There's Always Tomorrow (Immortal Series) (21 page)

Sophie glanced
toward the window and was startled to see the sun.
 
How long had she been sleeping?

Ibsen whispered
in Sophie’s ear, then stood to address everyone in attendance.
 
“Mrs. Barton wishes to be left alone,
for a while.
 
Marie, please see the
doctor out.
 
Thank you for coming
so promptly, Doctor.”
 
He turned
his back to the crowd and listened for their departing footsteps.
 
When the door clicked shut, he pulled
up a chair.

Sophie needed
to confide in her husband’s closest family acquaintance.
 
“Ibsen.
 
Do you know?”

“Madam?”
 
His face registered no emotion.

“My husband is
unique.
 
I need to know if you’re
aware of his…uniqueness?
 
This is
quite confidential.”

Ibsen began to
look the slightest bit uncomfortable.
 
“I know Mr. Barton very well, madam.
 
I came to work for him when I was but a young lad.
 
Does that answer your question, madam?”

Sophie
grinned.
 
“It most certainly
does.
 
Now that I know, you know, I
can speak freely.
 
His plane has
been reported to have gone down, just off the coast of France.
 
That’s not like in the middle of
nowhere, is it?
 
And, I know he’s a
really good swimmer.
 
Because of
his special condition, I have no need to worry, right?
 
He’ll call me when he gets ashore,
right?”
 
Sophie’s smile was
tentative.
 
The butler could see
she was in need of some reassurance.

Ibsen cleared
his throat.
 
“That is a
possibility, madam.
 
It is highly
unlikely that he has been
killed
.”
 
The old man hated to even whisper the word.
 
He loved the boy, but he was also aware that there were
things, that Tony could suffer, far worse than death,.
 
“I will call around.”

“Don’t let them
stop looking for him, Ibsen.
 
He’s
probably swimming, or floating on a piece of kelp.
 
I’m afraid even he can get tired.”

The butler’s
eyes rounded.
 
“Kelp, madam?”

Sophie waved
her hands in the air.
 
“Oh, you
know what I mean.
 
Don’t let them
stop looking.
 
And get me a flight
out of here.
 
I need to be with
Tony,” she insisted.

* * *

“It was a
miracle, the reporters all said.
 
Mr. Barton was the sole survivor.
 
Over 237 passengers and crew perished on that flight, God rest their
souls, yet he survived.

“I can’t
imagine how you must feel, Mrs. Barton,” the kindly old doctor went on,
breathlessly, as they rushed down the hospital corridor.
 
“How did you know to come here on such
short notice?
 
It’s almost as if
you knew he’d be found alive.”

Sophie
smiled.
 
“I had a hunch.
 
He’s always been very lucky.”

“Oui.
 
Lucky indeed,” he replied.
 
“A fishing vessel found him floating
amongst the debris.”

“On kelp?” she
inquired.

“Kelp,
madame?”
 
The man was clearly
puzzled.

“Never mind,”
Sophie said, off-handedly.

“They pulled
him aboard, and radioed in their position.
 
We sent a helicopter to bring him straight here, and
voila!
 
Here he is.

“He has very
serious injuries, but is improving.
 
His case is most unusual, however.
 
Our lab is most confused with their findings—but enough of that,
for now.
 
I know you are anxious to
see your husband.
 
He’s in here.”

He opened the
heavy door, at the far end of the hall. “Monsieur Barton.
 
I have a surprise for you.”
 
He stepped back and allowed a smiling
Sophie to enter the room.
 
The
doctor quietly retreated, closing the door behind him.

In a flash,
Sophie was in Tony’s arms.
 
He
cried…she cried…and then, they kissed…and kissed some more.

“Oh, Tony.
 
I was so frightened when I first
heard.
 
Why do bad phone calls always
happen in the middle of the night?
 
What happened to the plane?”

“From what I’ve
heard, they suspect wind shear.
 
The plane was pulled down, into the water, and couldn’t recover.
 
It happened very fast.”
 
He shut his eyes, reliving the
pandemonium in the cabin.
 
The
luggage and the passengers were thrown around like rag dolls.
 
He could still hear their cries of
panic.
 
He wouldn’t share those
memories with his wife.

Sophie tried to
bring him back to the present.
 
“I
had a talk with Ibsen and he set my mind at ease.
 
He made all of my travel arrangements, you know.
 
He’s worth his weight in gold.
 
I hope you pay him enough.
 
How old would you say he is?”
 
Sophie went fishing on a little fishing
trip.

Tony grinned,
knowing full well where she was going.
 
This was his Sophie, after all.
 
“He’ll be seventy this August.
 
Why do you ask, darling?” he asked, coyly.

“Oh, just
wondering.
 
When did he come to
work for you?”

Tony
chuckled.
 
She wasn’t even
pretending to be covert.
 
“Let me
think.
 
It was a very long time
ago.
 
A very, very, long time
ago.
 
Let’s see.
 
I believe he was nineteen.
 
Is your curiosity satisfied, now,
wife?
 
Before you ask, I was
twenty-four.
 
You do the math.”

Sophie lowered
her eyes and at least had the decency to blush.
 
“Yes, Tony.
 
He
told me as much.
 
I just wanted to
hear you say it.
 
I wanted to
lighten the mood.
 
This whole
episode has been very hard for me to digest, but I knew you’d be fine.
 
Nothing can happen to you, right?
 
Still, I was scared to death.”

Tony
paused.
 
His wife had done very
well, he thought.
 
