In a Heartbeat - Elizabeth Adler [46]
“I slept in your bed last night, honey,” she said, rubbing her fingers lightly up and down his arm, praying that he would respond to her touch. “I slept there without you. Without our magic. Without our love to keep me warm. I fell into a bottomless pit of sleep and as I did so, I thought, This is what Ed feels like. This is where he is too. Maybe I will meet him there, in both our dreams.” She shook her head sadly. “But there were no dreams, just . . . oblivion. Is that what it’s like for you, Ed? Just . . . nothing?”
No, he wanted to yell out. No, no, no . . . I know you’re here, I want to say I love you but somehow I can’t. . . . Just don’t leave me, baby, don’t give up on me. Don’t let them pull the plug on me. I’m still here, still alive. . . .
“They showed me your brain scan this morning,” she whispered. “They showed me how the blood supply was still working, that there is brain activity, that somehow you are still here with me. I’ll never give up on you, honey. I’m yours forever, I know that now. And Riley misses you. Did I tell you she said she loved you, that she wants you to share her Sundays? Oh, God”—she gave a choked little laugh—“I must be losing my mind, I can’t remember from one day to the next. Maybe I need some of that ginkgo biloba to perk up the old memory cells. . . .”
Just remember me, honey . . . remember us, that’s all I ask. . . .
“Ed,” she said, serious again. “The detective who’s looking for the shooter. His name is Marco Camelia. He checked into your hometown—you told me about Hainsville, remember?” She bit her lip, of course he didn’t remember, how could he?
I remember Hainsville . . . oh I remember all right. Hot panic flared in his head, sent his heart thunking again. . . .
“Ed, the police there say they don’t know any Ed Vincent. They say you never lived there. Somebody is lying, Ed, and I know it’s not you. Detective Camelia thinks it’s someone connected with the shooting. I need to go with him, to Tennessee, to your hometown. I’m going to find your roots, Ed, honey, and then we’ll find the truth.”
Don’t go! he wanted to scream. Don’t go there. . . . Oh, Mel, please don’t go. . . .
The monitor bleeped. Mel eyed it, alarmed, as the nurse came running.
It was a different nurse, they changed all the time depending on the shift, and this one was gentler, with a softer heart.
“He’s okay,” she reassured Mel. “Just a little agitated. At least he’s showing some response.”
“Then it’s good?” Mel was scared.
“It’s good. He’ll be okay, nothing to worry about.”
“Then I’ll just sit here quietly with him, until he calms down.” She took his hand again, stroking his arm gently, but now Ed lay still as death.
He could not push away the memories—his past was crowding out the present, taking away his future. Life had seemed so simple once . . . when he was just a hick little kid with big dreams. . . .
Don’t go, Zelda, he begged silently, please . . . don’t go there. . . .
It had been on his fourteenth birthday that he had his first brush with death. In that single year it seemed he had grown from a boy into a man. Already touching six feet in height, he had broadened through the chest and neck and gained extra poundage on his lean frame. New muscles rippled on his arms from hard work in the fields and from felling trees for winter logs, and he was as swift and light on his feet as a boxer from hiking up and down the mountains.
His mother, Ellin, knew, though, that agricultural work was not for him. His nose was always in a book, his mind on things far from her and from their tiny farm. She had bought him a birthday gift, a new shirt from Hains Haberdashery in Hainsville, in a deep blue-checked flannel that matched his eyes, and a pair of denims that were too long now but in two months would be reaching up around his ankles. And she knew that on his next birthday, when his schooling was finished, he would leave her. He would set out