Authors: Donna Richards
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In a Heartbeat
“I thought I’d find you here.” Mrs. Blake stood in the center aisle behind him. “The nurses said you forced your way in to see Angela.
What’s going on?”
“Did you see her?” he asked, barely able to contain his enthusiasm.
When she shook her head, he took her hand. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“But how?”
“She told me.” He patted the back of her hand and left her confused and bewildered in the chapel.
Now that he knew, truly knew that Angela was going to be all right, he needed to resolve the small matter of an engagement. Angie would need to focus all her energy on healing. By the time she would be allowed visitors, he planned to be a free, unencumbered man.
* * *
The hospital kept Angela in the ICU for a full week. Finally, she was moved out of the ICU and into a regular private room. A tube still pumped antibiotics into her arm, but she wasn’t under the constant scrutiny of the ICU nurses. Well-acquainted from past experiences with the rhythms and routines of a hospital stay, she hardly registered the constant interruptions, the constriction of a blood pressure cuff, or the thermometer coaxed between her lips. In most cases, she knew their names, their sounds, and their floral-medicinal smells. Flower arrangements and cheery planters arrived on a fairly regular basis, and stockpiled on every flat surface in the room.
Her mother and brother stopped by from time-to-time, but never the man she most wanted to see. Where was Hank? Why had he abandoned her? His rejection hurt bone-deep. She turned inward, sparing little energy for visitors.
The evening shift nurse had just monitored her vitals and had softly murmured that everything looked good. She should be released soon.
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return to her old life. Hank had given her a glimpse of passion. A life without that passion suddenly seemed to be no life at all. Angie had eased back into a restless sleep when something jarred her awake.
Wearily, she opened her eyes, expecting to see the plump face of Nurse Carson. She lifted her head, squinting her eyes. “Is someone there?”
A form, darker than the rest of the room, took shape. A man, she guessed from the broad shoulders, covered in black.
“Hank, is that you?” Had he stepped from her dreams into the room?
Instantly, she knew this man wasn’t the man of her dreams. A mask hid his face. Only his eyes and twin circles of surrounding pale skin could be seen. She gasped. Her fingers crept toward the call button tethered to the sidebar of the hospital bed.
“Who…who are you?”
“Ssh, go back to sleep.” The muffled words sent a chill through her spine. The overhead monitors beeped the accelerated pace of her heartbeat. She pushed the button at her fingertips. The man advanced between the bed and the doorway.
“I don’t think you should be here,” Angie said, frantically pressing the call button. Wasn’t anyone at the nurse’s station? “If you leave now, I won’t scream. But if you—”
“Relax, Short Stuff. Everything will be much easier if you just relax.”
“Raymond?” Uncertainty froze her in place. “What are you doing here?”
She thought she heard a muffled curse. He hesitated for a minute, looked toward the corridor, then quickly removed the ski mask. His black hair tumbled across his forehead, boyish and disheveled. He smiled. “I guess visiting hours are over, huh.”
“Yeah, some time ago.” She relaxed slightly.
“How did you know it was me?” He moved closer to the side of her bed. She stiffened and edged to the far side of the narrow mattress.
“I recognized your voice, and then when you called me Short Stuff…”
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In a Heartbeat
“I suppose you would find my voice familiar.” He was so close, she could smell the rubbery latex gloves on his hands. He reached across her to tug at the cord connecting the call button to the wall socket. Gloves, why gloves?
“What else do you remember about me?” He braced his arms on either side of her, as if he planned to kiss her. She looked in his eyes, but it wasn’t desire burning there. It was something else, something cold and crazed. A monitor near her bed jumped in erratic peaks. “What else, Miranda?”
“Who is Miranda?” She put her hands on his shoulders to stop him from lowering himself any closer. The pressure pushed her back further into the mattress and pillows.
“Don’t play games with me,” he whispered. “Do you remember the night we made love?” He slid his hand slowly up the left side of her chest.
“Hmmm, you feel hot. Are you burning for me, baby?”
