What Doesn't Kill Her Read online

  “One hand at a time. You can do it.” Actually, she didn’t know if he could. He had a lot of body mass and didn’t look as if he had much upper strength. “Hand over hand,” she instructed in a calm, encouraging voice.

  The idiot wailed and kicked his feet.

  She put her hand to her hip and moaned—and climbed up on the top of the concrete railing. It was a foot wide; wide enough for her to stand with no problem—as long as she avoided looking down the three stories to the ground. That got her close enough to grab at him. She didn’t, though. She didn’t want to startle him. “Roderick, can you look at me? See how close I am to you? Come on, Roderick, a quick glance.”

  Roderick glanced, his face a combination of blistering red effort and green-white terror.

  “Hand over hand,” she said. “It’s Oregon. We have a lot of rain. That gutter will hold you. All you have to do is move a little bit.”

  He looked up at the sky and hung, gasping. Then he shuffled his hands to the right in three quick movements.

  “That’s great,” she said. He’d hardly moved at all. “When you get closer, I can guide you down to the balcony.”

  “I’ll break my legs,” he yelled.

  “The people inside the room are bringing out pillows and blankets. Aren’t you?” She blared the question toward the screen door in her Captain-Adams-in-command voice.

  The screen door snapped open and a man in a white terry bathrobe stood there, looking annoyed. “Look,” he said.

  “You look!” She pointed up.

  Had he thought she was kidding? Apparently so, because as soon as he saw Roderick dangling there, he ran inside and came back hauling pillows, sheets, the comforter.

  She switched her attention back to Roderick. “Rod, listen.”

  “Roderick,” he snapped.

  For a guy hanging by his fingertips, he was pain-in-the-ass arrogant.

  “Roderick, we’ve got you a soft place to land. Come on, shuffle over a little more.” Because hand over hand was apparently too much to ask.

  He shuffled.

  She made approving sounds.

  The bathrobe-clad woman in the room stepped out, looked up and shrieked, “He’s going to plunge to his death!”

  Little Mary Sunshine, that one.

  From below, Kellen became aware of a growing mutter, like the rumble of thunder from a faraway storm. “You’ve got an audience, Roderick,” she said. “You’ve got something to prove. You can do it.” She measured with her gaze. “You’ve got about three feet before you can drop onto the balcony.”

  He shuffled a little more. “I’ll break my legs.”

  “Maybe.” She figured this was the time to be blunt. “But it beats dying of a broken neck. That’s a three-story drop below you. Come on! Move it!” She’d moved from Captain Adams to Army drill sergeant, balancing on the top of the broad balcony railing, braying out orders at an unseasoned recruit.

  Roderick moved on her command. He shuffled, hung, shuffled, hung. Sweat stained his armpits.

  She moved back to allow his flailing legs to get past her.

  He got about a foot past her, and his hand slipped.

  “He’s coming down, get out of the way,” she shouted at the people on the balcony.

  They leaped back against the building.

  He swung his legs.

  His foot hit her outstretched hand.

  Already overbalanced, she fell sideways onto the balcony. She landed on the comforter; agony slashed at her hip, and she blacked out. Somewhere in the depths of her mind, she had heard a sickening crunch.

  He’d made it to the balcony—barely.

  Seconds later, she woke to Roderick’s screams. He had missed the pillows and the padding. When she looked, she saw blood and shattered white bone sticking out of one leg.

  The man on the balcony, the one in the robe, leaned over the edge and heaved.

  EMTs burst through the screen door and knelt beside Roderick.

  Another man came out behind them.

  MAXIMILIAN DI LUCA:

  TALL, DARK, HANDSOME, ITALIAN-AMERICAN, BROAD-SHOULDERED FORMER FOOTBALL PLAYER WITH A SCOWL, WINERY OWNER. FORMER (PERHAPS FUTURE?) LOVER. SCOWLING, CLEARLY FURIOUS.

  Max knelt beside her, grasped her hand, looked into her eyes. “Tell me the truth—how badly are you hurt?”

  “I’m not dying,” she hastily assured him.

  He closed his eyes, cradled her fingers against his chest, then opened his eyes and roared, “You couldn’t have called me directly? You called Rita instead? You couldn’t have waited for me to assist?”

