Winter Oranges (32 page)

“Or maybe wherever your keys are?”

“Exactly.”

She laughed. “No problem. Anything else?”

He hesitated, debating if he dared ask for what he wanted most.

“What is it?” Sheriff Ross asked. “You need me to bring your teddy bear or your favorite blankie? You wouldn’t be the first adult to ask for one.”

“No. It’s not that.” He didn’t want her to think he was nuts, but he had a feeling he could trust her. “This is going to sound crazy, but there’s a snow globe in my room. It’s sort of a family heirloom. Can you bring that too?”

“You got it.” She shrugged. “Would have gone for the teddy bear, myself. But hey, to each his own.”

Sheriff Ross returned shortly after four and handed him a bag containing everything he’d asked for, including the globe. No sooner had he pulled it from the bag than Ben appeared, his face paler than usual and creased with fatigue and worry.

“I’m fine,” Jason said immediately.

Ben put his hands over his face and popped out of sight, leaving Jason alone with the sheriff, who assumed he’d been speaking to her. “Glad to hear it. Staying another night though, I hear.”

“At least.”

She scrawled a number on a piece of paper. “Call me if you need anything. I’m on duty, so I can’t say I’ll rush right over, but I don’t mind stopping by when things are slow. And I’ll give you a ride home once they cut you loose, since your car’s at your house.”

“I appreciate that.”

She’d been gone ten minutes before Ben finally appeared again. Jason hadn’t wound the globe yet, and Ben didn’t wait. He began talking immediately, his eyes pained and his hands flying all around his head as he raved at Jason.

“Hang on,” Jason said, chuckling. He turned the key and mentally steeled himself for the onslaught. Ben kept right on talking though, so Jason tuned in mid-monologue, when the music box finally began to run.

“—And then I heard them take you out and I could see them putting you in the ambulance from the bedroom window and then you didn’t come home and I’ve been worried, and I can’t do anything! I can’t even call the hospital! I had no idea if you were alive or dead and nobody even knows to come and tell me what’s happening and—”

He’d known Ben would be worried, but this was worse. This was near panic. “Ben, stop! I’m fine.” He hardly expected Ben to listen when he was so agitated, but he did. He fell silent, his hand clutching at his chest, and Jason sighed in relief. Still, he knew Ben had questions, and he deserved answers, but Jason didn’t relish the idea of a nurse walking in on him while he tried to reason with a man nobody else could see. He took his cell phone out of the bag Sheriff Ross had given him and held it up to his ear. Now that his tirade was over, Ben appeared calmer, although he still looked exhausted.

“Are you okay?” Jason asked.

Ben laughed in exasperation. “I’m fine. You’re the one in the hospital.”

“I’m sorry I worried you.”

Ben perched an inch or two from the edge of the bed. “What happened?”

“They don’t know yet. They’re running tests.”

“But they must have theories.”

“They do. They’re talking epilepsy, or ministroke, or maybe an
aneurysm
—”

“Oh my God!” Ben clapped his hands dramatically to his face and jumped up from the bed. “You could have died! Oh Jason, this is all my fault.”

“It isn’t.”

“It is! Don’t you see? It’s the globe! Both times you’ve come inside, this has happened—”

“That doesn’t make it your fault.”

Ben threw up his hands and disappeared again, and Jason wound the globe and patiently waited for him to come back. It didn’t take long, but it was clear Ben was fighting hard to keep himself together.

“It’s going to be fine,” Jason told him before Ben could start ranting again. “I’ll be home in a day or two, and then everything will be back to normal.”

Ben shook his head. “You can’t come in again.”

“Sure I can.”

“No.” Ben’s voice shook, and his chin quivered, but he clenched his fists and pushed on. “It was wonderful, and I hate knowing that was the last time, but you can’t risk it.”

“We don’t know that the globe caused it.”

“Don’t be stupid, of course we do! Both times—”

“Okay,” Jason conceded, patting the air in Ben’s general direction before he got too flustered and vanished. “Okay. You’re right. The globe probably has something to do with it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t come back. And anyway, it’s my risk to take.”

“
Your
risk? So I have no say in it? Don’t you think I’d rather have you alive? Do you have any idea what it would do to me to lose you now? Do you really think I want you to risk your life just so we can—”

“That’s not what I meant. The first time I came in, I was there for about two hours. And that headache hurt, but it was manageable. This time, I was there over four hours. And yeah, that was obviously too much. But if we keep the visits short—two hours max—then it’ll be fine.”

But Ben was already shaking his head. “No. You’re assuming too much based on too little data. What if the problem is escalating? What if each visit aggravates it or makes you weaker? Your first time in the globe, you had a minor reaction. Your second time, you had a major reaction. What if the third time kills you?”

Jason chewed his lip, considering. Ben was right. His hypothesis was every bit as realistic as Jason’s. It was also possible they were both right—that whatever went wrong was both time-sensitive
and
accumulative. “We’ll talk about it later,” he said, keeping his voice gentle. “We don’t have to decide anything right now.”

Ben sighed and nodded, touching his fingertips to his lips. Jason suspected he was trying hard not to cry. “I was so scared, Jason. I don’t know when I’ve ever been that scared or felt that useless.”

