Home Again

He shouldn’t care.

But he did. Suddenly, irrationally, he did. He didn’t want Madelaine to be his brother’s wife, his brother’s love. He wanted her the way she’d always been. A brilliantly colored photograph in the sepia-toned memories of his life. His and his alone.

She stared at him for a long moment, looking disappointed, then, very quietly, she said, “You can get as famous as God, and it doesn’t change the facts.” She leaned close, so close he could smell her perfume. “You’ll always be Francis DeMarco’s kid brother.”

“I forbid you to tell him I’m here.”

“Oh, Angel.”

At that moment, in that tone of voice, she made his name sound like a curse.

Madelaine moved woodenly toward her desk. She sat down, her back ramrod-straight, then, very slowly, she sagged forward, plopped her elbows on the desk, and closed her eyes.

It had taken considerable self-control to appear cold and disinterested. Of course, discipline was the one thing she had in spades. She’d practiced it since her hair was in pigtails—lying, pretending. In that big house on the hill, appearances had been everything.

Yes, Father, of course, Father. Certainly I will.

She was a master of such deception, but she’d never quite been able to overcome the unpleasant side effects—the dry mouth, the clattering heart, the sweaty palms. Any time she had to stand up for herself, she was a wreck afterward.

She’d expected Angel to have changed more. World-famous now, rich and good-looking and successful, he should have been surrounded by friends. But no flowers or cards or phone calls had come for him. There was no woman waiting in the hallway, no friend hovering about his bed. Now, when push came to shove, he was utterly alone.

What did he have now? she wondered. Where did his joy come from? Drug use, free sex, a brawl or two at some seedy tavern, an Oscar nomination? She wondered if all the photographs she’d seen of him over the years were lies—brittle smiles for a flashing camera.

In the old days she’d known his soul—or thought she had. He’d always been all bluster and anger on the outside, but inside, he hurt as badly as she did. She’d known always that he had a hole inside him, a deep secret place from which he bled. She knew it because she had the same hole in her own soul. In her it had been born of loneliness and fed by the hard realization that her father despised her. Over the years she’d covered it with a sheer, thin wall of glass that made her feel fragile and easily bruised, but it was some protection at least.

With Angel, who knew?

The phone on her desk rang, interrupting her thoughts. She reached for it and heard Hilda’s voice. “It’s Tom, Madelaine. He’s coding.”

“Shit!” Madelaine threw the papers down on her desk and ran for the door. As she raced down the hallway, she heard the alarm blaring through the paging system. Code blue, ICU … code blue, ICU.

She skidded into the room. White- and blue-clad people clustered around the bed, yelling at one another, reaching for things. Hilda was already there, hunched over Tom, her hands clasped and pressing on his chest. She saw Madelaine and flashed her a panicked look. “We’re losing him.”

“Get me the cart,” Madelaine barked, shoving through the crowd to the bedside. The cart skidded to a stop beside her. “Intubate him,” she said.

“Lidocaine’s started,” the staff nurse answered.

Madeline’s gaze shot to the monitor. “Shit,” she hissed again. It wasn’t working. “Shit. Defib.”

Someone handed her the defibrillator paddles, ready to go. Hilda wrenched Tom’s gown open, and Madelaine pressed the paddles over the ugly red scar that bisected his chest. “Clear!”

Electricity slammed through Tom’s battered body. His back arched off the table, then collapsed back down. All eyes went to the monitor. Rat line.

“Again,” Madelaine said.

Once more Tom jerked off the table in an inhuman spasm. Madeline’s breath caught; she stared at the black box. A tiny blip-blip-blip came from the monitor; a pink line humped and waved and skidded across.

“We’ve got a pulse…. BP’s eighty over fifty and rising….”

Madelaine sighed in relief—a sound she heard echoed by everyone in the room.

“Too close for government work,” Hilda said with a tired smile as she extubated Tom.

Madelaine didn’t answer. One by one the staff left the room, talking among themselves. Already the emergency was over and it was back to life as usual.

Hilda remained behind. She put a hand on Madelaine’s shoulder. “He’s been doing well up to this point. Handling meds well. Biopsy came back negative.”

Madelaine nodded. She tried to smile, but it took too much effort. “Thanks, Hilda. I’ll stay with him a minute.”