WINDOW OF TIME (11 page)

“It’s my nickname,” Sunny said, addressing Johnny. “And yes, Sergio, I noticed she’s unconscious. Now tell me something I don’t know.” The doctor gingerly lifted Lucy’s eyelid and flicked a bright light in it. She did the same to the other. “Why does my patient have a concussion, Mr. Cartwright?”

“I bet you don’t know about the knot on the back of her head,” Sergio said, reading her chart. “And that she was knocked out with chloroform.”

Sunny put her penlight away in her jacket pocket, and then ran her fingers along the back of Lucy’s head. “That’s quite a bump.” She leaned against the bed with her fists and looked at the other nurse. “Give me her vitals, Cliff.”

“Her pulse is sixty, and her respiratory is shallow at 10.”

“Give her more oxygen,” Dusty said as he studied the monitor above Lucy’s bed.

“Thank you for the advice.” Sunny stared at Dusty and asked, “Mr. Cartwright, should this, uh, gentleman be in here?”

Johnny knocked Dusty in the side with a firmly placed elbow. “He knows about Lucy’s occupation.” He then added, “He also knows how she got her concussion, and about the chloroform.”

“Oh.” Sunny glanced between the two men. “Are you ready to fill me in?”

“Can you tell me how Lucy is, Dr. Pettigrew?” Johnny asked.

“Just call me Sunny.” She placed her hand on Lucy’s forehead. “I don’t know why she isn’t responding to the oxygen. Chloroform just isn’t that strong of a sedative to keep her unconscious for this long. There isn’t a good reason why she isn’t awake. But with a head injury combined with the Chloroform …” Sunny shook her head. “I can’t predict what kind of reaction she may have or how long it will take for her to come out of it.”

“Why don’t you give her Adderall?” Dusty asked. “Stimulate her.”

Sunny blew out a sharp breath. “What would that do to her blood pressure, Doctor?”

Dusty straightened his back. “I’m not a doctor.”

“That’s right, you’re not! Because a doctor wouldn’t give a patient with a head injury something that would increase the pressure in her brain and increase any potential bleeding she might have.”

Sunny caught Johnny’s stare. “I’ll order a CT brain scan, and then we’ll need to keep a close watch on her and hope she comes out of this on her own. Until then, I’ll keep her safe.”

~*~

Johnny and Dusty leaned against either side of the CT scan room door, waiting while Lucy had her exam.

“Why did you make such a stupid suggestion?” Johnny asked.

Dusty grinned. “I wanted to see if Sunny knew her stuff.”

“Well, all you did was tick her off and give her the impression you were an incompetent paramedic.”

“Maybe.” Dusty crossed his arms over his chest. “Did you see how her green eyes flared? They were beautiful. It was worth the chewing out she gave me.”

“Dusty Rhodes, I didn’t know you were a masochist.”

“I’m not.” He sighed as he pressed his hand on his chest. “I’m just in love.”

“Now you’re crazy.” Johnny checked his watch. “If you’re so easily beguiled by a pretty face, then why haven’t you ever been married? You’re over thirty.”

Dusty lost his smile, and his good humor it seemed. “When was the last time you met beauty, brains, and bravado wrapped up in the same package?”

Johnny gazed at the closed door between him and Lucy and thought about the past eighteen hours. In his heart, her beauty eclipsed any other woman he knew. Her selfless bravery in saving all the people on the staircase, and again on the freeway, knowing she’d never receive any reward, or even acknowledgement for her heroism, put her in a category of courageous beyond any firefighter he’d ever known.

“I met that woman yesterday.”

Dusty glanced at the door. “Her doc sure seemed to take it all in when you told her how Lucy got the head injury, and about the attack in the lobby, and how she saved you from being shot,” he said, relaxing against the wall. “But she didn’t seem surprised.”

“Why should she be? They have a dangerous career, and Lucy’s been well trained.” Johnny lifted his arm and read his watch again. “How much longer is this going to take?”

