She gathered up her styrofoam cup and cellophane wrappers and threw them away. Then she stood over him, indecisive, looking worriedly down at his waxy face. There was a bullet in his chest. Could he get lead poisoning? Would the wound get infected? He would never get well as long as it lay in there festering. Now was the time to call a doctor if ever she was going to do it. She moved toward the telephone and picked up the receiver. A woman’s voice answered.
“Front desk.”
Clara took a deep breath. “Wrong number.” she said, and replaced the receiver in the cradle. Maybe she could try, just a little, to get the bullet out of the wound herself. She had played “Operation!” a lot as a girl. The object of the same was to extract a plastic organ from a gameboard
patient with inch deep openings in his body where the organs lay in wait. The openings had metal sides, and the tool of extraction was a pair of electronic tweezers. If the tweezers touched the metal sides during the operation, a buzzer sounded and your patient died. She’d been pretty good at it as a girl, but Jack was no gameboard patient. He was a living, breathing man, and utterly important to her. She couldn’t go poking about that hideous little wound with a pair of tweezers! But if she didn’t, who would? The next thing to do seemed to be remove the bullet, and there was only herself to do it.
The gift store had tweezers. An omen? Clara bought them, bought some rubbing alcohol, cotton, and some more gauze. Maybe she would just probe around a little bit. If she was lucky the bullet might be right beneath the surface and she could remove it with no trouble at all.
She would just probe a little. Clara kept repeating the words over and over as she unbandaged the wound, swabbed the area with alcohol and soaked the tweezers in the smelly liquid. Then, steeling herself, she took the tweezers in hand. Should she do this? Or would she harm him more by trying? She didn’t know. But her instincts told her that the bullet had to come out. If she could not do it, then she should summon a doctor. But she couldn’t do that, either. Clara knew as well as if he were conscious and could speak what Jack would say to her Go for it! And he would grin that lopsided grin.
She would just probe a little, Clara repeated as she tentatively brought the edges of the tweezer together and inserted them in the hole. Fresh blood oozed forth. Clara winced, feeling her stomach churn with revulsion, expecting at any moment to hear Jack scream with pain. But he lay unmoving, mercifully oblivious to her amateur ministrations.
So, taking a deep breath, she sank the tweezers a little deeper into his flesh.
By the time she had worked the tweezers inside him until they were buried nearly to the tip in his flesh, she was sweating like a rain forest and covered with blood. Blood had a distinct smell to it, she discovered, a sweetish odor that didn’t help the state of her churning stomach. She fought to hold back wave after wave of nausea, concentrating instead on feeling her way inside, following the path the bullet had taken. She was about as deep as she was prepared to go. Besides, the tweezers were in so far that she could barely manipulate them as it was.
Just then the pointed end of the tweezers struck something hard. Something metal. Clara felt a rush of excitement. Unbelievably, it seemed she had found the bullet!
The tweezers were inside too far to permit her to open them and grasp the bullet with the pointed ends. Instead she had to work the ends beside the bullet and nudge it upwards a little at a time until at last she could manipulate the tweezers. After that, it was only a matter of a minute or two. She opened the tweezers, probed carefully, felt metal on metal and closed them. Then, gently, she withdrew the tweezers holding their prize. Blood poured forth in the bullet’s wake. Clara had just a moment to look at the blackened, twisted lump of bloody metal on her palm. Then, with a shudder, she threw it across the room and applied herself to stopping the bleeding again.
By the time that was accomplished, antibiotic ointment was worked into the wound and a fresh bandage was applied, Clara felt as if she had been run over by a truck. Every muscle in her body ached. But she had done it! She had really done it! Pride in the accomplishment warmed her. She was smiling faintly as she pulled herself to her feet and
stumbled into the bathroom to wash off as much of the blood as she could. By the time she came out she was no longer smiling. It had occurred to her that just because the bullet was out did not mean that Jack would recover. He could die from infection or internal injuries the bullet had caused. She had no idea how severe they might be.
But just then she couldn’t worry about it. She had done what she could. Her body and mind were far beyond the point of exhaustion. Dragging the other pillow from the bed, she dropped to her knees at Jack’s side. If he worsened, she wanted to be near enough to know it. Then she drew the covers a little away from him and crawled in beside him. He still felt as cold as a corpse … She shivered at the comparison. Curling as close to him as she dared, hoping to share her warmth with him as she wrapped her arms around him, she closed her eyes. Moments later she was asleep.