  Wow. For a moment, he looked as if he cared. “He was going to fall!”

  “You’re bloody and you’ve got something sticking out of your hip. What the hell have you done?” Apparently it was a rhetorical question, because he yelled over the railing, “I need more EMTs up here!”

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  “So’s he, except for the compound fractures of his tibia!” Max put his hand toward the shard of roof tile sticking out of her side.

  She flinched away. “Don’t! If you pull it out—”

  “You’ll bleed to death. Yeah, I understand.”

  Roderick must have gotten enough morphine in his system, because his screams quieted to the whining of the world’s largest mosquito.

  Max gestured at the EMTs attending Roderick, and one rose, ready to attend Kellen.

  Then, from the top of the spike ladder, at the outside edge of the balcony, a chirpy sunny childish voice said, “Mommy, that was awesome. You’re like Warrior Woman. That makes me Warrior Girl. I’m going to be Warrior Girl for Halloween. What are you going to be?”

  RAE DI LUCA:

  FEMALE, 7 YO, MIXED ITALIAN/NATIVE AMERICAN/ANGLO ANCESTRY. BLONDE, BROWN-EYED, TALL FOR HER AGE, FRONT TEETH TOO BIG FOR HER FACE, INTELLIGENT, RELENTLESSLY CHEERFUL, TALKS LOUDLY AND CONSTANTLY. PREFERRED APPAREL: PINK TUTUS, PINK TIGHTS, PINK T-SHIRTS WITH GLITTERY EMBOSSED WIDE-EYED OWLS, ANKLE-HIGH PINK FUZZY BOOTS. PREFERRED MENU: PEANUT BUTTER, CHEESE STICKS, YOGURT, ANYTHING COVERED IN BALSAMIC VINEGAR. HATES GOLDFISH CRACKERS.

  Max stood and swiftly, efficiently grabbed their daughter off the top of the ladder. In his fierce father voice, he asked, “What have I told you about climbing trees and tall ladders? Haven’t I told you no?”

  “Mommy did it!” Rae said.

  Kellen intercepted a livid glare from Max and judged it a good time to pass out cold.

  So she did.

  3

  By some accident of nature, probably that she had needed less triage than Roderick, Kellen’s ambulance got to the hospital first. Some cute young guys wheeled her through the ER entrance—they probably weren’t any younger than her, but really, they were cute, for all the good that did her—and down the hall to a room occupied by tall female in a white coat:

  DR. CHERYL BRUNDAGE:

  FEMALE, INDIAN ANCESTRY, 45, 6', 160 LBS. BROWN EYES, HEAVY BAGS BENEATH, BROWN SKIN, BROWN HAIR WITH GRAY STRANDS. SITTING ON A TALL STOOL, FEET PROPPED ON ONE ANOTHER, LEANING AGAINST THE WALL. WEARY.

  Dr. Brundage took one look at the roof tile protruding from Kellen’s hip. Her eyes lit up, she stood, and in a booming voice, she said, “We don’t usually get good stuff like this in here. Usually it’s car wrecks and home canning accidents. Now this—this is something interesting.”

  “Thanks,” Kellen muttered. “I do my best.”

  With an air of efficient competence, Dr. Brundage helped transfer Kellen off the stretcher and onto the table beneath the overhead light. She cut the jeans off Kellen’s hip. “How’d you do it?”

  The adrenaline that had kept Kellen going through the rescue attempt had faded, and she couldn’t come close to meeting the doctor’s enthusiasm. “Tile fell off the roof. Broke. Got me.”

  “I’l
l say!” The doctor glanced up. “Max, this happen at your place?”

  “Yes.” He stood in the door, looking visibly displeased.

  “You taking care of the insurance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great. Don’t worry about it. Shouldn’t cost you too much. Unless she decides to sue.” Dr. Brundage peered at Kellen. “She doesn’t look like the type.”

  “I won’t sue,” Kellen said.

  “There you go, Max. Now go fill out the forms so I can work on my patient.”

  “Right,” Max snapped back and headed toward the waiting room.

  He didn’t even ask Kellen how she was feeling. She guessed right now he considered her more trouble than she was worth. “Maybe that’s true, but I did save the guy’s life.” She blinked at the doctor’s face. “Know what I mean?”