“We’re done now,” Sunny said as she opened the door. She gazed at Dusty. “It’s amazing how voices carry in this hallway.” She pushed the door open wider and stepped aside while Sergio pushed Lucy’s gurney through the doorway. “We’re taking her up to the second floor. Why don’t you two go down to the cafeteria and grab something to eat while we get Lucy settled in her private room.”

“Uh …” Johnny hesitated. “Don’t you need us to stay with you just in case you need protection from—you know?”

Sunny gave Dusty a suspicious half smile as she took his hand and proceeded to place it on the small of her own back.

“No, Johnny,” Dusty said quietly, staring heavily into her smiling green eyes. “The lady doctor is packing her own protection.” He leaned down closer to her face. “Would you really shoot someone?”

Whispering just loud enough for them to hear, Sunny said, “If it meant saving an agent’s life? Absolutely, I would. It’s in my job description.”

Dusty slowly ran his hand up her back before moving aside a step. “I think we’ll go get a snack downstairs in the cafeteria. Can I get you anything? A cup of coffee? A donut? Dinner and a movie?”

Sunny smiled at him a moment before walking after Lucy’s gurney and helped to push her to the elevator.

Dusty stood staring at the empty hallway after they had disappeared with his hand on his chest.

“Oh, yeah, Romeo, she’s really into you,” Johnny told him.

“Don’t sound so skeptical.” Dusty shoved Johnny in the shoulder. “She let me touch her gun, and she barely knows me.”

The bottom of Lucy’s foot itched. She flexed her toes, but it didn’t do anything to still the feeling. Using the big toe of her other foot, she reached over and scratched the tender spot near the ball of her heel. “Mmmm,” she moaned as she relieved the painful itch on the surface of her skin.

“Lucy?”

“Hmm?” She turned over, tucking the pillow up under her head.

“Are you awake?”

“No.” She sighed. A warm kiss on her cheek preceded a substantial shake of her shoulder. “Stop it.” Lucy squirmed sideways.

“Lucy, wake up or I’ll take you into a cold shower.”

Johnny? A chilling memory of the drenching he gave her last night flooded her mind, and then she remembered her encounter with that woman. Resentment filled her heart. Lucy slapped at his arm and pushed him away as she sat up in bed. She was in bed?

“Sergio, go get Sunny,” Johnny said in a rush.

A young man with a grin on his face, dressed in hospital scrubs, pulled out a cell phone from his shirt pocket as he dashed out of the large room. Lucy lifted her right hand. An IV drip was taped onto the knuckle side and the line led up to a bag filled with clear liquid suspended above an electronic box on a pole next to her bed. Lucy lifted the neckline of her gown and saw round patches attached to her skin with wires coming out of them and leading up to that same box and beat in rhythm with her heart.

“What happened to me?”

Johnny sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. Lucy yanked it away. “Okay,” he said. “I can understand you might be a little angry with me—”

“A little?” Lucy asked sharply, pushing at his shoulder. “You promised you wouldn’t lie to me.”

“But I didn’t—”

The door burst open, and an older nurse smiled as she swept into the room. “Agent James, I heard that you were awake. That’s very good.” She walked around the bed and turned off the IV machine. As it went dark, she went back around to the other side of the bed with her arms out wide. “Now that you are able to drink and eat, and most importantly, go to the bathroom unassisted, I will take out your Foley catheter.” The nurse took Johnny’s arm and began pulling him off the bed. “But we will need privacy. Please step outside.”

Lucy noticed her directions weren’t requests, but orders. The nurse took control of her patients much like a captain of a ship to keep things organized. It bothered Lucy to no end for some reason. She hadn’t adjusted to being in the hospital yet, didn’t know why she was there, and then suddenly a woman dressed in pink scrubs was disconnecting her from all the monitors. As the nurse leaned over her, Lucy tried to clear her mind. Something wasn’t right about her caregiver.

“Taking out the catheter will hurt, so first I will give you something for the pain.”

