“I don’t feel anything.” If only his mind was as numb as his leg.
“That’s normal. When the pain meds wear off, you’ll feel it. Tell the nurse and she’ll give you more.” Dr. Ford sat in the chair next to his bed. “So,” she said, looking around. “Where’s Mrs. Juran?”
Alex blinked. “Excuse me?”
“We need to talk about your recovery and it’d be best if Mrs. Juran were here.”
“Mrs. Juran won’t be here today.”
She’s too busy ending our marriage while I’m laid up in the hospital with a bum knee.
“But she said—”
“She’s not coming.”
Dr. Ford looked confused.
“Look, Doctor, just tell me what’s going on with my knee.” Anything would be better than thinking of Tess and the divorce.
She shifted in her chair. “The bullet hit your knee, nicking the artery and shattering the bone. After the artery was fixed and your condition stabilized, we replaced the knee.”
The doctor began a long litany of things he should and should not expect over the next several days and months, but all he heard was
replace the knee
. Good God, his knee? What the hell? He knew he’d been shot in the knee, had figured an artery had been hit and he’d probably bleed out before help arrived. But after he’d woken up, he’d hoped it wasn’t as bad as he’d thought.
His knee.
Gone.
Shattered.
Like his marriage. How ironic.
He waved the doctor’s words away with a swipe of his hand. “What about my job? When can I go back to work?”
She shifted again and looked uneasy. “I’d really prefer it if Mrs.—”
“Look,” he ground out, “
Mrs
. Juran isn’t returning.” There wasn’t a
Mrs
. Juran anymore but he’d be damned if he told her that. “When can I go back to work?”
Her eyes met his. The scent of antiseptic and rubbing alcohol mixed with the flowers made him feel sick to his stomach, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with the odors in the room.
“We won’t know for at least four months,” she said.
“So in four months I can go back?”
“In four months we’ll re-evaluate the situation.”
“So it could take longer? Say, six months?”
She looked at him with sad eyes.
“Tell me.” His voice sounded rough and he thought of that beer somewhere out there with his name on it.
“You may never return to police work, Mr. Juran. I’m sorry.”
Alex closed his eyes. Oh, yeah, there were different kinds of pain, and his had just taken a whole new turn.
He opened his eyes and stared at the happy-face balloons and the banners on the flower arrangements demanding he “get well soon”.
In one day, he’d lost his wife, his career. His
life
.
Dr. Ford’s beeper went off. She looked at the screen and muttered something. “I have to take this call. I’ll be right back so we can discuss this further. Maybe by then Mrs. Juran will be back.” She hurried out the door.
He gritted his teeth, half wishing he hadn’t been wearing his vest and the bullet had entered his heart. He’d rather meet death head-on because it would be a hell of a lot easier than living his life without Tess and without the career he loved.
The door opened again and he looked up, expecting Dr. Ford.
It was Tess who stood in the doorway, the lights from the outside hall backlighting her.
God, she was beautiful. Her long red hair was done up in what she laughingly called a messy bun. A short brown turtleneck sweater just barely met her form-fitting, well-worn jeans. She held a can of root beer—her favorite drink—nearly crushing the aluminum in her tight grip. “Hello, Alex.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” He hurt everywhere and some perverse part of him wanted her to hurt just as much. Of course, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t hurt her enough in the past. After all, it was why she’d kicked him out and filed for divorce.
She lifted her chin. “Has Dr. Ford been in yet?”
“What do you care?”
She looked pale, the freckles on her nose more prominent. “I care,” she said in that soft voice she used when he’d been overly harsh with her. A tone he’d heard more and more often in the end.
The door opened again—honestly, the hospital administration should make it revolving—and Tony strolled in. “Hey, my man, rumor had it you’d decided to rejoin the living.”
Tony looked at Tess, then back to Alex, apparently sensing the tightly strung emotions between them. “Uh, you want me to leave?”
Alex eyed Tony’s BDUs and attempted to ignore Tess, who stood awkwardly on the other side of the room. “Tell me you’ve got a beer in one of those deep pockets for me, Blankenship.”
“Yeah, right. With the meds you’re on? What, you have a death wish?”
