The Cinderella Hour (27 page)

“I don’t think they were vandals. I also think there was only
one intruder. Nothing was stolen, Snow. Not the TV, not the stereo, not the
cash in the kitchen. And your room and belongings were untouched.”

“But my mother’s room and belongings?”

“Destroyed. Clothes shredded. Mirrors broken. Mattress
slashed. The dresser was thrown onto the floor with enough force to shatter it.”

“You think it was him. My father.”
Blaine
.

“I do now.” Luke sighed. “I never believed I’d hear myself
say I was glad you left Quail Ridge when you did, but I’m saying it now. He wasn’t
after you. That’s clear. The danger
was
for your mother, not for you. But
who knows what he might have done to you if you had been there.”

Now it was Luke who felt a soul-deep shiver.

Tonight’s arsonist had believed he would have Mira’s empty house
to himself. He had responded with rage to her unexpected return, throwing her
against the fireplace with the same violence as Leigh Gable’s infuriated lover
had thrown her dresser onto the floor.

Leigh Gable’s lover.

Snow Gable’s father.

Mira Larken’s brother-in-law.

It’s pretty farfetched, Snow had said—before she and Luke had
talked it through.

At first blush, farfetched was an apt description of the
notion that Blaine could have been responsible for Mira’s assault. He had been
miles away, in his office, awaiting his interview with Snow. Hadn’t he?

Luke reached for his phone.

“I’m being cautious,” he said to Snow.

“Good.”

The call to Detective Lansky was perfectly timed. He was with
Dr. Sandra Davis, who was explaining the security precautions in place for all
patients housed within the Grace Memorial ICU.

Like any regional trauma center, the ICU frequently provided
care to victims of violent crime, survivors who would become witnesses unless
the criminal found a way to ensure their permanent silence.

The ICU was locked and guarded. Only authorized visitors were
permitted to enter. Identification was checked. The police were welcome to post
officers at the rooms of individual patients they felt required additional
protection. But Chicago PD had become so confident of the unit’s security that
only in exceptional situations were their own personnel assigned.

By any law enforcement standard, Mira wasn’t high risk. She
probably hadn’t seen her assailant to begin with, and even if she had caught a
glimpse in the darkness, her head injury would have erased the fleeting memory.

The detective had been on the verge of telling Dr. Davis they
would arrange for police protection only after Mira’s transfer to the ward when
Luke called to say he believed a QRPD cop should watch her—and her visitors—
at
all times.

“Any particular visitor, Luke?”

“No one I want to name. It’s an unlikely candidate, Rob.
Maybe an impossible one. But erring on the side of caution seems the way to go.”

“Agreed. Okay. We’ll watch her around the clock. And when you
feel like sharing the name, you’ve got my number.”

“I do.”

Luke disconnected the call and looked at Snow.

“Very cautious,” she whispered.

“So cautious, Snow, that I’m never letting you out of my
sight.”

Grace
Memorial Hospital

Intensive
Care Unit

Wednesday,
November
2

3
:
00
a.m.

A white-coated entourage encircled
Mira’s bed. Her sister and brother-in-law watched from outside.

That was where Thomas joined them.

“Hello, Vivian. Blaine. How is she?”

“This is as close as we’ve gotten,” Vivian answered. “She’s
unconscious, but she’s ‘bucking’ the ventilator. They’re trying to decide what
to do. The neurosurgeons are worried her struggling could increase the pressure
in her brain.”

“But they also want her to wake up,” Thomas said.

“Yes. So they’re thinking about taking her off the
respirator.”

Thomas knew the dilemma well. The option was to paralyze her
pharmacologically, rendering her lungs powerless to resist—much less fight—the
breaths administered by the machine. The concern was whether, once extubated,
she would be able to breathe on her own. If not, she would require urgent
re
intubation,
a procedure that could be stressful in itself to her recently injured brain.

“Maybe you should go in,” Vivian suggested.

Dr. Thomas Vail would have been welcome. He was respected.
His opinion would have been valued. But Mira was in excellent hands.

