Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(68)

She stared at him, and he at her, until her eyes filled with tears and his face swam before her. When she blinked, wet trails slid down her face, and he reached out and wiped his thumb through each one. At his touch, she began to sob, silently.

He cupped his palm over her cheek, and she turned into it. “What’s in your way, sweetheart?”

She didn’t know. She was so alone, so lonely. It didn’t make sense; Show was there, right there. Badger was with her all day long every day, but it was like there was some kind of invisible barrier between her and them. The pain that was just hers, impossible to share or express or even explain. The fear. The loss.

The confusion, like she’d been yanked out of her life and dropped into another dimension, one different in ways both subtle and extreme.

Her last memory before the hospital was of sitting on the loveseat in the manager’s suite, watching television. Some sitcom she didn’t even know the name of. She’d been killing time, waiting for Badger to get home from his run. The day had been average in every way, except that Badger had been away from her, and she had been lonely for him and eager for him to come home.

The last thing she could remember thinking was that she wanted to have sex with him again when he put her up on the kitchen counter.

And then she’d woken here, and her life was totally different. Or it felt totally different. It felt tiny— trapped in this bed, either wracked with pain or dopey, surrounded by people in masks and gowns, everybody looking alike, nobody looking entirely human.

And nobody could touch her. Except these barely touches of her face or her—so far—unhurt hip and leg. Or to hurt her. People touched her to hurt her every day.

What she wanted more than anything else in the world was for Badger to hold her in his lap and wrap her up in his arms. She wanted to tuck her head under his chin and feel his beard on her face. She had no idea when or if she’d ever have that again.

Somewhere in the jumble, she’d lost words. She didn’t know what was in her way. It was too big to see.

Show pulled his mask down, and she saw his face for the first time in days. “Adrienne, please. Try for me.”

But she was trying. She’d been trying.



oOo



She woke up one morning, about a week or so after her hopefully last surgery, and could talk.

There was nothing different about the morning—she’d woken to find Badger in his usual place. He was without a mask or gown, but that had been the case for a couple of days. There had been nothing different about the night she’d just passed, as far as she knew. Everything was the same. Her pain was less, but that, too, had been improving gradually every day since the surgery—it was still a lot of pain, but she was finding her tolerance for it.

Still, on that morning, as on every morning, Badger stood when he saw her open eyes. He came over and kissed her, on the lips, gently, then more deeply when she opened her mouth. Then he’d pulled back a little and smiled. “Morning, babe.”

And she’d answered. Without thinking about it, without trying, she’d said, “Morning.”

She hadn’t even realized she’d done something remarkable until he flinched back, his smile spreading.

“Hey! Are you back? Can you do that again?”

Now that attention had been drawn, she could feel the weird stiffening of her throat that she’d felt every time she’d tried over the past however long she’d been fighting this—but before it could overtake her, she forced out two more words: “Think so.”

Badger laughed and slid his hand behind her head, holding her against his shoulder—the closest thing to a hug she’d gotten in weeks. Since the skin graft surgery there’d been almost nowhere but her head that was both safe to touch and accessible.

“I missed you, babe. I love you,” he murmured. She could feel his words moving his throat.

“I love you.” She pushed her face against the side of his neck, feeling the soft brush of his beard against her temple and cheek, and wept.



oOo



“The mysteries of the human psyche, Adrienne. Even those of us who are supposed to be experts are just making smart guesses.”

Dr. Ambrose had come in to talk to her for the first time the day before her skin graft. He’d asked her a bunch of questions—all of them easily answered with a nod or shake. He hadn’t tried to cajole or force her to speak. He’d accepted that she couldn’t, not that she wouldn’t, and had worked around it. Badger was the only other person who hadn’t pressured her at all.

It had been a long first talk, every question he asked built on the last so that she could answer in the only way she had available. Without her hands, she couldn’t write out longer answers or explanations. But by the time he left, she’d managed to tell him things she would never have thought she would be willing to tell him. He knew about her father. He knew about her pain. He knew how lonely she felt, even though she was hardly ever without company. He even knew about her hard time at Columbia—and almost nobody knew about that.

When he’d left that day, promising to come back when she was up to visitors after her surgery, he’d said, “The last thing you need to worry about right now is whether you’re holding up your end of a conversation. I’m going to see what I can do to get everybody to leave you alone about that. And then, when you’re up to it, I’ll come and talk to you some more.”