What's Left Of Me (The Firebird Trilogy Book 2) (16 page)

“Shh. You’re the bravest person I know. It’ll be over before you know it.” Alex smoothed her hair back, his eyes shining. “Please, baby. Don’t cry.”

She drew in a deep breath. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Never.” He kissed her hands. “See you this afternoon.”

They wheeled her away.

The surgical team members, dressed in identical gowns and with masks on, moved about the brightly lit room. The nurse helped Stephanie shift from the stretcher onto the hard, cold operating table, removed her gown, and instructed her to lie on her left side. She placed a safety strap across Stephanie’s thighs, then secured her arms on padded arm boards. Warm blankets draped her legs, but her breasts were hanging out, her nipples so taut in the room’s frigidity they hurt.

The team asked the same questions as those in Pre-Anesthesia. She couldn’t go under soon enough if it meant never having to answer them again. The anesthesiologist attached a blood pressure cuff, sticky pads with little nubs on the end he explained as ECG leads, and a plastic clip attached to her fingertip to measure the amount of oxygen in her blood during surgery. He affixed a mask to her face.

“Breathe deeply, Stephanie. That’s it. I know you’re nervous, so we’re going to give you something to help you relax, okay? We’ll inject it into your IV.”

She nodded. She could use all the help she could get.

The IV site tightened and burned a little. Was that normal?

Someone was washing their hands. “Stephanie, we’re going to prep your skin now. This will feel a little cold.” Beginning at the incision site, the nurse sponged a chilly solution onto her back in widening circles. This dragged on for at least five minutes, and she was starting to doubt the efficacy of the drug they’d claimed would calm her.

“We’re going to deliver the anesthesia now. Ready, Stephanie?”

She didn’t have much choice, did she? She couldn’t very well get up and walk buck naked out of the operating room. As much as Alex might enjoy that show.

She offered her muffled assent through the mask. And in another moment or two, there was only darkness.

***

Alex

Alex hesitated outside Stephanie’s room, one hand on the door handle. They hadn’t allowed him to see her during her three-hour recovery in ICU; now that he could, he was ashamed to admit how it frightened him. The surgeon had informed him the operation had gone well, but he did not have context for “well.” When the doctor had told Stephanie the same thing after his injury, what did she assume it meant? “Well” simply because he was alive, never mind the loss of his career? His mind?

Part of her lung was gone. She might always be a little short of breath now, might not be able to play hockey anymore either. How perfect for each other, and there was nothing “well” about it. He’d wanted to become more like her, not the other way around.

He opened the door, and the cheap tape and bits of string holding him together began to break apart. She was so pale. Sick-pale. Death-pale. A plastic tube jutted from the right side of her chest, where her gown dipped below her shoulder, sutured there and connected to a machine that suctioned air and drainage.

Stephanie blinked several times, glanced around, then looked at Alex and smiled. He had ordered more flowers sent to the room, which was bursting with them. He resisted the urge to examine the name on each card and see if Brandon’s was among them. Then sneak them out while she slept and hurl them into a Dumpster.

“You’ve been crying,” she croaked. “Either I’m dying, or I look like I am.”

He laughed and kissed her forehead before sinking into the visitor’s chair, hands clasped between his knees. “You’re fine. They’ll try to get you moving this afternoon to prevent blood clots in your legs.”

“Ugh. I already feel like I’ve been run over. And this thing in my chest…”

“Can I get you anything?” he blurted, wanting to pretend the thing in her chest wasn’t there. To pretend his wife had not been sliced open in a bid to save her life.

“Not right now. I’m a little nauseated. When do you talk to the police again?” Her nose wrinkled when she said “police.” He didn’t blame her for finding them less than savory after what her father had done.

“Tomorrow morning. But I’ll be here right after. I just wish I could remember that night. There’s no evidence, but my history isn’t helping me.”

“Alex, did it ever occur to you that maybe she slipped you something?”

He felt the blood drain from his face. “Why would she do that?”
Is she saying what I think she is?
He could not begin to wrap his mind around the concept. It didn’t happen to people like him.

“Get you to take her home with you? Everyone says you weren’t interested in her.”

Then, at some point, her illness takes over. She sees me in the news for one thing or another and wants the attention. She decides I raped her.

He popped up from the chair. “I need to call my attorney. Will you be all right for a few minutes?”

“Yes. Go.” She flicked her hand.

“You’re brilliant, you know.” He pecked her cheek, then darted into the hall, phone in hand as he strode toward the lobby.

***

Sometime between leaving the hospital and arriving at the police station the next morning, shame that he had allowed a woman to take advantage of him—
him
, of all people—devastated him. He sat in the Mercedes in the parking lot, pummeling his fists against his thighs to release the fury. Then he hunched over the wheel, unsteady, the world outside too loud, too busy. Too many condemnatory glares cast at him. If he hadn’t lost any fans, he had made many new enemies.