“Raymond, I don’t think—”
“Ssh.” His hand slipped over her breast and stopped right above the crest. “I can feel your heart beating, Miranda.”
“You’re scaring me, Raymond. I think you should leave.” She squirmed to escape his touch, but only managed to move her legs back to the middle of the bed. He pressed harder on her chest, pinning her to the mattress. She tried to scream. He quickly clamped a hand over her mouth.
“You remember the night you told me you were pregnant, don’t you? I had to kill you, don’t you see? You didn’t leave me much choice.” He used his body weight to hold her still while he fumbled in his pocket with his free hand. “You should have told me that you had more lives than a cat, Miranda. I cut your brake lines, and you survived. I tried to shoot you in that warehouse and some idiot takes the bullet instead of you.” He pulled out a hypodermic needle and held it upright. “This time it’ll be much faster. This time I’ll –-”
Using all her strength, Angie pulled her knee sharply into his groin.
Cursing, he rolled to his side. She kicked him squarely in the belly. She www.samhainpublishing.com 287
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tried to scream for help, but her weak yells couldn’t have carried far. He tumbled off the side of the bed, catching the intravenous line and dragging the attached medicine bag and pole down to the floor with a crash. The line ripped painfully from her arm, but she had more freedom.
She pulled herself to the opposite side of the bed.
“H-help!” she cried, feeling in the dark for something to throw.
“Don’t—” he yelled seconds before a planter aimed at his head crashed on the floor. The door to her room banged open. Raymond turned toward the sound.
“What’s going on in here?” Nurse Carson filled the doorway.
Raymond drove into the nurse, forcing her back against the outer wall of the corridor. Angie followed them, her arms filled with another planter. Raymond quickly regained his footing and ran down the corridor. Angie tossed her planter, but it fell short, splattering over the hallway. Angie, out of breath, stumbled over to Nurse Carson. Someone down the hall called for security.
“Are you all right?” She tried to help Nurse Carson to her feet but found that she was the one in need of assistance. Her legs crumbled beneath her.
“Let’s get you back to bed,” Nurse Carson said, slipping her shoulder under Angie’s arm. “Dear me, there hasn’t been that kind of excitement here for a long time.” With a second nurse’s assistance, they managed to get Angie back in bed. Nurse Carson bustled about, re-hooking monitor lines and checking vitals. “Who was that man? Why was he here?”
“I think…I think he wanted to kill me.” Angie replied, not sure she completely understood what had just happened.
“Well, he almost did,” Nurse Carson said with a frown. “But you showed him, didn’t you, sugar?” She flushed out the intravenous line and reattached it. “Yessiree, you sure showed him.”
“Miranda,” Angie tested the name out loud. “He called me Miranda.”
More out of habit than thought, her hand reached over and pressed on her chest to feel the pulsing beneath. “Who on earth is Miranda?”
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In a Heartbeat
“You’re very lucky, young lady.” Her cardiologist straightened after examining her chest. “There’s some surface bruising where he pressed on your chest, but nothing damaging to the heart itself. It’s a good thing the mattress had some give to it.”
“It didn’t hurt,” Angie said with confidence. “Wouldn’t it have hurt if he damaged my heart?”
“Not necessarily. When we do the transplant, we connect the arteries and veins, but we can’t connect the nerve endings. They never grow back. Consequently, you won’t feel pain around the transplanted organ.”
“How’s everything else, Doctor?” Angela’s mother asked.
“Her lungs sound good. It’ll take some time to work all the phlegm out, but obviously the infection has been eliminated.” He flipped papers on his clipboard and recited blood count levels. “All in all, I want to keep you a bit longer, just to keep everything under observation, and then I’ll release you into your mother’s care.” He smiled his approval.
“Thank you, Doctor,” her mother answered for her. Angela buttoned up her fancy bed jacket. Cardiac patients accumulate fancy bed jackets, the way others collect shoes, she supposed.
“Cheer up,” the doctor patted her leg, “you’ve got a new lease on life.”
Just as the doctor exited, her mother excused herself and followed. Angie expected as much. Out-of-earshot hallway conferences with the doctor were another commodity in a cardiac patient’s life.