And if Thomas Vail, the man, got anywhere near her, the
battle between his brain and heart would be fierce.

His heart would win. He would scoop her into his arms,
freeing her from every constraint as he did, and take her home.
Home
.

“Her doctors know what they’re doing,” he replied.

Moments later, the decision was made.

The endotracheal tube was removed.

Moments after that, Mira’s physicians emerged, smiling, from
her cubicle. Their patient was breathing comfortably.

“You can go in,” Sandra Davis told Vivian and Blaine. “She
still has anesthetic on board. It would be best to let her awaken on her own.
It may be a while.”

“Thank you,” Vivian said.

“You’re welcome.” Sandra looked to the other very relieved
person standing outside Mira’s room. “Thomas? I’m glad you’re here. Our
transfer arrived twenty minutes ago. Any thoughts you have would be
appreciated.”

Daniel’s skin was yellow . . . except
where it was purple. He was unresponsive even to pain, and what muscles still
clung to life twitched in a random and purposeless way.

“Where are his casts?”

Of all Daniel Hart’s problems, the arms broken hours before
his farm flooded were the least significant. To remark on the unsplinted bones
in the face of Daniel’s multi-organ failure was strange. To sound accusatory
when asking why the waterlogged plaster had been removed but not replaced was .
. . not what Thomas Vail, intensivist, would do.

But the question had been his.

He was as emotional about Daniel as he was about Mira. He had
wanted to carry Mira away. What he wanted for Daniel was equally irrational.
Casts or no casts, Daniel was not going to live long enough for his bones to
knit.

He would never again carve a pumpkin, or sandbag a neighbor’s
home, or hold his little girl.

Wendy was Thomas’s daughter now.

Thomas’s little girl.

It wasn’t an emotion-driven realization, but a medical fact.

To which Thomas’s response was
no
.

No? Because caring for Wendy, loving Wendy,
wasn’t
what he wanted?

Of course it was. But . . .

“Ortho needs to stabilize these fractures. We’re not going to
save him from hepatorenal failure only to have him get a fatty embolus.” Thomas
smiled at his stunned colleague. “And we are going to save him.”

“I’m with you, Thomas,” Sandra replied. “But do you have any
idea how?”

“Hey, Luke.” The arson
investigator assigned to the fire rose from the back bumper of the truck where
he had been drinking a cup of coffee.

Luke shook hands with Noah’s successor, a man Noah had personally
trained. “Kyle. This is Snow Gable.”

“Hello, Snow. I really enjoyed your interview with the coach.
And I was looking forward to the one with Luke.” Kyle’s tone underscored the
somber event that had preempted Luke’s interview. “How’s Mira?”

“She’s good, Kyle,” Luke said. “More than holding her own.”

“That’s great news. Want to hear what I’ve found?”

“Love to.”

“It’s pretty much what the guys said you concluded when you
looked around earlier. His intent was to destroy the structure from the outside
in. He didn’t care about revealing his plan, but he was scrupulous about
concealing his identity.”

“He used generic gas cans.”

“The kind that melt. We’ve found pieces. But there won’t be
prints. He’ll have worn gloves.”

“Any idea how he accessed the property?”

“Through the woods. He left footprints—boot prints—in the
dirt. The same boots used by the QRFD.”

“Terrific.”

“The prints end at the street.”

“And no tire tracks?”

“We’ll look again at daylight. But I doubt it.”

“And no one saw anything?”

“No. The parking place he chose wasn’t visible from any of
the nearby homes. He didn’t leave a lot to chance.”

Except, Luke thought, Mira’s return home.

“Feel free to poke around, Luke. Maybe you’ll find something
I’ve missed.”

For the second time in as many
awakenings, Mira opened her eyes to a confusing scene. Earlier, she had found
her bearings in earnest young eyes.

The face peering at her now was both familiar and foreign.

It looked like Vivian. But her makeup was so ravaged,
she
was so ravaged, it took Mira several frowning moments to be sure. Once she was,
she felt an impulse to throw her arms around her sister.

