Once More With Feeling (20 page)

She nearly choked. "What?"

"Yeah. A clear case of obsession. He's after
you to repent, but he's the one who needs to. You get messages like
that all the time. He's probably busy under the desk while he's
leaving them."

"You're kidding!"

He started on his salad. "You don't remember
any of this?"

"Not a bit of it."

"Well, it's a start that you remembered the
name."

"What else should I know?"

"He propositioned you once."

"What?"

Casey nodded and dug deeper into his salad.
He was obviously a one-food-at-a-time kind of guy. Grant was the
same way. As a child he had refused casseroles, and to this day he
hated it when one food on his plate touched another. Grant, whose
mother she could never be again.

"Gypsy?"

She realized she was staring off into space.
"Sorry. It's just so unbelievable that the Rev. George Bordmann
would put the make on me. Do I look like I have minister's wife
potential?"

He looked up and grinned. "Did Tammy Faye
Bakker?"

She laughed and dug into the shrimp creole,
ignoring the salad, which looked far less promising.

"Gypsy!" Casey leapt to his feet and dived
across the table. Pottery skidded across the glass top and crashed
to the floor. Her fork flew out of her hand and shrimp creole
splattered all over her white shirt. "Spit it out! For God's sake,
spit it out!" he shouted.

She swallowed convulsively. Casey was lying
across the table like a turtle on a frozen pond, his arms batting
back and forth as if he were struggling for solid ground. She
gasped at the absurdity of it all. . . And no air filled her
lungs.

Her eyes widened.

"St. Patrick and all the Saints!" He managed
to get to his feet again and took off for the front door. He threw
it open and shouted into the hallway. "Billy, get an ambulance. Get
a doctor. Get somebody!"

Gypsy tried to piece it all together, but
the world seemed to have switched to a slower speed. She had
swallowed one bite of shrimp creole. And now, she couldn't seem to
breathe.

Bit by bit the room filled with people, all
moving slowly. So incredibly slowly. Her body seemed to swell. All
her organs were swelling and filling every cavity inside her. She
felt as though she might burst. There was no room for air. Had she
been able to breathe, she didn't know where the air would go.

She was dying. Again.

She closed her eyes and wondered if this was
a habit she ought to break. Was she going to die and find herself
in someone else's body once more?

She didn't want to die. And she didn't want
to leave this life. It wasn't Elisabeth's life; it was the life
Elisabeth had yearned for. Yet never, in all the weeks that it had
been hers, had she really lived it.

"Gypsy, look at me. Don't you go out on us.
Don't you dare!"

She opened her eyes and stared up at Casey.
She was scaring him to death. She could see that. He didn't know
that she'd been through this before, and that the worst part was
knowing she hadn't done the things she should have.

She'd been given another chance, the chance
she had secretly yearned for, and she'd blown it.

Again!

"Gypsy!"

Her eyelids closed on their own. And night
fell like a black velvet curtain.

"I don't need to be here." Gypsy looked
around the hospital room. It was a different hospital room, and a
different hospital. Roosevelt was not nearly as attractive as the
Stony Brook University Medical Center, where she'd recovered
before, but the paramedics hadn't been taking requests. Her
room--and she'd been lucky to get one--had no windows, and an empty
bed sat between her and the door. She could hear noise from the
rooms on each side of her, separated by makeshift partitions.

"I feel perfectly fine now," she added. "I
don't need to stay overnight."

Casey momentarily stopped pacing the room.
"You do, and you're going to. Des is on his way over, and he says
we're not going to let you out of here until the doctor says you're
fit to go home."

"Great."

"You scared the sh. . . You scared me."

"I guess my allergy to shellfish was just
one of those little things someone forgot to mention."

Casey still looked shaken. His hair was
hopelessly rumpled and he wasn't even trying to regain his savoir
faire. "It just never occurred to any of us. You were always so
vigilant. You picked through everything you were served, questioned
waiters and cooks. . . After the accident the subject never came
up, and I guess nobody thought about telling you. I know I
didn't."