  “Not really, but I am glad you saved someone’s life.” Dr. Brundage’s voice changed. “Hi, Rae, how are you? Any more trouble with shutting your finger in the car door?”

  Rae’s high piping seven-year-old voice said, “I only shut my finger in once. It hurt. I won’t do it again.”

  “Max needs to take her with him,” Kellen said.

  “She’s fine,” Dr. Brundage assured her. “We’re good friends. Aren’t we, Rae?”

  Kellen heard the sound of a stool scraping across the linoleum toward her.

  “I like you except when you stick me with needles.” Rae’s voice got closer. She was the stool scraper. “Know what? I climbed the ladder all the way to the top, just like my mommy.”

  In a normal voice, Dr. Brundage said to Kellen, “This is going to hurt a little,” and plunged a hypodermic needle about the size of a Craftsman screwdriver into her hip. In a return to that cajoling kid-talk voice, Dr. Brundage asked Rae, “Who’s your mommy?”

  “She is!”

  Kellen didn’t have to look to know Rae was pointing at the examining table.

  Dr. Brundage’s voice changed to sharply inquisitive. “This is your mommy?”

  “It’s a long story,” Kellen said. “Not interesting at all.”

  “I beg to differ!” Kellen suspected Dr. Brundage always said what she thought.

  Out in the corridor, they heard a scuffle: shouting and swearing. “What’s going on out there?” Dr. Brundage asked.

  “Roderick Blake has arrived,” Kellen said.

  “My mommy saved that man’s life,” Rae confided.

  “Did she? Sounds like he didn’t appreciate it,” Dr. Brundage said.

  Impatient voices murmured around Roderick’s wildly abusive language.

  “We love getting those kinds of guys into Emergency.” Dr. Brundage looked closely at Kellen. “How’s your pain on a level from one to ten?”

  “About eight. Seven. Six...” Kellen’s voice slurred as her grip on reality slipped. “What did you give me?”

  “The good stuff.” Dr. Brundage yelled, “Brenda, I need you! We’ve got some irrigation and sewing to do in here.”

  The sound of Roderick’s yelling faded, followed by an indistinct swell of indignation from the hospital staff as those who could hurried away.

  In her cajole-a-kid voice, Dr. Brundage said, “Honey, we’re going to fix your mommy now, so you need to go find your daddy.”

  “I want to stay! My mommy is ThunderBoomer.”

  “ThunderBoomer?” Kellen and Dr. Brundage said at the same time.

  “What happened to Warrior Woman?” Kellen asked.

  “No, you can’t be Warrior Woman, because I’m LightningBlast.”

  “ThunderBoomer sounds like I have a flatulence problem,” Kellen complained.

  Dr. Brundage snorted and laughed—and snorted. Then she sobered and with a grim intensity, said, “Rae, your mommy’s going to spout a lot of blood.”

  “Oo. No. Gross.” Without hesitation, Rae abandoned ThunderBoomer. The stool scraped away. From the door, her piping voice admonished, “Mommy, you be good and don’t cry too much.”

  “More likely I’ll dance.” Kellen wasn’t sure the words came out right, she was slurring so much.

  “Brenda’s my nurse,” Dr. Brundage said. “Once she gets in here, we’ll have you cleaned up in no time. This is going to hurt a little. I’m removing the tile.”

  She wasn’t finished speaking before she’d done it.

  Bright pain spots on a black humming background. How was it possible to hurt so much coming out when it hurt so much being in there?

  “You going to toss your cookies?” Dr. Brundage asked.

  Kellen folded her lips tightly over her nausea and shook her head.

  “That’s official doctor talk,” Dr. Brundage informed her. “This is more official doctor talk. I’m going to irrigate the wound now. With saline. It’s going to sting.”

  In the hallway outside the room, Kellen heard a woman say, “Hi, honey, how are you? Have you fallen out of a tree and scared your daddy again?”

  “Hi, Nurse Brenda. No way, I haven’t fallen out, and Daddy doesn’t know about the walnut tree, so it’s okay.”

  “The walnut tree?” Brenda asked.

  “I made a tree house.”

  Kellen squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them wide. A tree house? Rae had made a tree house? The kid was seven. How could she make a tree house?

  “How did you make a tree house?” Brenda must be channeling Kellen.

