When she’d finally awakened, he’d been torn. Her emergence from unconsciousness should have freed him to depart. But he found it oddly appealing to take care of her, to bring her a drink or hold her hand. His whole existence was about bringing life and marshaling the rebirth of nature after winter’s slumber, and yet those small acts in the dark of a hospital room somehow felt more meaningful.
And then she’d asked him if he was okay. When was the last time someone had expressed care for him instead of contempt? Instead of betrayal? So unexpected, the two words had jolted his heart. Blanketed him for a long moment in a rare sensation of peace.
All of this explained why, three days into the very season his lineage fated him to usher in and oversee, Zephyros, the Supreme God of Spring, Master of the West Wind, found himself haunting a human hospital, standing watch over a mortal woman.
When the female nurse left the room, Zephyros sighed and snaked through the gap in the window frame. Each hour, nurses came in to do routine checks, until finally Ella’s eyes blinked open in the late afternoon. Her awakening heralded a parade of hospital personnel through the room. A doctor gave her a thorough exam. A nurse removed various tubes her conscious state no longer required. A nutritional aide delivered a plastic tray of covered food.
Ella eyed the food and licked her lips. The aide positioned Ella so she could reach everything, and removed all the lids and covers since Ella only had one useful hand. Her right arm, injured somehow in the storm, sat immobilized in a sling. Zephyros grimaced at the watered-down sauce covering limp pasta noodles, but his bigger reaction was an intense desire to feed her from his own hand, to provide her the nourishment that would return her to health. Regardless, she ate with gusto like, well, like a woman who hadn’t eaten solid food in three days. When everything was gone except a container of lime Jell-O, she wiped her mouth, pushed the tray away, and dropped her head back against the pillows.
“Bet you think this is hilarious, don’t you?”
Zephyros’s disembodied gaze cut to her, startled at her speech though there was no way she could know he was there.
“I can just hear you, going on and on about how this is proof positive you’re such a better sailor than I am.” She chuckled ruefully and shook her head. “But I’m still not the one who took out a whole section of dock. I don’t care if you were sixteen.” The smile dropped from her face. Her breathing hitched. “I brought her back, though, Marcus. Somehow I got her back to the marina.”
Zephyros frowned at the mention of the man’s name, but couldn’t deny he was mesmerized by her words and the expressiveness of her face. When she fell asleep again, he stayed. Not because he had to, or felt he should. But because he wanted to. It probably wasn’t in his best interest—and certainly it wasn’t in hers—but where else did he have to be, anyway?
CHAPTER FOUR
Two mornings later, Ella woke to the smell of pancakes and sausage and the chatter of Janet, one of the friendlier nurses. The heaviest fog of pain and drugs had finally lifted from her brain, though she still felt a bit slow, a bit disconnected from reality. As the nurse took her vitals and spoke, the only words Ella really seemed to hear were “released later today.”
“Today?” Ella asked, her voice sounding more like itself.
“Yep,” Janet said with a smile. “Doctor has to check you out, and you have a PT consult, but we should be able to get you out of here later this afternoon.” The nurse raised the back of the bed and rolled the food tray closer.
Ella cooperated as the woman resituated the pillows to help her up, being very careful to move her right arm as little as possible. A spot of bright color caught her attention from the corner of her eye. Flowers. An enormous arrangement of springtime blooms of every color sat on the windowsill. “Where did those come from?”
Janet glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “I don’t know, but they sure are beautiful, aren’t they? Florist left them at the reception desk without a card, but no one noticed until after the delivery man was gone.”
Ella stared at the gorgeous bouquet. A rush of warmth flooded her chest. For the life of her she couldn’t imagine who they’d be from. And how sad was that? Still, they were stunning, and proof that someone had thought of her, even if she didn’t know who.
Janet looked at her. “Doctor’s gonna want to know if you have someone who can take you home, stay with you for a few days. Just to be on the safe side. You didn’t have any ID on you when you came in, so we only had the name and information the marina provided the EMTs. They said you didn’t have any family here, and we didn’t have any way of contacting anyone.”
Ella nodded, wondering which of her longtime buddies had found her on the True Blue. She wasn’t looking forward to facing him, whoever he was. “I’ll have to take a cab home, but if I can make a call, I have someone who I can arrange to come stay with me. Would that work?”
The nurse frowned for a minute, but finally said, “Should. Go ahead and make your call, though, and get those arrangements set up. You really ought to have someone with you.” She moved the room phone to the tray next to Ella’s breakfast.
“Thanks,” Ella said as she picked up her fork. “I’ll call right after I eat. I’m starving.”
“An appetite’s a good sign.” Janet smiled and left.
Ella groaned and the fork sagged in her hand. She had no one to call. Parents were gone. Marcus was gone. Craig…she scoffed…no way she’d ask him for help. Not after everything. Among her friends, most lived an hour away in D.C. and had families and jobs of their own they wouldn’t be able to walk away from to come play nursemaid. Not to mention, she had no desire to see the pity in their eyes, to watch them tiptoe around all the landmines in her life.
No thanks.