"It should have been in my medical
file."

"I don't know if Roney ever requested
records from your regular physician. But if he did, somebody
slipped up or the information just wasn't there. Either way I
should have thought of it. Des should have thought of it."

"Don't beat yourself up. I survived."

"You nearly didn't. Thank God for
epinephrine and paramedics who know when to use it."

Gypsy reached for his hand. It seemed the
simplest thing in the world to do now. "Perry's going to have a cow
when she finds out."

He linked his fingers with hers. "I called
and left a message on her machine. I told her not to bother going
back to your apartment until tomorrow."

"At least she gets a whole night with her
honey. Silver linings and all that."

"Our night sure got shot to hell."

She brought his hand to her cheek. The
contact was comforting--and something even nicer. "I bet you're
starving. You can go back to my place and warm up the shrimp if you
want. I sure won't be eating it."

"I lost my appetite about the time you
stopped breathing."

"So did I." She didn't let go of his hand.
She pulled him a little closer. She wanted him closer. "You saved
my life. You and your quick thinking."

"I should have figured out what was on your
fork about one bite sooner."

"I wanted the shrimp to be a surprise. Was
it ever."

Casey lowered himself to the bed beside her.
"I guess I'm going to call it a night. Des should be here any
minute. He'll probably camp out by your bedside. I thought we were
going to lose him for sure when I told him what had happened. He's
been counting on getting you back on the air right away."

"Casey . . ." She tugged him closer still.
She didn't know what she wanted to say. Three hours ago she'd been
full of questions. Now she was full of answers, but she knew he
wouldn't understand.

"It's okay." He leaned closer and kissed her
lightly on the lips. "You're exhausted. It's been some night."

She put what little she could into words.
"Life looks a lot different when you think you're about to leave
it."

"Don't go philosophical on me, Gyps. I don't
know what to make of it, coming from you." For all his macho
veneer, his dark eyes were pools of confusion.

She was touched. "Sorry I keep trying to die
on you."

"Yeah, would you lay off dying for a while?
Give it a rest so we can all get back to work?"

"I plan to try," she said with feeling.

He nodded. He hesitated, as if he wasn't
sure exactly what to do next. She solved the problem by lightly
resting her hand on the back of his neck and guiding his lips back
to hers. His taste was becoming familiar. Her own response was
familiar, as well. She needed him. His warmth. His consolation. The
assurance that her heart was still beating. His arms came around
her and he pushed her harder against the pillow. Her heart beat
even faster. They were engrossed in a passionate kiss when the door
wheezed open.

A familiar voice bellowed from the doorway.
"Jeez, Gypsy. What in the hell are you trying to do to me?"

"Des is here," Casey said, without turning.
He smiled a little, kissed her again, then straightened. "I'm
gone."

"I'll see you soon?"

"Yeah. In a couple of days. When I get back
from assignment."

"I'll look forward to it."

Casey passed Des on his way out of the room.
"She didn't see Elvis or Hoffa before the paramedics got to her. I
checked."

Des didn't rise to the bait. He bustled
across the room and folded his arms to stare down at her. "I can't
take much more of this, Gypsy. My heart won't stand it."

"If you're worried about your heart, you'd
better pull up a chair."

He did, but he leaned forward as if he
planned to leap to his feet again if necessary. "Why in the hell
were you eating shrimp?"

She took a moment to compose herself,
although it was going to take a lot longer than that. "I didn't
know that I couldn't."

"Why the hell didn't somebody tell you?"

"Des, you're not making sense."

He ran his fingers through the wiry strands
of his hair until it was as rumpled as Casey's. "I never thought
about it. None of us did."

"It's over now. Unless there's something
else I should know? Something else that's threatening my life?" She
waited expectantly.

He looked down at the floor and didn't
answer for a moment. "Casey's been talking to you, right?"

