Home Again

There will be no baby. He tried to take comfort from the knowledge, but somehow it only hurt more.

He was scared. God, so scared. He didn’t want to give up his whole future, not yet.

Slowly he turned. He saw her up there, her pale oval face trapped between the iron bars that blocked her window, captured in the rain-smeared glass.

Then he jumped on his brother’s bike and rode away, the check as heavy as pieces of silver in his coat pocket.

Angel released his breath in a heavy sigh. Yeah, he’d ridden away, ridden hard and fast and long, and ended up right where he began.

I call her Lina.

The words slammed him back into the present.

And he felt the first threatening thud inside his chest.

He closed his eyes and lay still, taking shallow breaths. The sweat on his forehead turned cold, slid in streaks down the sides of his face.

He tried to reach for the nurses’ button, but he was too weak. He couldn’t lift his arm.

The cardiac monitor clattered and hummed, then screamed in alarm.

Heart failure.

Angel tried to keep breathing. His body seemed to encase him, bloating bigger and bigger, a seeping darkness that filled everything. And in the center of it all was the pain.

In some distant part of his brain, he heard the commotion—the door banging open, the light spilling in, the voices raised in alarm. He heard them calling his name, but he couldn’t answer. There were layers and layers of darkness between him and the light, and he was tired, so tired. Hours seemed to pass.

Then he felt her touch, heard her voice through the screaming cacophony. “Angel?”

He tried to reach for her, but his body fought him, a limp dead thing without will or ability. He blinked hard, forced his eyes to open.

Madelaine was leaning over him, her hair transformed into a halo by the glaring overhead light. For a second he was back on the Ferris wheel, seeing her draped in starlight. “Mad,” he croaked.

“Don’t you die, Angel DeMarco. Don’t you dare.” She turned her head and gave orders in a composed, controlled voice that calmed him. Then she turned back to him, stroked his damp forehead again. “You’re going to make it through this, Angel. We’ll find you a heart. Just don’t give up.”

r /> Her face kept going in and out of focus.

“Angel? Stay awake.”

His eyelids felt heavy. He thought there was something he needed to say to her, then the thought was gone.

“Pulmonary edema,” Madelaine said under her breath. Then louder, “Get the code cart. God damn it, people, let’s move….”

He knew the words should frighten him, but he couldn’t feel anything anymore.

Chapter Fourteen

The cool autumn evening sky had begun to soften, blurring at the edges in shades of pink and lavender and blue.

Francis sat Indian-style on the hardwood floor of the Quilcene Room, his gaze fixed on the night unfolding beyond the floor-to-ceiling window. Crows cawed to one another, swooping from their perches in the cedar trees, chasing smaller, weaker birds into hiding places along the eaves. He could hear the scraping of their clawed feet on the planks outside. It was just past twilight, the time of night when the horses and cows on nearby farms whickered and lowed for their nightly rations of hay, when deer warily crossed the country roads in search of the last sweet grass before winter.

Thick gray clouds drew cautiously together and sent a few spitting drops of rain downward. A breeze tapped the window and kicked up a pile of browning leaves. Pine needles sprinkled to the ground, collecting here and there on the white-painted windowsills.

“Father Francis?”

Francis drew his gaze away from the window and glanced around the room at the men clustered near the fireplace. Shards of light leapt from the roaring fire, twisting across the serious faces that stared back at him.

It was their sixth night together, the last before a forty-eight-hour break when each of the couples would spend some romantic time together. Francis looked at the men and smiled.