She’d be fine. What choice did she have? She’d been one of two her whole life, literally, now she needed to go it alone. If everybody else could do it, so could she.
Resolved, Ella pressed the edge of her fork into the pancake. It slipped, splattering syrup onto the tray. “Damn!” She cleaned up the spill, but couldn’t wipe all the stickiness off the fork handle. Cutting pancakes one-handed with your weak hand was a lot more difficult than it seemed. She sighed and attempted it again and again until she finally managed to free a few mangled bites. Giving up on cutting her food, she speared the whole sausage patty with her fork and ate it that way. She shoved the rest of the tray away.
She wanted to sleep, but found she couldn’t get her mind to stop churning. Every worry demanded airtime in her thoughts until she simply itched to get the hell out of there.
Maybe getting out of bed would help. Ella threw the light covers back and shifted one leg at a time over the edge. Keeping her immobilized right arm against her chest, Ella held onto the bed with her left hand and rose to her feet. Her back muscles ached and her head swooned, but she kept herself upright as she shuffled to the bathroom door and flicked on the light.
Her gaze went immediately to the mirror and the horror show that was her appearance. “Holy shit,” she murmured. The whole right side of her face was swollen and bruised from cheekbone to eye. She had a nice gash on her cheek with three—she leaned in closer—no, four stitches. Her lips looked like she could use a whole tube of Chapstick and never get them soft again. And that wasn’t even mentioning her limp, messy hair or the dark circles under her brown eyes. The latter she couldn’t really blame on the accident.
Relief flooded through her when the doctor arrived a little before noon. She was ready to be back in her own bed. Well, it wasn’t really hers, but as close as she had, right now…
“I see Janet left a note in the chart that you were making arrangements for company at home for a few days.” He looked up from the computer where he’d been entering findings from examining her.
“Oh, uh, yeah. Yes, I did. My, uh, a friend from D.C. will be over after work tonight. She’s going to stay with me a few days at least. She can telecommute, so it works out good.”
The doc
tor, an older man with a kind face and bushy eyebrows, nodded and smiled. “Good to hear. We’ll get you out of here as soon as the physical therapist can see you. In the meantime, a nurse will be in to go over your discharge instructions. You should follow up with your regular physician within forty-eight hours, and don’t hesitate to call the number on the discharge paperwork if anything worsens.”
A nurse came in just as the doctor left, a sheaf of paper in hand. In addition to the home-care instructions for her injuries, Ella also received a bundle of forms from admissions and billing. Normal people had loved ones who could take care of those things when you arrived in the ER, but, of course, she wasn’t normal. Not in that way, at least. And she couldn’t even use filling out the forms as a means of busying her hands and mind, because her right hand was largely immobilized and her left hand produced scrawl no better than a kindergartener. She set the paperwork aside.
In the afternoon, a gentle rain shower pattered against the window. The relaxing sound made her sleepy, so of course the physical therapist finally chose that moment to make an appearance. A young guy with far too much pep for her current mood delivered the disturbing news that she was going to have to use her injured shoulder and begin therapy right away. The ripping sensations that shuddered through her right side as he examined her nonexistent range of motion made his order seem frankly ludicrous, but injured muscles and ligaments apparently couldn’t sit idle too long without causing other problems down the line.
Begrudgingly, Ella agreed to the regimen he laid out before her and accepted the referral to a physical therapist who could see her day after tomorrow. Even without the sling, she found herself cradling her arm under her breasts.
As the therapist departed, a nurse breezed in and settled a bundle of fabric on the foot of the bed. “They cut your jacket and top off when you came in the ER, so here’s a fresh set of scrubs. How ’bout I help you into them?”
“No, that’s okay,” came Ella’s knee-jerk reaction.
The woman arched an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t risk your shoulder by attempting this yourself right now.”
“Oh, right. Guess I wasn’t thinking.”
“No worries, hon.”
Dressing was a torturous affair. Clearly, she’d be wearing a lot of button-up shirts for a while. She couldn’t have gotten the top over her head alone if she’d tried all day. She chuckled when she wondered how she would get it off again, but couldn’t share her thoughts with the nurse, who was under the false impression she’d have help at home this evening. Guess she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.
After sitting around all day, her departure from the hospital went comparatively quickly. An orderly wheeled her from her room, through the front lobby, and out to the circular drive, while a second man carried her bag of personal items and flowers. A taxi already waited, so with the men’s assistance, she slipped from one seat right into the other. The gentle drumming of the rain and the rhythmic thump of the windshield wipers filled the silence as she stared out the window.
The driver took her the back way to home. Down the busy strip of West Street, past fast food restaurants and car dealerships, to the historic part of Annapolis. At Church Circle, he veered right, then right again to head down the hill toward Eastport, her neighborhood that was really its own separate enclave within the town. Over the drawbridge they went, the metal surface a loud whirr under the tires, and Ella’s gaze couldn’t help but be drawn to the masts clustered together everywhere along the shorelines. A pang squeezed her chest when she thought about True Blue. She didn’t know her condition. And, likely, it would be a few days before she was up to checking her out.