Alex didn’t laugh. Maybe. Probably.
“So…” Tony sauntered over to the bed. “Thought I’d get to you before the chief and LT.”
“Yeah?”
Tony rolled his eyes. “Spill it. What happened the other night that everything got so fucked up?”
Alex looked at him, his mind a blank.
“Who the hell shot you, partner? Who killed your contact?”
“Tony, I don’t think this is the time,” Tess said from far away.
But Alex wasn’t paying attention. Beyond the actual bullet and what it had done to him, he hadn’t had time to think about what went down that night. He remembered walking through the warehouses, the adrenaline swimming through him, and the long, low bellow of a riverboat. He remembered meeting up with Jason and he recalled the pain of the bullet as it ripped through his knee, rolling to avoid the shot to his chest, waiting for the ambulance.
What he didn’t remember was who shot him and who killed Jason.
Chapter Four
“Out!” Dr. Ford’s voice rang above the chief’s, the lieutenant’s, Tony’s and several detectives Tess didn’t recognize.
They all looked at the doctor as if amazed anyone had the balls to interrupt them. The doctor pushed the lieutenant on the shoulder and pulled the chief by his sleeve. The others followed, meek as lambs, until the room was empty except for her, Dr. Ford and Alex.
Alex leaned back and closed his eyes. Sweat beaded his forehead. Dark smudges circled his eyes and bruises dotted his face. Tess wanted to go to him but stayed where she was, too afraid to make that first move.
With the room finally quiet, Dr. Ford turned to Tess. “You can stay, Mrs. Juran.”
“No.” Alex opened his eyes and rolled his head in Tess’s direction. “She needs to leave too.”
Their gazes collided, his filled with anger and pain.
“Alex, please don’t do this.”
He closed his eyes again and turned away.
“Alex—”
“I don’t want her here,” he said to the doctor. “Make her leave.”
Dr. Ford looked at the floor while Tess stared at her husband. She’d known he was bitter and angry over what he considered her abandonment of their marriage, but hadn’t realized how deeply she had hurt him when she asked him to leave six months ago. She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. Quietly she stepped forward and placed a tube of lip balm on the bed beside his hand and left the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.
The group who’d been pushed out of Alex’s room stood in a huddle farther down the hall.
Roger leaned a shoulder on the wall next to her. “I heard he was awake.”
“Yeah.” Tess rubbed her tired eyes and moved her feet so a janitor wouldn’t roll over them with his mop bucket.
“I also heard he can’t remember.”
Alex’s announcement that he couldn’t remember what happened the night he’d been shot was what had caused the uproar and the subsequent removal of everyone in his room.
“What’s the doctor saying?” Roger asked.
“We haven’t spoken yet.” Because half the brass in the police department had crowded in. Crowded her out. She shouldn’t be surprised. After all, the force was what had driven them apart. That it was happening again should have been expected.
She understood why everyone was concerned. Alex’s shooter was out there and probably knew Alex was alive. Had Alex seen his face? Was the identity of the murderer locked somewhere in Alex’s mind?
“Mrs. Juran?” Dr. Ford approached. “We need to discuss Mr. Juran’s recovery. Do you have a minute?”
Tess nodded. After the humiliating incident in Alex’s room, she was surprised the doctor would want to speak to her. Dr. Ford glanced at the knot of uniforms, then motioned Tess into an empty room.
“Maybe I should go with you.” Roger pushed away from the wall.
Remembering how alone she’d felt when she talked to the ER doctor, Tess agreed. Roger wasn’t her first choice, but he was family, and right now Tess didn’t trust herself to think clearly enough to make the right decisions.
When they were settled, Dr. Ford said, “Does Mr. Juran have any other family?”
Cheeks burning in embarrassment, Tess shook her head. “Just me, even though he would deny that.”
“Yes, well.” Dr. Ford looked away, then back. “He’ll need someone to care for him once he’s released. To take him to his doctor’s appointments and physical therapy. He won’t be able to get around very well for a while.”
“There’s no one else,” she said. “I guess it will have to be me.” If Alex would even let her take care of him.