“You haven’t
even told me how good I look.
 
What
gives?” Tony chided.

“That’s because
you look like hell, to be honest.
 
You look pretty busted up, to me.
 
Does it hurt much?”

Tony
nodded.
 
“A little.”

Sophie leaned
in close and whispered, “I thought you were immortal.”
 
She trailed a finger down the side of
his bandaged cheek.

“I guess I left
some details out of my explanation,” Tony groaned.
 
“It only hurts when I laugh.
 
So Sophie, please do me a favor and be on your very best
behavior.
 
All of my ribs are
broken, making each breath sheer agony.
 
I had a collapsed lung, but it’s healing.
 
If the water hadn’t been so cold, I would have bled out.”

He paused to
think about that.
 
“Mmm, that would
have been interesting.
 
Don’t know
how that would have played out.”

“You’d still be
alive
, right?”
 
Sophie’s
little body began to tremble.

Tony noticed
how pale Sophie had suddenly gone.
 
He pressed his call button.
 
“Sit down, sugar.
 
You don’t
look too good.
 
This has been too much
for you, I’m afraid.”

A nurse rushed
in, expecting to see her patient in distress.

Tony pointed to
his wife.
 
“She’s pregnant and not
feeling well.”
 
He took his one
good hand and made a baby bulge over his stomach, in case the woman didn’t
understand.

The nurse
nodded and smiled.
 
She poured
Sophie a glass of water and took her pulse.
 
Very efficiently, she dampened a cloth and placed it across
the back of Sophie’s neck.
 
“She
will be good.
 
She is just happy to
see you,” she said, in her imperfect English.

Tony
sighed.
 
“Merci.”

The nurse left,
with her sturdy, white shoes squeaking loudly down the hall.

“I’m really
glad to see you darling, but if I’d known you were going to fly here, I would
have left instructions with Ibsen to detain you.
 
I plan to be home at the end of the week.”

Sophie about
fell out of her chair.
 
“End of the
week?” she squeaked.
 
“You’re
injured, Tony.
 
It’s serious.
 
They won’t let you leave the hospital
for weeks yet…forget days.”

“I’m not their
ordinary patient, sweetie.
 
In fact,
it is far more dangerous for me to remain here, than it is to disappear and go
home.
 
Once the lab results come
back, they’ll know something is dreadfully wrong with me, and they’ll never let
me out.
 
People like me,
never
have lab tests.
 
Technology has
proven to be a bitch.”

Sophie stood
and approached Tony’s bedside.
 
She
gently took his hand, marveling at the sheer masculine beauty of it.
 
“Darling.
 
I’m so confused.
 
I know I’m not smart, but this makes no sense to me.
 
It makes my head hurt.”
 
Her bottom lip began to quiver.

“Aw,
sugar.
 
Don’t fret about it.
 
I’ll explain it all to you.
 
Crawl up here beside me, but be
careful.
 
I’m fragile,” he
joked.
 
“Lay your head on my
shoulder, and just relax.
 
This may
take a while.”

“Are you going
to tell me another story?”
 
She
sounded like a small child.

“I’m going to
explain being immortal.
 
It is not
as well defined as you might think.”

Sophie loved
resting in her husband’s arms.
 
He
smelled so manly, and his strength made her swoon.
 
Within his arms, she felt as if nothing could harm her.
 
She sighed and closed her eyes.
 
“You may begin,” she whispered.

“The first
thing you need to know, Sophie, is even though I am immortal and cannot die,
that doesn’t mean that I cannot be incapacitated.
 
Do you understand?”

She
nodded.
 
“Yes, that means you could
lose your head.”
 

“No,
sugar.
 
That’s
decapitated
,
and that is particularly troublesome to an immortal.

“What I mean to
say, I do not catch disease and I heal from injuries at an accelerated
pace.
 
I’m immune to starvation and
dehydration, although they require some attention.
 
The one thing, we all fear, however, is the loss of a limb
or one of our five senses.
 
We do not
regenerate missing limbs.
 
If I
were to lose my arm, today, I’d live for eternity without it.
 
If I lost an eye, it would be gone,
forever.
 
So, you understand, even
we, immortals, must be careful with our bodies.

“I feel the
same pain as any man.
 
I simply
feel it for a shorter period of time, as I start to heal almost
immediately.
 
I’ve never heard of
one of us bleeding out.
 
I honestly
don’t know what would happen in that instance, or even if it is possible.”

“You told me
Thomas died.
 
How was that
possible, Tony?”

The time had
come.
 
There was no way that Tony
could avoid revealing his deepest and darkest secret.
 
Sophie had been patient and had a right to know.
 
She needed to understand the conditions
of his curse.
 
Tony felt the bile
rise, filling the back of his throat.
 
He wasn’t ready to face his demons, but he could find no way to avoid
it.

“I’ve put off
telling you this, darling, because I dread going back there.
 
My nightmares are real.
 
The terror I felt then, was replayed
many times in my dreams.
 
For
years, I was haunted by the actions I was forced to take.
 
It’s a horrendous tale and one I would
like to forget.

* * *

“It was 1900
when I found Thomas living in Kansas City; the beginning of a new and exciting
century.
 
However, I barely
recognized my dearest friend.
 
I
knew he had taken the deaths of his wife and child badly, but it had been more
than seventy-five years since they had died.
 
Even for us, three quarters of a century is a long
time.
 
Thomas didn’t know me when I
walked up and offered to buy him a beer.
 
He was so drunk that he didn’t know his own name.