Stephen burst into the room, clutching a tiny black and white plush puppy. She couldn’t help it. The sight of her big hulking brother with a tiny cuddly toy brought a smile to her face.
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“Angie, I’m so sorry about Raymond,” he said, apology evident in every feature on his face. “I never knew. Believe me, I never would have hired him if—”
“Ssh. I know you had nothing to do with this. How could you have known he would try to hurt me?”
“I brought you this,” Stephen offered her the stuffed animal. “Oreo says hi. She misses you.”
“At least one of us is out of the hospital.” She patted the toy and set it next to her. “How’s she doing?”
“Pretty good. She’s knocking things right and left with that tail of hers. They shaved her where she took the bullet. She looks pretty pitiful.”
“I know the feeling,” Angie replied, fingering the bandages on her arm. “The doctor says they might release me in Mom’s care soon.”
“That’s good news.” He shifted his weight and glanced toward the open door. “Listen Angie, I really feel bad about all that happened. I mean, I’m the one who said you didn’t know how to take care of yourself, and then I send this psycho guy to watch over you and—”
Angie reached over and tugged on his hand. “I know you thought you were doing what was right for me. After all I’m still your kid sister.”
“Yeah,” he smiled, “but after last night, you’ve proven you’re big enough to take care of yourself without interference by me.”
She knew his admission was difficult. Her chest swelled with respect for him, and for herself too. She squeezed his hand in gratitude.
“At least hospital security caught him last night,” she said. “We won’t have to worry about him coming back to finish the job. What I don’t understand, though, is why Raymond wanted to kill me in the first place? Why did he call me Miranda?”
“I can answer that,” her mother’s gentle voice answered from the doorway. She directed a sad smile toward Angie. “Five years ago, Miranda donated her heart for transplant.”
“Miranda was my donor?” Angie paused, waiting for her heart to give an extra thump or some other sign in recognition of her identity.
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In a Heartbeat
However, the monitors continued their steady rhythm. Her mother walked over to the window and pulled aside the curtains. A few lazy snowflakes drifted by the window in an otherwise overcast, depressing sky. Angie let go of her brother’s hand. “How do you know?”
“I’ve been in contact with Miranda’s father for many years now,” her mother said, straightening the fallen cards on the windowsill.
“You? But you never said anything.”
“Yes, I know. I never told you. I didn’t want you to be upset.” She held up her hand to stop Angie’s protest. “Let me finish. In the weeks before your transplant, all those years ago, we didn’t know if a donor would be found in time. You were so sick then” She sat on the side of Angie’s bed, the shimmer of unshed tears glistened in her eyes. “You were so pale and thin, every breath was a struggle and your lips and skin were almost blue from the lack of oxygen.” She took a deep breath and exhaled in a whispery rush. “I thought you were going to die.”
“We all did,” Stephen added.
“But I didn’t die. I’m still here.” Angie settled her arm around her mother’s huddled shoulders. Tears coursed down her mother’s cheeks.
“I know that, dear, I know that.” She patted her daughter’s hand.
“But back then I grieved for you as if you were already in a coffin. Then God gave us a miracle.”
Angie retreated from comforting her mother. A cold ribbon of sorrow rippled at the memory that someone had to die so she could live. Her mother always regarded this event as a wonderful miracle. But Angie knew it to be something else.
“I know you don’t like to think about the person who died.” Her mother swiped her cheeks dry.
“It’s not that.” Angie shook her head. “I think about the person who died with every heartbeat.”
“Miranda. Her name was Miranda,” her mother reminded her. “I thought I knew what her parents were going through, having been so close to losing my own daughter. When you didn’t write to them, I did. I www.samhainpublishing.com 291
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had to tell them so they would know the joy they had brought my family.
One letter led to another.”
“You wrote them,” Angie exclaimed, feeling betrayed by her mother’s actions. Her mother knew she didn’t want to know about the donor. It would make the sorrow too real.
Her mother nodded. “They’ve wanted to meet you for years. Perhaps now…”