The doctor touched her knee. “He’s been traumatized. Both his body and his mind. Sometimes that leads people to say—”
“Thank you, Doctor, but Alex was angry with me long before this.”
The doctor pressed her lips together and nodded. “Very well. Let’s talk about his injuries. Mr. Juran suffers from Critical Incident Amnesia. Which is a fancy way of saying he doesn’t remember what happened the night he was shot.”
“None of it?” Roger asked.
“Bits and pieces. This is common in victims who have suffered a stressful experience. Especially police officers. It’s worse for them because more often than not some important piece of information is locked in their minds. Something that might be critical to a case.”
Like the identity of a killer.
“Usually patients recover their full memory after a good night’s rest, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here,” Dr. Ford said.
“Will he ever remember?” Roger asked.
“The mind is a tricky thing. Only time will tell.”
***
Alex was staring out the window, turning the stick of lip balm in his hand when his door opened again. He ignored whoever it was. For the past several hours he’d been reliving the night he’d been shot. Or trying to. He could get so far, to the point where Jason arrived, then his mind jumped to being shot. Everything in between was gone, no matter how hard he tried to remember. Forcing it seemed to make it worse, yet he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“Alex?”
A muscle in his jaw jumped and he squeezed the lip balm. “What do you want?”
“We need to talk.”
“No.”
“Officer Juran, we need to discuss your recuperation,” Dr. Ford said.
“
She
doesn’t need to be here for that.” He still hadn’t turned to them, was still staring at the heavy gray clouds that didn’t seem to move. The lip balm had helped. His lips had been so sore and chapped. Tess always did seem to know exactly what he needed. Or at least she had at one point. And he had known what she had needed too. Until everything went to hell and somehow they’d lost the ability.
Or stopped caring.
He heard Tess sigh and shuffle her feet.
“If all goes well,” the doctor said, “you’ll be released in a few days. You can’t live alone.”
“I’ll think of something.”
“Stay with me, Alex,” Tess said. “Let me help you.”
He jerked his head around. “No.”
Hell
no
.
“Alex, be reasonable.”
His gaze swung to the doctor. “What about Drake Center? That rehab place? I’m sure I’ll need some sort of rehab.”
Dr. Ford was shaking her head before he even finished. “Yes, you need rehab but not the inpatient kind. Mrs. Juran—”
“I’m not staying with
her
!”
Tess looked at him, her face pale, her eyes so damn sad. There’d been a point in his life, years of his life, where he would have done anything to erase such sadness inside her. To know that he still wanted to, even after she’d given up on them, made him angry.
“I’m sorry, Alex,” Tess said. “I know this is the last thing you want, but—”
“What about Tony? I’ll stay with Tony.”
“Tony lives on the fourth floor, with no elevator.”
“Stairs are out of the question,” Dr. Ford said.
“I’ll move.”
“Alex—”
He pointed a finger at her. “No one asked you to be here. You’re through with me, remember?”
She stepped forward and her pale complexion fired up to bright red. It’d been a long time since he’d seen this side of Tess. He always did like it when she got spitting mad. “I believe you were the one who asked for me—”
“Like hell!” But he knew he had.
That
he remembered.
“Like hell, nothing, Alexandre Juran.” She took another step closer. Man, she was magnificent. “You asked for me, called for me. When the ambulance took you to the helicopter, while in the emergency room, while waiting to go into surgery, you called for
me
. Who’s been here all these days and nights by your side? Me.” She pounded her chest with her fist.
“That’s enough.” Dr. Ford stepped between them, her arms raised out to her sides as if separating two wrestlers. She turned to Alex. “You have to stay with Mrs. Juran. You can’t live by yourself. You can’t even drive. Who’ll take you to your doctor’s appointments and physical therapy? Mr. Juran, you have no other options.”
***
Tess positioned the walker in the opened passenger van door.
“Get that thing the hell out of my face,” Alex snarled.
She nudged the contraption with a bump of her hip. “I may be strong, but I won’t be able to catch you if you fall on your face.”
With a growl, he hoisted himself out and grabbed the walker. He hated it, despised it. Wanted to burn it and dance a jig while the damn thing incinerated. But he couldn’t dance and he couldn’t walk without its support.