  “I got the boards from the, um, place where Daddy’s new shed is getting built.”

  “You stole the boards?” Brenda sounded surprised and maybe a little admiring.

  “No! Stealing is against the law. I took boards from the scrap pile.” In a confidential tone, Rae said, “That’s another way of saying the garbage dump.”

  “Daddy doesn’t know you confiscated those boards, does he?” Brenda asked.

  “No way.” Rae sounded absolutely unrepentant. “You know what? My mommy’s in there bleeding.”

  “Is she?” Brenda sounded interested and a little skeptical. “Who’s your mommy?”

  “My mommy is a superhero. She’s secretly ThunderBoomer. See, she got shot in the head by a bad man.”

  Kellen felt Dr. Brundage brush the bangs off her forehead.

  Dr. Brundage made a “hmm” sound as she revealed the round red scar. She didn’t call Brenda in, either, but started irrigating.

  “Mommy was in comma.”

  “A comma?” Brenda sounded as if she was torn between amusement and a vast captivated interest.

  “She couldn’t wake up,” Rae explained.

  “That’s not good.”

  “It was bad.” Rae sounded like she was telling a horror story. “Because she was pregnant with me and she didn’t know it.”

  “That’s really not good,” Brenda agreed.

  “She had me early.” Rae’s voice got gloomy. “My daddy and my grandma took care of me, and they were sad. Then one day, my mommy woke from her comma.”

  “Coma... Never mind. What happened?” Brenda sounded eager.

  Dr. Brundage was clearly riveted, too, because she pulled up a stool, said in a quick low voice, “I’m stitching now,” and went to work.

  Lucky for them both Rae had such a piercing voice.

  “She woke up and...?” Brenda’s voice trailed off invitingly.

  “She didn’t remember she had a little baby girl. She didn’t remember my daddy. She didn’t know where she was. So she got up and got dressed and left the hospital, and we didn’t know where she was!”

  “Wow. That’s quite a story.” Brenda sounded as if she wasn’t sure she believed it. Sensible woman.

  “Don’t you want to know where she was?” Rae asked.

  “Sure!”

  “She joined the Army. She got to be a captain. She got shot and blown up and stuff. That’s how she got to be Thund
erFlash.”

  “I thought she was ThunderBoomer,” Brenda said.

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “Makes total sense.”

  Rae continued, “One day she came back from the war and she still didn’t remember.”

  The stitches pulled and tugged at Kellen’s hip. She could hear Rae’s voice grow uncertain.

  “She went to work at Yearning Sands Resort for Annie and Leo—they’re my great-great-aunt and uncle, because I like them a lot and they’re great. Mommy met my daddy and she saved people’s lives and she kind of remembered and she almost got killed and then I told her she was my mommy.” Rae’s voice wavered more and more.

  “And then?”

  “I think she believed me.”

  Oh, God. Kellen was such a bad mother. Maybe a bad person. She had a daughter, a daughter she hadn’t known, and sure, she was trying to be a mother now. But it was tough. She didn’t know much, but she knew she wasn’t supposed to make Rae uncertain and scared. Mothers were supposed to be smart. She was supposed to be right. She was supposed to know what she was doing—and she didn’t know anything!

  She had no instincts.

  She was a bad mother.

  “Stop worrying about it. No mother knows what she’s doing.” Dr. Brundage was reading her mind.

  Or maybe Kellen was thinking out loud.

  Dr. Brundage continued, “I had my daughter when I was in high school, I wouldn’t give her up to a good family, and I did everything wrong. But she’s a good kid, and she’s in premed. Rae’s a good kid, too. She’ll be okay.”

  Out in the corridor, Max’s voice, wry and amused. “Honey, are you telling the whole hospital our family secrets?”

  “No, Daddy, only about Mommy and me and you.”

  “That’ll do it,” Max said. “Hi, Brenda.”

  His tone must have made the elusive Brenda nervous, because she suddenly appeared at Kellen’s bedside. “I’m here, Doctor.”

  Outside the door, Max said, “Grandma has arrived. She’s in the waiting room, and she’s going to the cafeteria.”

  Kellen heard the steady thump-thump of Rae’s heels against the linoleum. “I want ice cream!”

  “You’ll have to talk to Grandma about that,” Max said.