Grave Secret Page 0,61

locked up again. There were no doors leading to other rooms, and on the second floor I felt no one could get in the window. But I drew the drapes.

And I stayed isolated in the room until the next morning.

It was no way to live.

Tolliver looked even better the next day, and the doctor said he could check out of the hospital. He gave me a list of instructions. The wound was not supposed to get wet. Tolliver was not supposed to lift anything with his right arm. He was supposed to have some physical therapy on the arm when he got home. (I supposed in our case that would mean when we returned to St. Louis.) Of course the discharge process took forever, but eventually we were both in the front seat of our car together, and I'd buckled Tolliver in.

I started to say, "I wish we could just leave," but then I thought that might make Tolliver feel bad. We had to follow the doctor's orders, so we had to stay a few more days. I was increasingly eager to leave Texas. I'd thought we might start house hunting this trip, and instead I wanted to pack our stuff into the car and drive like hell.

Tolliver looked out the car window as though he'd been in prison, as though he hadn't seen restaurants and hotels and traffic in years of solitary confinement. He had on the jeans and button-up shirt I'd brought him, and he looked a lot more like himself than he had in the hospital smock.

He caught me looking sideways at him. "I know I look like hell," he said, matter-of-factly. "You don't need to tell me."

"I was thinking you looked really great," I said innocently, and he laughed.

"Right," he said.

"I've never gotten shot before. Not really. Just grazed. Was it really like a big fist hitting you? That's the way they always describe it in books."

"If the really big fist travels all the way through you, making you bleed and causing some of the worst pain you've ever felt, yeah," he said. "It hurt so bad I wanted to die for a minute."

"Gosh," I said. I tried to imagine pain that intense. I'd been hurt, and hurt badly, but when the lightning had struck, I hadn't felt anything for a few seconds, except that I was in another world, and then back in this one. After that, I'd pretty much hurt all over. My mother had told me that childbirth was horribly painful, but I'd never experienced that.

"I hope that never happens again," I said. "To either of us."

"Have you heard from anyone?" he asked.

I thought that was an odd way to put it. "Who, specifically?" I asked.

" Victoria came to the hospital last night," he said.

I held my tongue for a second. "Should I be jealous?" I asked when I could manage the appropriately light tone.

"Not any more jealous than I am of Manfred."

Uh-oh. "Then you'd better tell me all about it."

We pulled up at the hotel then, and our talk was postponed while I went around the car to open Tolliver's door. He rotated his feet out, I pulled a little with my hand under his good arm, and out he came. He made a face, and I knew the process had hurt. He moved away from the door, and I shut and locked the car. We went into the hotel slowly. I was more dismayed than I cared to show when I realized just how shaky Tolliver was.

We got through the lobby just fine, then into the elevator. I was trying to keep my eyes on Tolliver in case he needed support, and also trying to watch out for some approaching trouble, so I felt like a demented woman, with my eyes darting here and there and then back to my patient.

When we were actually in our room, I heaved a sigh of sheer relief and helped Tolliver lie down on the bed. I pulled a chair up to the bed, but that felt too much like the hospital, so I lay down beside him and turned on my side so I could look at him.

He took a minute to get settled. Then he turned his head so his eyes would meet mine.

"This is so much better," he said. "This is better than anything."

I agreed that it was. In the spirit of welcoming him back to the nonhospital world, I unzipped his pants and gave him some physical therapy he hadn't expected,