The Lost Recipe for Happiness - By Barbara O'Neal Page 0,130

you off. If you need to get back, Patrick can bring you.”

She looked at him, and he could tell she sensed the distance, too. “Thank you. Don’t wait up. I’ll probably stay with Patrick. He’s a mess.”

Julian nodded.

Alvin whined softly.

Ivan awakened slowly to a sensation of gagging and a headache that was like bombs going off. In his body were aches and pains and one dead zone around his ankle, which felt muffled or smothered.

A voice said, “He’s coming around,” and Ivan coughed as something slid out of his throat. There was rawness in his throat, a blast of pain in his face, his mouth. He opened his eyes a crack, gathering details, trying to piece together what he remembered, but there was a buzz in his brain and he couldn’t really think, and this room was lit with a cold bluish fluorescent light. He could hear the buzz of it. Someone took his hand.

Patrick said, “Ivan?”

He opened his eyes. There was Patrick, peering at him, his face ravaged with tears. “What happened?” Ivan rasped, and the words barely came out around the rawness.

“You wrecked your car. Ran into a tree three blocks from the Orange Bear.” Patrick glared at him. “You must have been going sixty to wreck the car that badly, they think.”

Ivan slowly shook his head. “I can’t remember anything.” There was a wisp of something, some faint unpleasant memory, and his bruised head skittered away.

“It’s all right, don’t worry. It will come back.” Patrick took a breath. “I thought you died, Ivan.” Tears spilled down his face. “I thought you died.” He kissed him, and Ivan tasted the salt and tears and there was something wrong, but he couldn’t remember what it was. As Patrick kissed him, he just let the light of that fill him up, and he fell asleep.

Around 3 a.m., Elena sent Patrick home for a nap and a change of clothes. He was upset in ways she’d never seen, pacing and weeping. “I should have gone outside, made sure he was all right. It was humiliating for me, but how much more for Ivan? That wasn’t fair. I’m not usually so mean. But I was tired of him fighting and being jealous and I wanted to teach him a lesson.”

Elena nodded, rubbed his back, listened and listened and listened as he covered the same ground, over and over. “I’ll sit with him,” she said. “Then I’ll go home when you get back.”

Alone in the room with Ivan sound asleep, Elena dozed. When she awakened, Isobel was there, sitting on the end of the bed, her legs teenager skinny, her neck looped with a dozen cheap necklaces. Her trademark. “He almost killed himself,” she said, putting her hand on Ivan’s knee. He didn’t stir. “He’s got so much love in him, poor guy.”

Elena nodded, feeling hollow as she listened to the blips and bleeps and gurgles, the faraway sound of pages—why did hospitals still use such noisy technology anyway, when every nurse and doctor could wear a cell and be paged via text? Then patients could sleep.

“Is there anything more depressing in the world than a hospital room in the middle of the night?” Elena said.

“You were there a long time,” Isobel said. She was still looking at Ivan with a slight frown.

Elena nodded. It made her feel hollow to sit there, looking at Ivan’s ravaged face. His lower lip, always so sensual anyway, was swollen twice the normal size and had a split through the middle of it, angry and moist. One eye was swollen shut, and there was an odd mark on his cheek, a fabric imprint. He’d broken a few ribs, and his left ankle, but it was cleanly broken and after a week he’d be able to stand on the cast. They thought he had a concussion, and he was covered with assorted cuts and bruises and stitches, but considering the impact, he’d been very lucky.

The chef computer in her was running scenarios of how to make the kitchen work without him for a few days. At least he hadn’t broken anything critical, like a wrist or a shoulder or—

Isobel touched his brow, his hair. “He doesn’t say how bad it was,” she whispered. “When he was a child.”

“How bad?”

“Bad,” Isobel said. She kissed his forehead. “Now he has you. You have him.”

He made a sound and moved restlessly. “Hey, Jefa,” he said. His voice was ragged.

A swell of emotion burst in Elena, and she jumped up, feeling tangled