A few quick turns later, the driver pulled up in front of the little yellow cottage that had been her brother’s home for the past three years. Now it was hers.
She dug into the bag with her ruined clothes and found her keys zipped into a side pocket of her windbreaker. Thank God. The cabbie carried Ella’s things to the front porch and waited while she ducked inside and grabbed some money. Ella threw a few extra dollars in when the older man offered to bring the flowers to her coffee table. It wasn’t like she could lift the heavy vase, and she’d become rather fond of them. So she agreed. The driver took the money with a smile and a “good-night,” and then Ella was all alone.
For the first time in the almost two months she’d resided here, she was truly alone. Marcus wasn’t here any longer. Not even in the form of his ashes. She didn’t even have the urn—
She shuffled over to her bag and yanked her tattered jacket onto the coffee table. Holding her breath, she grasped her right pocket. Sure enough… She grinned so wide it hurt her chapped lips. Somehow, the urn’s lid had stayed in her pocket through everything. With a groan, Ella reached up and settled the brass cover on the mantel. It was stupid, really, but having it there made her feel better. She could almost imagine she wasn’t alone.
Moving like an eighty-year-old, Ella grabbed a drink from the fridge and wandered around enough to turn on a few lights and her iPod. The light and music filled the house, feeling like company on the cold, rainy night. Her evening consisted of a dinner of chicken noodle soup at the table and reading the last few days’ newspapers that had piled up on the front porch, and even that was more than she probably should’ve done. When her eyelids drooped, Ella left her dinner mess for the morning and retreated slowly through the house, turning everything off on the way to the upstairs bathroom.
Once there, the idea of bathing took root, and sounded so delicious she gave in despite her exhaustion. What she really wanted was a shower, but her bandages made that impossible. She filled the tub with warm water, then turned to undress. No way she was getting her top off. Not by herself. She dug into a drawer and found a pair of scissors. Careful to hold the material out from her skin, Ella cut the shirt from V-neck to hemline and gingerly slipped it off her shoulders.
Washing her long hair one-handed proved a frustrating task, but she felt so much better when she was done she could hardly regret it. The water was warm and soothing, luring her to doze off. In the quiet stillness, she had the strangest sensation she wasn’t alone, but knew it was just the wishful thinking of her grief playing tricks on her. She sighed and pulled the plug with her toes before she really did fall asleep.
As she stumbled into her bedroom afterward, Ella decided to skip the bother of trying to get a shirt on. Instead, she simply slid under the thick pile of covers. Cold at first, they warmed quickly. She arranged the pillows as the nurse had suggested to keep from rolling onto her right side. Achy as her shoulder was, though, Ella was pretty sure even the slightest movement in that direction would wake her right back up.
Her body melted into the inviting comfort of the big bed. She lingered for long moments right at the cusp of unconsciousness. A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
“I feel you watching over me. Thank you for being here. I love you,” she murmured, thoughts of her dead twin the last she had before finally drifting off to sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
Zephyros stood, stunned.
He was ancient. He was immortal. He was a god. Yet this slip of a mortal woman pulled the ground out from under him over and over again. And she didn’t even know he was there.
Or maybe she did?
Every time he convinced himself to go, she said or did something that intrigued him. Or, worse, concerned him, and he’d find himself negotiating for just a little more time. Her pleased reaction to his flowers, her lie to the doctor and nurses, her pain at seeing her own reflection, at having that young doctor poke and prod her ruined shoulder. He couldn’t leave.
In truth, he didn’t want to.
His interest was stupid—and dangerous—but how many other times had he ignored the warning signs and plowed straight ahead? What his brothers said about him was true. He was apparently hardwired to fall, and fall hard. He couldn’t help it, though. Something to do with the interconnectedness of love and life and all that bullshit. F
at lot of good it had done him.
And then, as if each of those earlier moments hadn’t intrigued him enough, her words as she fell asleep nailed his feet to the floor. Did she really feel his presence? Surely, her expression of love wasn’t intended for him. But he was here, even if only in his elemental form, and he was real. And he was, in fact, very much watching over her.
As compelling as all of those reasons were, they paled in comparison to the one that kept him rooted to her side since she’d fully regained consciousness. When he was in her presence, a fundamental sensation of peace flowed through him. The first time he’d felt it, he’d nearly gone to his knees in sheer relief and surprise. For long, wondrous moments, the ancient pain and sadness and humiliation lifted. Sheer ease of heart, mind, and body surged through every molecule of his being. He couldn’t fathom an explanation, but the fact it kept happening when he was in her presence quite clearly meant it had something to do with her.
He had to learn more. And, in the meantime, he had to soak in every iota of her life-giving energy. It had been eons since he’d felt anything like it, and who knew when he would again. Maybe never. Definitely never.
But as the night passed and Ella slept, Zephyros resolved to right what he had wronged once and for all, before any further damage was incurred, before she became any more interesting. Now that she was at home, he had enough privacy to heal her, and then he would depart from this situation. Difficult though it would be to leave whatever it was about her that soothed him, he certainly couldn’t lurk around the edges of her life for however much of it she had left.