The woman grasped the IV line, and as she took out a syringe from her pocket, Lucy remembered the nurse had called her Agent James. That would mean the nurse was an agent too, yet she hadn’t identified herself. Which would mean …

“No way!” Lucy hit the syringe from the woman’s hand just before she was able to insert it. She threw herself off the other side of the bed and fell to the floor in a tangle of bed sheet and rubber catheter tubing, knocking over a portable IV stand in the process. As Lucy pulled the sheet from around her legs, the so-called nurse took a knife from her pocket. She flipped out a blade with a touch of a switch and started around the bed.

Lucy knew there wouldn’t be any alarms sounding for her. The woman had turned the machines off when she first came in. Lucy was on her own. Standing unsteadily, she moved back a step and stumbled over the skinny metal IV pole in her attempt to put a little more distance between them.

“Help!” Lucy’s voice sounded like an industrial-sized frog, croaking loudly.

The woman sneered and moved closer, just as Johnny opened the door. “Lucy?” His entrance distracted the woman long enough for Lucy to pick up the IV pole. She swung the bottom of it against the woman’s hand, hitting the knife out of her grip. It pinged loudly against the bathroom door before dropping to the floor. On the backswing, Lucy caught the woman’s face with a sharp metal edge and sent her backward, making her shriek in pain. Johnny rushed further inside the room, and the woman charged him, shoving him against the wall before she fled out the door.

“Lucy!” Johnny ran around the bed. He caught her as she slumped to the floor. “Did she hurt you?”

The surge of adrenaline that had assisted in her self-defense had drained her muscles of any strength, leaving her arms and legs feeling like little more than wimpy rubber. Lucy trembled uncontrollably against Johnny’s chest.

“What happened in here?” A woman wearing a doctor’s white jacket burst into the room, the man in scrubs came in behind her along with a big man in a firefighter uniform.

“Sunny, Lucy was just attacked by a woman dressed all in pink. She had short black hair.” Johnny pointed to the left. “She took off that way.”

Sunny jabbed the firefighter in the chest with the point of her finger. “Dusty, stay here!” She dashed out the door with the other man rushing behind her.

Dusty closed the door and leaned against it. “Is she all right?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sergio said she woke up.”

“I’m definitely awake now,” Lucy said, trying to control her shakes. “But I would have preferred the cold shower.”

Johnny held her tightly. “I guess she wasn’t really a nurse, was she?”

Lucy shook her head, and if she’d had the strength, she would have pushed him away. But she didn’t, even if her heart reminded her how he misled her.

“Don’t be angry with me,” he said with his lips next to her ear. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my girlfriend before she came over.” He kissed her cheek. “I broke it off with her. Please believe me. I won’t ever lie to you.”

“Girlfriend? She wasn’t your ex-wife?”

Johnny leaned back and gazed at her. “Monica? No! My ex-wife’s name is Natalie.”

“But …” Lucy tried to remember what that woman had said. “She told me she was your ex-wife … I think … and that you always come back to her.”

“Uh, Lucy?” Dusty said from across the room. “That would be the words of a very jealous woman talking. Monica dates around, if you get my drift. She probably saw herself being replaced by you.”

Lucy saw the tall man with the broad shoulders from over the top of the bed. She recognized him from the staircase. He seemed to know her well enough to call her by name. That uncomfortable feeling crept up her neck. “Johnny, what happened to me? Why am I here in the hospital?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“I wouldn’t be asking if I could remember,” she snapped.

“When you went back—”

“Johnny, don’t!” Dusty said sharply. “Remember what Sunny told you.”

Lucy asked, “Who is Sunny?”

“She’s your doctor.” Johnny held her around her shoulders, slid his arm under her knees, and lifted her onto her bed. “She went after the woman, or nurse—whoever tried to hurt you.”

“My doctor? No, she can’t do that!” Lucy tried to get up. “She’ll get hurt. Johnny, you need to go after her. Stop her!”

Dusty smiled. “Don’t worry about Sunny. She’s a CIA agent, too, and she can take care of herself.”

The accusing glare Lucy gave Johnny should have been enough to set him back several steps, but he held his ground. “Yes, I told Dusty about your job. I found your purse, remember? I also told him about what happened on the freeway and how you got hurt. He’s been helping me watch after you since you were admitted.”