Mira didn’t block the impulse. But something did. Her arms
wouldn’t move. And it wasn’t simply the weakness she was feeling.

Her arms were tethered, with fleecy cotton, to the bed.

“Mira?”

“Hi, Vivian. Are you okay?”

“
Me
? Yes. But what about you? You recognized me, didn’t
you?”

“Of course!”

“That’s so great, Mira.
So great.
”

Vivian’s relief was transforming. Her ravaged face glowed. Then
glistened. As Mira watched, Vivian’s manicured fingers, stained with what
looked like dried blood, wiped away tears.

“What about me? Do you recognize me, too?”

“Blaine,” Mira said as he came into view.

“Hello, Mira. We can’t tell you how happy we are to have you
back. Do you remember what happened this evening?”

Mira tried to focus on Blaine’s question. But she was
distracted by what was happening to her hands, her palms. The pain was . . . impressive.
And, she realized, self-inflicted. She couldn’t see the damage. The tethers
prevented it. But she could diagnose its cause. She would have thought her
nails were clipped so short they would be useless as weapons.

She would have been wrong. They had become tiny razor-sharp knives.

“This evening? I—no. I don’t. Will you tell me?”

Vivian’s reply was halted by her husband’s hand, the one with
the pinkie ring, on her shoulder.

“Yes, we will,” Blaine said. “Later. After you’ve had a
chance to rest. For now, Mira, you should sleep.”

“It’s Thomas, Daniel. You’re at
Grace Memorial in intensive care. I don’t know if you can hear me. I’m going to
talk and keep talking until you do. It may take a while for my words to
register. Days, weeks, maybe months. I’m here for the long run, and I expect
you to be, too. Your brain is fine, Daniel. Uninjured. So is your heart. But
your electrolytes and serum chemistries are out of whack. Your coma will
resolve once we’ve gotten them back to normal. And we will get them there. It’s
four in the morning and the best specialists I know are poring over your chart.
Everything is fixable, Daniel. You just need to hang in there. You’ve made it
this far. Let us do the rest.”

Thomas looked from Daniel’s quivering muscles to the
nephrologist reviewing the lab results obtained since Daniel’s arrival. There
wasn’t a single value that didn’t have # beside it, an indication that it
departed—dangerously—from the norm. A page full of #s should have been
incompatible with life. It would be if the renal specialist didn’t arrange for
emergency hemodialysis soon.

The specialist knew it. As Thomas watched, he put the lab
data aside and started making calls.

Thomas returned to the only thing he could do in the attempt
to save Daniel’s life. “We both know why you’ve made it this far. It’s the same
reason Eileen survived until it was safe for Wendy to be born. You’re here
because of Wendy. She’s healthy, Daniel. Because of you, she escaped the
floods. I’ve fallen in love with her, of course. And she’s becoming comfortable
with me. I’m prepared to spend my life being a father to your lovely daughter,
and I would cherish every moment of it. I’m telling you this so you won’t waste
any energy fearing you made the wrong choice. You didn’t. I confess I would have
advised against it. Your trust in me was a gift. Wendy was a gift. But she
belongs with you, Daniel. She needs
you
.”

Thomas didn’t expect a response from Daniel. Nor did he get
one. Wendy’s real daddy was as unresponsive to love as he was to pain. Wendy’s
temporary daddy, however, was exquisitely sensitive to both. Thomas needed a
few deep breaths before continuing.

“I haven’t told Wendy you’re alive. I won’t tell her until
you open your eyes. I wouldn’t do that to either of you. You’ll see her then,
Daniel. I promise. Within minutes you will see her, and she will see you. To
tell you the truth, I’m not sure she’ll be surprised. She’s not convinced you’re
looking down from the stars. But maybe that’s just a desperate wish. She needs
you, Daniel. And she’s fighting for you. She didn’t want me to leave her
tonight. She’s beginning to comprehend the loss she’s already suffered, and
she’s fearful of losing more. But she overcame her fear. For you.”

After another deep breath, he said, “So here I am, telling
you your daughter is fighting for you . . . and asking you to keep fighting for
her, too.”