“I had a feeling that would be the case. That’s why I had the sheriff bring you here.” He held out his hand, and Ben came nearer and sat on the edge of his bed. “But you can stop worrying now. I’m fine.”

Ben nodded mutely, his image flickering.

“Did you sleep at all?” Jason asked.

Ben shook his head. “I wanted to be there if you came back. Or if anybody came back. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Jason reached for him, hating that he couldn’t touch him. He settled for touching the bedspread near Ben’s knee. “You should get some rest.”

“What if something goes wrong and I miss it?”

“Nothing’s going to happen. They’ll be taking me later for an MRI and God knows what else, and then I’ll be stuck here all night. You may as well sleep now, and we can talk again later.” He gestured at the TV and did his best to smile. “Maybe we can watch a movie.”

Ben’s shoulders slumped, but he nodded. “I suppose you’re right. I can’t do anything here anyway. I’m as useless now as I was before.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know. But it’s true.”

“You help just by being here, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t rest for a bit.”

Ben sighed, rubbing his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m being childish. I promise I’ll be less jaded when I’m not so tired.”

“I know. All the more reason you should sleep.”

Ben lingered a bit longer, but finally agreed to return to the globe and rest when Jason’s nurse showed up to take him for “additional testing,” which took hours. His cell phone was ringing when he returned to his room. A glance at his screen showed eight missed calls, with the current one being from Dylan. Jason answered with more than a little trepidation.

“Hello?”

“Jason!” Dylan sounded half-exasperated, half-relieved. “What the hell happened? Are you okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“
StarWatch
reported you were hospitalized last night. Is it true?”

“Shit.” He covered his eyes with his hand. “It’s true, but I’m fine, I swear.”

“What the hell, Jase? I just left, and you’re already falling apart! I knew I should have stayed.”

“You’re making a huge fuss over nothing.”

“Like hell I am. I’m coming up there. I can be there by tonight.”

“Dylan, stop. Aren’t you working this week?”

Dylan cussed for a moment, and Jason waited. “It doesn’t matter,” Dylan said at last. “I can quit. I’ll tell them there was an emergency.”

“Don’t be stupid. I swear to you, it’s not an emergency, and you can’t walk out in the middle of a shoot.”

Dylan sighed, but it sounded a bit like an agreement. “What happened?”

“I was napping. I was a bit worn out, and I still felt like maybe I was coming down with something, so after you left I went back to bed, but the doorbell woke me up. I jumped up so fast, I got a bit of a head rush and fell down the stairs.” It was amazing how easy the lies came. “The sheriff saw it through the window and overreacted and called for an ambulance. The doctors diagnosed me with a raging sinus infection and a bump on the head. They kept me overnight in case of a concussion, but they’ve ruled that out. I’ll be home as soon as they finish the paperwork.”

“You’re sure? You swear to me it’s nothing more serious than that?”

“I promise.”

“Okay.” Dylan sounded calmer. That was good. “What was the sheriff doing at your house, anyway?”

“She came to tell me she’d caught a photographer sneaking onto my property.”

“‘She’? The sheriff’s a woman?”

“Yeah.”

“Interesting.” Jason could practically hear the gears shifting in Dylan’s head. “Is she hot?”

“I don’t know. I guess.”

“You guess? How can you not know if she’s hot?”

“I’m not having this conversation with you right now.”

“I’m just asking—”

“I’ll introduce you next time you’re in town.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

Jason’s phone beeped as another call came in. He was glad for a reason to end their conversation. “I have to go. Natalie’s calling. I’ll talk to you later, all right? Good luck on the shoot.”

Natalie was far less suspicious and accepted his sinus infection story right off the bat. She advised him to get plenty of rest. Jason assured her he would. He browsed through his missed calls after hanging up. One had been from Natalie. The rest had been Dylan. He counted himself lucky he’d answered when he had. He had a feeling another couple of unanswered calls would have had Dylan back in Idaho by sundown.

Despite the many tests they’d run, the medical staff remained stumped.

“This incident has all the markings of a mild brain hemorrhage,” the lead physician on his case told him early the next morning.

Ben, who was standing next to Jason’s bed unseen by everybody but Jason, clapped his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide with horror.

Jason couldn’t blame him. The words scared him too. “That sounds serious.”

“It certainly can be. But the CT scan and MRI are both negative.” The doctor shook his head and held his hands up. “Honestly, I still think that’s what happened, but the evidence doesn’t back me up.”

The final remnants of Jason’s headache had disappeared overnight as well. By all accounts, there wasn’t a single thing wrong with him, so the hospital released him later that day to Sheriff Ross, who drove him home. By four o’clock, he was back on his couch, Ben cuddled against his side.

“I hope the media doesn’t report how long I was in the hospital. And I
really
hope they don’t get wind of the doctor’s brain hemorrhage suspicions. Dylan’d never forgive me. He’d be pounding on our front door by nightfall.”

He meant it as a joke, but the look Ben gave him was solemn. “He’s bound to come back eventually.”

“I know.”

“What will you do then?”

Jason didn’t have an answer.