"Yes."

"So you know about Mark. Well, that'll make
it easier to keep you safe. We won't have to scurry around behind
your back."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Roney said not to. He thought it would be
one more thing to worry you, and you had enough on your plate."

"Well, that part's true, at least. But it's
time to tell me all my many secrets. I'm not going to remember
things on my own, Des. I think that's pretty clear by now. And I
don't want to take any more chances with my life. It may very well
be the only one I've got left."

He looked up and glared, as if she were
making a lousy joke. "How in the hell are you going to get along?
I've got a show to produce, and you're the star. How are you going
to work if you don't remember anything? How are you going to sit
there and read copy if none of it makes any sense to you?"

"I've seen every episode of the show from
the moment I went on as reporter. None of the copy makes any sense
anyway, so what's the problem?"

"Are you kidding?"

In the last hours Gypsy had thought this
over carefully. For better for worse, she had been given this life.
She didn't know why, and she didn't understand how. But there it
was. At the moment when she thought she'd lost it forever, she had
realized just how precious a chance it had been. She had been given
her heart's desire. And she had nearly thrown it away.

"You know I can't remember anything, and I
know it. But I'm nothing if not an actress. Everyone knows my brain
got badly shaken. That's all they have to know. Nobody has to know
it's not going to get any better."

"Maybe it will. Maybe you'll--"

"No." She shook her head. "We've got to
assume this is what we've got to work with. And we can't assume I'm
going to regain any memories. Knowing that, with your help and
Casey's, I think I can pull this off."

He was silent, probably searching every
which way for angles on what she'd said. "You think you can do
it?"

"I know I can. But I'm going to need your
help. No more episodes like tonight. I've got to know everything
about myself, about the show and my job. Everything. There's no
point in keeping silent, hoping I'll remember on my own. If I
couldn't remember not to eat shrimp, I'm not likely to remember
colleagues or components of my job or any of the other ten thousand
things I'll need to know."

"It's going to be a whole lot of work."

"For both of us. Are you willing?"

"Willing?" He stood up and started to pace.
"My frigging job's on the line! If our ratings don't go up soon,
Callahan's going to be looking for a new producer. And I'm not the
only one. He'll make a clean sweep. There won't be anybody left
except the janitors."

"So even if I did recover in a couple of
months, there wouldn't be a show to go back to?"

"Not the show you're used to. . . or
were."

"Then neither of us has anything to lose and
everything to gain. Are you with me on this?"

"When are you coming back?"

She took a deep breath. She had expected
Desmond to agree. She just hadn't expected this to be so easy. She
was making more than a commitment to her job. She was making a
commitment to this life, Gypsy's life. She was going to seize this
opportunity, no matter how long or short her sojourn in this body
was destined to be. She didn't understand anything that had
happened or why, but now she understood something more important.
It could happen again. She could be faced with death at any moment,
and somewhere along the way she was going to run out of
chances.

If she wanted to be Gypsy Dugan, the time
was now.

"Monday," she said decisively.

"That's only three days away. Roney's gonna
pee in his pants! Especially after this latest scare."

"I don't care what Roney does. He's my
doctor, not my keeper. I'm coming back, and I want to get back on
the air as soon as I can."

"Nan's gonna pee in her pants."

"Now that I'd like to see." She dimpled
seductively, and she knew that if she were looking in a mirror that
the face dimpling back at her would be classic Gypsy Dugan.

It wasn't even light the next morning when
Gypsy got out of bed. Sometime during the night a nurse had removed
her I.V. and allowed her to get up on her own to use the bathroom.
She was steady enough on her feet, considering what she had been
through, and even steadier in her mind. She knew exactly what she
had to do next.

She was going to live Gypsy's life. She was
already, in very real ways, Gypsy Dugan. But she was also part
Elisabeth Whitfield. And the part of her that was still Elisabeth
couldn't completely abandon the life that had been hers.