XXIII
He was burning hot, and she was terrified. It was the middle of the night and he had started muttering and thrashing an hour before. Clara couldn’t make out anything he said. The jumbled phrases made no sense. But once he called her name.
“I’m here, Jack. Lie still, darling. Please lie still. You’ll reopen the wound.”
But he hadn’t given any indication that he had heard her. He continued to thrash, kicking off the covers she piled on top of him, flailing his arms about until she caught his hands and lay across his stomach to hold them still.
“Jack. Jack, please be still. Please.” She was crying as she begged. She had never felt so helpless or so alone in her life. He was dying, right there in her arms. She knew he was. No one could burn so and live. And there was nothing she could do. No one she could call. No help she could give him.
“Please don’t let him die!” She turned to God, that solace of her youth. As a child she had spent every Sunday morning in church, and said her prayers every night of her
life. As an adult she was not nearly so conscientious, but now, when there was no one else, she turned to He from whom all blessings flowed. And she prayed as she had never prayed in her life.
Her arms were resting across the hard flesh of his stomach. His skin was so hot that it burned to the touch. He was groaning in pain, and she had nothing to help ease it. Then the groans turned to whimpers, pitiful helpless whimpers like a hurt child. There had to be something she could do for him, there had to be. She could not just let him die! Clara gritted her teeth. She would not
His fever had to be brought down, and he had to be kept still. Those were her immediate priorities. Straddling him to keep him as still as she could, she reached for the torn top sheet, ripping long strips from it. Those she tied together to form a rope. That done, she scooted down so that she was sitting on his thighs, and quickly wrapped one end of the rope around his twitching wrists. His head thrashed from side to side as she wrapped the rope around him until he was bound like a mummy from his navel to his ankles. His hands were caught inside the binding. Knotting the rope at his ankles, she only hoped that her makeshift straitjacket would hold. Then she got up, grabbed the ice bucket, and ran outside to the ice machine in the little cubicle three doors down. In the quiet hours before dawn the area was deserted. Clara looked uneasily around at the shadowy darkness beyond the yellow motel lighting, but saw nothing out of place. Still, she thought of Rostov and her heart pounded.
When she let herself back into the room she forgot all about Rostov. Jack’s entire body was jerking, rising off the green carpet in spasmodic heaves. Oh, dear God, don’t let him die!
Dumping the ice in the sink, she filled it with cold water and soaked the fitted bottom sheet in it. When the sheet was dripping wet, she carried it back over to Jack, kneeling as she wrapped the icy wet cloth around him, leaving only a small opening for him to breathe and another around his wound. She wanted to keep the wound as dry as she could, but the priority had to be bringing down his fever.
She soaked and wrapped and soaked and wrapped, and at last he was still. His skin was still overly warm, but not as fiery hot as it had been. His breathing seemed easier. Clara was exhausted, but she could not leave him lying there soaking wet. He needed to be dry.
Every muscle in her body ached. She was so tired that she could barely lift her arms. Her left hand with its broken finger was killing her. Looking down, she saw that the splint Jack had made for her out of his underwear was soaking wet. But she was too tired to unwrap her finger and deal with what was underneath. Swallowing two aspirin, she set herself to untying and unwrapping the makeshift strait-jacket she had put on him. Finally she had the last of it off. Still he lay without moving. She prayed that he had passed from unconsciousness to sleep.
His pants were soaked, as was the open shirt. Unbuttoned and unzipped, they still clung to him, the wet material loathe to leave his body. She yanked and pulled and tugged until she had them off. Then she cut off the shirt. He was naked except for the bandage, legs sprawled, left arm outflung, right arm, the one nearest the wound, close to his side. Carefully she dried him with a blanket. His nakedness seemed as natural to her as her own. When she was done, she pulled off her own sweater and jeans. Wearing just her teddy, she lay down beside him, pulling the rest of the covers over them both. Nuzzling her face against his side
and wrapping her arms around his middle, she whispered another prayer for his life. In the middle of it she fell asleep.
Forty-five minutes later his restless mutterings woke her. For a moment she was groggy, not knowing quite where she was or what had happened. Then she felt the burning heat of his skin. The fever had returned. Groaning, she got up and repeated the process she had been through before, fetching ice and soaking sheets and wrapping him in them. And as before his fever went down, she dried him and went back to sleep.
Before morning she repeated the procedure twice more. By the time the sun rose she was sitting on the floor near his head, her own head flopped back on the mattress, back propped against the end of the bed. She was boneless with exhaustion. Bright spots of white floated in and out of her vision. She had never worked so hard or so desperately in her life, never prayed so fiercely nor willed anything so much. He was going to live. She would not admit any other possibility.
