I'm not Elisabeth Whitfield." She spaced
the words, weighting each one.

Perry proffered another bite. "Well I'm
relieved to hear you say so."

"Unless God did get the wrong person."

"Can't imagine God making mistakes. Some
kind of God that'd be."

"I'm so confused."

"Sure you are, June bug. How could you help
it?"

"Elisabeth's life is absolutely clear to me.
But it has to be in my imagination."