Sexual Healing for Three (41 page)

“Russ, where are you now?”

“I was already on my way to the hospital when you called. Chance and I were supposed to have a late lunch…” Damn, had it only been a few hours ago when he, Chance, and Donna had sat in her apartment kitchen having breakfast and a heart-to-heart? When he had suggested them all getting together for lunch, he hadn’t imagined it would be under these circumstances.

What had happened to Chance? Had he overextended himself trying to heal Donna? Russ had never seen his brother go so far trying to heal someone that he passed out. This was serious. As if Suzie’s hysterics and crying hadn’t been enough to convince him.

“Russ?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Please hurry.”

“I’m almost there.” Russ ended the call, made a left turn at the next corner, the hospital visible in the near distance, just several blocks away.

He caught the light and stopped just short of flooring the gas, closing the gap between him and the emergency entrance of Belfiore within a minute.

Russ pulled into the nearest parking space he found, put his truck in park, leaped out, and ran through the pneumatic doors. He breathlessly and frantically searched the floor for his daughter and ex-wife.

“Russ! Over here!”

“Daddy!”

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He found them standing at the back of the waiting area, Kim with a large, vaguely familiar handbag clutched against her chest and her face still wet with tears.

Russ jogged over to them and pulled Kim into his arms. She wrapped one arm around him, holding on to the bag with the other as if her life depended on it, like she could stay connected to Donna by keeping a hold of it.

He pulled away to thumb the tears from her eyes, then welcomed Suzie into his embrace. She held on to him tight for several minutes before he pulled away and held her arm’s length to peer at her.

“Any news yet?”

“Not on Donna, but last I heard, Chance was coming around from whatever happened to him while he was treating her.”

“Any of Donna’s family arrive yet?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Do you know what room Chance is in?”

Suzie pointed across the hall from where they were standing.

Russ squeezed her shoulder reassuringly and gave Kim a peck on the forehead before he headed toward where Suzie had pointed.

He supposed it was good news that Chance was still down here in a treatment room and hadn’t been taken upstairs and admitted to one of the wards. He held on to this thought as he stepped around the curtain to see his brother propped up in a stretcher, eyes closed, and an IV drip attached to the inside of one of his arms.

He looked pale, which was saying something since Chance sported a healthy, natural golden tan year-round. And he looked younger than Russ had ever seen him since he was a teenager.

Protective instincts going into overdrive, Russ crossed the threshold of the room, grabbed a chair, dragged it over to the bed as silently as he could, and sat down to watch his brother.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, listening to the comings and goings of staff and patients in the outer rooms, but he couldn’t 330

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bring himself to leave until he knew Chance was okay and what had happened to him and Donna.

At one point Suzie came in to check on them and let Russ know that Donna’s parents and older sister had arrived and were waiting in the outer room with Kim.

He vaguely acknowledged the news, but still didn’t leave.

He didn’t have any news to give them about Donna, as hungry as he was for it himself, and wouldn’t be able to tell them anything to ease their fears.

After a few hours, Angela came in to see how he and Chance were doing and to share the news that Donna was out of surgery and in ICU.

Russ hugged her and accepted the news with elation and relief.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Angela said before leaving.

He watched her go, then turned his attention back to Chance.

After another hour, his brother finally blinked open his eyes.

Russ’s breath hitched in his chest as Chance’s gaze settled on him.

“Been up to your old tricks again, playing God, I see.”

“Russ.” Chance gripped the bedside rail and tried to sit up, but Russ gently planted a hand in the center of his chest and pushed him back. When Chance went down without a fight, Russ knew how weak he was.

“Tell me what happened to you, Chancellor.”

Chance grinned, eyes still closed. “I can’t explain it. I…I had an experience when I was treating Donna. I felt her feelings, saw her memories. The guy who hurt her…he really did a job on her. He hated her, Russ, with a vengeance.”

“You felt all that?”

Chance nodded.

Could it have been that guy Morgan or maybe one of the other irate husbands and boyfriends of Donna’s clients?

Chance grabbed his wrist and squeezed so hard Russ thought he would break a bone.

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“A vision?”

“He’s going to try it again. He’s going to come and finish what he started. Soon. We have to be prepared. We have to stop him.”

“No.
You
need to get some rest. I’ll alert the police and hospital security.”

“Don’t let anything happen to her, Russ. You have to protect her.”

“I’m not going to let anything happen to her, Chance.”
And I’m
not going to let anything happen to you.

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Chance drifted once Russ left. He didn’t go to sleep but let his consciousness float up out of his body in search of Donna’s, praying that she remained in that in-between place where he had seen her last and that she hadn’t gone over to the other side yet.

He traveled through and searched all of the treatment quarters in the emergency room first, then went up to surgery, exploring each room before retreating back into the hallways to search some more.

He tried to home in on her spirit, her familiar psychic energy leaving as distinctive a trail as her light vanilla scent, easy to follow once he picked it up.

Chance found her in ICU, in a room guarded by one uniformed policeman—her body supine, motionless, and occupying a bed while her spirit hovered close by, watching over herself like some guardian angel.

“This takes some getting used to, huh?”

She turned to him slowly. She didn’t look as shocked to see him as she had before in the emergency room. “You seem to be handling it okay.”

He shrugged, went closer until he was standing inches in front of her. “I’m getting the hang of it.”

“It’s very freeing not being tied down to the physical world.”

Chance frowned. “I hope you’re not getting any ideas about checking out again.”

She shook her head. “No. I’m sticking around. I’ve been told I’m needed down here, that my work isn’t done yet.”