It occurred to her, in her half somnolent state, to wonder why it mattered so much. After all, she had only known him five days. How could a stranger—a violent, tormented stranger who played this horrifying game of kill or be killed like one born and bred to it—have come to mean so much to her so quickly? He was not her type at all. She wasn’t sure what her type was, but she was sure it was not him. He wasn’t even handsome, or at least she remembered she hadn’t thought so at the beginning. Now she found him wildly attractive, but she suspected that it was the result of some kind of chemical effect he had on her hormones. With him she was as uninhibitedly passionate as any of the heroines in her books. It was not something she had ever expected of herself, and she did not like it. Craving a man’s
body like an addictive drug just was not nice. Certainly it was nothing to make her fall in love. …
Her mind winced away from the thought. She could not, would not, fall in love with him. It was ridiculous, impossible. He was crazy, for God’s sake, and she wasn’t referring to his past breakdown. He liked violence, liked danger, she knew he did, could see it in his eyes whenever they were in a tight spot. He had torn her from her home, endangered her life every half hour, been rude to her, insulted her, manhandled her—and he hated cats! She could not be in love with him.
She had always had the feeling that somewhere in the world was a man meant by fate just for her, her soulmate. A gentleman, a knight in shining armor, someone with whom she could fall madly, irretrievably in love. Someone with whom she would blissfully spend the rest of her life. Clara’s head lifted from the bed and she stared down at Jack in a kind of horror. Pale, unshaven, breathing stertorously through an open mouth, black hair standing up around his head in spikes, he looked dearer than all the world to her. Her heart warmed, but her mind shuddered with horror. Please, dear God, she added an addendum to her original prayer, don’t let my soulmate be him!
He was muttering. Clara sighed, pushing the unwelcome thoughts away. Whether he was one of life’s little dirty tricks or not, he had only her to care for him. And his fever was up again.
It was late afternoon. Clara was sprawled wearily on the floor beside Jack, too tired even to sleep. She had battled the fever all day, and at last she thought she might be winning. He was sleeping now, really sleeping. She wished she could. But she had passed beyond that point. She was tired to death, but sleep refused to come.
“Clara.” The mutter was indistinct, and for a moment she thought she had imagined it.
“Clara.” He was calling her! The knowledge banished her tiredness. Scrambling over beside him, she touched his cheek.
“Jack, I’m here. Right here, darling.”
He opened his eyes. His green eyes were feverish and bright, but aware.
“What
…
happened?”
“Don’t you remember? You were shot. When we were escaping from Rostov and his men.”
“Ahh.” He was silent for a moment, eyes closed. Then they flickered open again. “I see we … made it.”
“Yes. We’re safe. Don’t worry.” She wanted to soothe him. Impulsively she bent down to kiss his cheek. His eyes adjusted to look at her as she straightened. His lips moved in what might have been meant for a smile.
“You’re a good egg, baby.”
Clara didn’t know what encomiums she had been expecting, but that brief compliment made her want to laugh and cry and bash him over the head and hug him at the same time. When she thought back over the battle with death she had waged for the last twenty-four hours, to be greeted with You’re a good, egg, baby seemed like something of an anticlimax. But what had she expected, anyway? Protestations of undying gratitude and devotion? Not from Jack.
“You’re a good egg, too, Jack,” she told him with a rueful smile, and gave him a thumbs up sign. This time his smile looked more like the real thing.
“You got the bullet out, didn’t you?”
Clara blinked at him. “How did you know?”
“I know you. Nothing you can’t do if you put your mind
to it. Remarkable—remarkable woman.” His speech was slurring. His eyes blinked once, then closed.
“Jack!” She was panic stricken, leaning over him. She hadn’t known how much she needed his conscious presence until that instant.
His eyes flickered open again.
“Call Ramsey,” he said. And then they closed. Clara called to him, even shook him a little in her fear, but to no avail, He was either unconscious or deeply asleep. She sat back on her heels, chewing her lower lip with worry. Call Ramsey, he’d said. He must mean General “Wild Bill” Ramsey from Camp Lejeune. But was General Ramsey on their side? True, he had not shot them down when they had been in the stolen helicopter, but he had not helped them other than that, as far as she could see. But Jack had told her to call him. Had he been out of his head? She didn’t think so. Clara pondered a while longer. Then she made up her mind and picked up the phone.
“I want to place a call to Camp Lejeune,” she said into the receiver.