own. They moved away from her in hushed conversation to the hall, and Trissa buried her head in the pillow, better to hide the tears from him when he returned, tears he would not understand and she could not explain. She heard his quiet footsteps as he circled the bed, picked up the fallen roses, and set the bedraggled bouquet on the windowsill. And then he waited, his arms folded, leaning against the radiator.
"Thank you," she said finally, pulling herself up but not trusting herself to look directly at him. "I mean, for the flowers."
"I'm sorry they're a little crushed."
"And--" she added with a quick, sharp sigh, "and for me."
"A little crushed as well, I'm sad to say."
"I don't know how you could -- or why -- or why you'd want to -- I -- I'm sorry. You could have been killed." Her whole body shuddered with the sobs that broke over her, but without a word he stepped toward her and enfolded her in his arms and rocked her while she cried. "It would have been better if you hadn't. It would have been over by now. It would have been over."
"But the world needs you, Trissa. It couldn't let you go. I couldn't let you go."
In confusion, she looked up at him through the blinding blur of her tears. What impossible faith did he demand of her? Her leaving would be of such small import to the world, the hushing of one heartbeat among so many billions. What could it matter when no one cared? God, how her head ached, how her heart thumped with such deafening regularity in her brain! How she wished it would stop and leave her in peace.
She buried her head against his arm, soaking his sleeve with her relentless tears. Her fists clenched at the soft wool of his jacket as he rocked her patiently, cradled her so gently, mindful of her bruises. And since it hurt so much to think, she surrendered to his lulling comfort. Maybe it was not him she had feared but the life he had restored to her. But she would not think of that now either. Thought seemed to be drowning in this battered brain of hers, sinking in the pain and the constant roar of the train.
*****
Her crying slowed and stopped and her ragged breathing gentled a bit. Limp with exhaustion, she slipped into fretful sleep, but when he made moves to settle her back against the pillow, she clutched at him. "Please, don't let me go. You said you wouldn't let me go."
"I won't," he whispered.
With her eyes still closed, she spoke to him, in a dreamy haze of a voice. "Who are you, Nicholas Brewer? Who are you?"
"Someone to take care of you."
"Forever and always?" she asked with the questing faith of a child.
"And ever after that." She slept then. The nurse's aide said that she would. The painkiller would make her drowsy all day. Beyond that, she would tell him nothing. There were x-rays taken. Her continued dizzy spells were a concern, but the doctor would have to talk to him about that.
"Don't worry, Mr. Brewer, we are doing all that we can for her." It was a sentence that sent an immediate chill through him. All that we can implied that there was something they could not do, didn't it? The thought made his precarious optimism seem as bent and mangled as his poor bouquet.
It made jagged sense to him that he would find her just to lose her. It was the wretched pattern of his life -- found and lost and found and lost again. But what twisted God would seek to illustrate his point with such cruelty? That was an insanity more difficult to accept than his own.
When he felt, at last, that she slept soundly enough, he nestled her back on the crisp, white sheets, drew his chair up to the bedside and sat watching her. Remembering his promise, he kept one hand lightly on her forearm, not letting go.
Chapter Six
Trissa did not stir with the bustle of activity that brought another patient to fill the bed next to her. Nicholas watched the precision of the staff, the two orderlies and two nurses, as they shifted a motionless bundle from the gurney to the bed, attached an intravenous bottle to the rack they wheeled in and belatedly drew the curtain. When they left, only the new roommate's huffing intakes of breath made him aware of her presence beyond the