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He released the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, reached out, and caught her hand. It still surprised him that he could touch and feel her skin against his when neither of them was in the corporeal world. Was what they were experiencing similar to the phenomenon of cellular memory in transplant patients? Did their souls remember what it felt like to touch and be touched, and the sensations he felt were all memory rather than actual sensations?

Chance didn’t care how it happened. He was just glad he could feel the warmth of her, know that she still existed on some plane that he could contact.

“I still don’t know how I’m supposed to get back into my body.

I’ve tried melding with it, but it’s like falling into an endless void.

There’s no activity, no light, no sound, no life, just…” She choked on a sob, and Chance pulled her close, rubbing her back as she cried in earnest.

After several minutes she pulled away and searched his face.

“How is it for you? How do you get back into and meld with your body when you leave here?”

He shrugged, wished he could make this easy for her, but he couldn’t. “I just concentrate, think about what I want to do, and it happens.”

“Easier said than done.”

“It’ll happen when you’re ready.”

“You don’t think I’m ready now?”

“Are you?”

She looked at him but didn’t say anything, and Chance answered for her. “You sounded perfectly content being where and how you are right now. I believe your exact words were, ‘It’s very freeing not being tied down to the physical world.’ Sounded like being in your body was a burden you didn’t want to carry anymore.”

“Sometimes it is. But I didn’t mean I want to die.”

He wrapped his arms around her again. “I know things get difficult sometimes on the physical plane. There’s grief and pain, 334

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disappointments and regrets. But there’s also pleasure and triumph too. There’re also the people who care about you, the people who love you.”

“My parents and Angela were here a little while before you, visiting in shifts. It was so hard not being able to communicate with them, tell them I was here and could hear everything they were saying to me, that I could feel them. It was so hard watching their grief and not being able to alleviate it.” She looked at him, her eyes glossy and moist with tears. “Right before the attack, I was feeling so good, almost like I was on a high. I was optimistic and filled with plans of the things I wanted to do, the things I wanted and needed to tell you and Russ. And all I could think about as those kicks and punches were raining down on me was that I would die and never have the opportunity to tell you and Russ how I felt about you.”

Chance looked at her, his heart pounding as he waited.

She reached up to cup his face, an electric current traveling from her fingers to his cheek. “I love you, Chance.”

He caught her hand and pressed it closer to his cheek, his eyes closing as her life force suffused him, comforted him. “It feels good to hear you say that.”

“It feels good to say it and know that you can hear me.”

He smiled and opened his eyes.

“I’d like to be able to tell Russ too.”

“You will. You’ll come out of this coma, back to the people who love you, and we’ll be waiting here for you when you d—” A chill ran through him, and Chance jerked away from Donna to glance back toward the door.

The policeman was gone.

“What is it?”

“Something’s happening in the ER.”

“Something’s always happening in the ER.”

“No. This is different. He’s here.”

“Who’s here?”

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“The guy who did this to you.” He pulled her close and kissed her hard on the lips. “Hang tight. I’ll be right back.”

“Chance.” She caught his hand and squeezed it in a crushing grip.

“Be careful.”

“I will.” He rushed out of the room, floating back to the ER and back to his body in seconds. He sat up in his bed with a rush of exhaled air, panting as if he was breaking the surface after being held under water for several minutes.

Chance darted his gaze around the room before he pulled the IV

out of his arm, released and lowered the bedside rail, and flung his legs over the side of the bed.

His legs were shaky and weak when his feet hit the floor, but he forced himself to stand, getting his bearings before he made a move toward the threshold, holding on to the bed and the walls to make his way.

Chance instantly found the source of his earlier alarm and caught the commotion down the hall where Russ was wrestling with a man on the floor as a uniformed cop rushed in to cuff the man’s hands behind his back.

The rest of his ER was similarly in chaos, staff and patients ducking for cover, screaming and cowering behind chairs and desks as the policeman dragged the suspect to his feet.

Chance stared at the face of the man who had been haunting his dreams for the last couple of weeks, Naomi’s husband.

Morgan shouted and struggled against the cop holding him. “You got me now. But I’m going to get that bitch if it’s the last thing I do!

That’s a promise. I’m going to kill her!”

Chance watched his face, flushed and mottled with color, twisting with rage as the cop led him to and through the pneumatic doors and outside.

He saw Russ get to his feet and dust off his pants and shirt as Suzie and Kim rushed over to him, both talking at once, asking if he was okay.

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Russ hugged them both to him, asking if they were okay before assuring them he was. Then he looked up and past them to catch Chance’s gaze.

“What are you doing out of bed?”

“I heard the commotion.”

“And thought you could help?” Russ chuckled and released his women, making his way toward Chance.

“What happened?”

Russ draped an arm around Chance’s waist and walked him back to the treatment room. Suzie and Kim followed them as Russ ushered Chance back into bed before he answered. “Morgan came, just like we thought he would. Asked for information on Donna, what room she was in. When the staff at the desk balked and questioned him, he pulled out a gun and started waving it around, demanding to know where she was.”

Chance shot up his eyebrows. “And you jumped him?”

“I wasn’t reckless or anything. I waited for the right moment, before he had a chance to hurt anyone. I held him until the policeman made it here from another part of the hospital, and that’s where you came in.”

Chance nodded, his heart suddenly dropping when he realized what part of the hospital the policeman had come from and that their work wasn’t done.

Morgan wasn’t the only man who wanted Donna dead. There was someone else, and he was already in the hospital.

* * * *

He was a chameleon, blending into his surroundings, moving like he belonged and knew exactly where he was going.

He’d earlier waylaid a doctor with a similar build and coloring as him and borrowed the man’s outfit and ID. This helped him merge into the comings and goings of the staff.

Sexual Healing for Three