Revealing Stephanie’s theory to Ed had burned with acid intensity in his mouth. How could he tell the cops his accuser might have drugged him? They’d never believe him, and why should they? His reputation spoke for him. It was the dumbest story he’d ever heard, except he’d never experienced total memory loss, no matter how much alcohol he’d drunk or how many drugs he’d taken.

Alex dragged himself from the car and into the station, his knees weak and his palms slick with sweat. He felt small enough to tumble through the gaps between atoms and wink out of existence altogether.

He had the distinct impression Lane liked him less than before; even walking toward him from the hallway, animosity emanated from the detective like summer heat from asphalt. Lane ushered him into the interrogation room, where Alex broke into a panic-inducing bout of tachycardia, his heartbeat so loud it all but drowned out the investigator.

“You’re always nervous in here, Aleksandr.”

“I have anxiety. This room…”

Lane jotted notes on his legal pad. Was that a crime now, to be nervous? Cops didn’t care about anxiety or bipolar disorder. They dealt in absolutes, in things they could see and quantify. To a cop, a panic attack suggested guilt. “What brings you in today, Aleksandr?”

“I have some important information. My wife thinks…” He cleared his throat. Perspiration beaded along his hairline.

“You all right, Aleksandr?”

“I’m embarrassed, honestly.”

“About what?”

“She thinks that maybe Ms. Miller drugged me.”

“I see.” The detective scraped his chair on the tile floor as he inched forward, the noise knives in Alex’s ears. “I’ve spoken to your wife. She’s a firecracker, huh?”

It was the first thing other than Anya to make him smile that morning. “She’s something.”

“So, why do you think your accuser would do that? Do you believe she assaulted
you
?”

The predicted incredulity. “I don’t know. I used to, uh, sleep around a lot. And I’ve done my share of drugs. She probably assumed no one would believe it.”

“Do you still do drugs?” Lane lowered his chin in an attempt to look down at him, except seated Alex was still six inches taller than he was.

Even so, Alex found himself unable to meet the cop’s eyes. “Recently, for the first time in well over a year. I was having some personal issues, and…”
I don’t have to tell him any of this. I don’t owe him an explanation. He already hates me.

Lane grunted, the scratch of pen on paper like the signing of a death warrant.

“Anyway, I wasn’t interested in Katherine, and maybe that pissed her off. I was at the height of my career.”

“Professional hockey player.”

“Yes. I was the Gladiators’ team captain; everyone wanted a piece of me. Look, I know how this sounds, but even I didn’t consider it until my wife brought it up. I just know that I didn’t do what Ms. Miller is accusing me of. I wasn’t the nicest person, but I would never do this.”

“I appreciate your cooperation, Aleksandr. Your account does corroborate what witnesses have been telling us.” Lane’s mouth twisted into an ugly frown, as though it physically pained him to admit Alex might be telling the truth. “We’ll be in touch.”

What did that mean? The investigation might go on for weeks or months. Even years, if Katherine was that entrenched in her delusion. It had to end before Anya was old enough to understand words. To have friends who might overhear their parents talking about the rapist, once their hero, in their midst.

Chapter Sixteen

Stephanie

“Hello?” Stephanie said into her phone. The vibration against the plastic bed tray had jolted her out of a rare slumber. She didn’t catch more than one or two hours at a time without nurses constantly coming in to take her vitals or check her chest tube and oxygen flow, or ensure her surgical incision was healing properly and free of infection. Yet they insisted she “rest.” Hilarious.

“Hi, Stephanie. It’s Jessica. Brandon Johansson let us know what was going on, and—God, I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”

Thanks, Brandon.
He meant well, of course, and Jessica would’ve found out one way or another. “I’m in the hospital for a couple more days, then two months of bed rest at home. One lobe of my right lung was removed.”

“Lung cancer. How does that even happen to someone your age?”

She’d have to get used to explaining it. Might as well start now. “It’s a rare form that seems to target young, non-smoking women.”

“What happens now? Do you have to go through chemo or radiation?”

“It responds best to surgery. So after bed rest, I should be mostly back to normal.”

“Well, that’s good to hear, because I’d like you to come back. We let Bob go and replaced him with an ex-Gladiator. So, obviously you have some time to think about it, but we miss you, and so do the viewers.”

“I will give it some thought.”

“Is there anything we can do for you in the meantime? Does Aleksandr need any help while he’s taking care of you and Anya?”

“No, we’ll be all right. We have a housekeeper, and Alex’s manager is handling some other things for us. But thank you. I do appreciate it.”

“Okay. And whatever decision you make, let me know as soon as you can. I hope we’ll see you back here.”

“Thank you, Jessica. I’ll talk to you soon.” She laid the phone facedown, curled up onto her left side, and closed her eyes. Normal functionality seemed a fantasy when a phone call wiped her out. She almost hoped Alex wouldn’t show up, except of course he’d arrive at noon on the dot to eat lunch with her, as he had all week. She was too tired to see him, and too tired to call and tell him to stay home.

The door opened. She sighed into her pillow.

***

“Jacob will be bringing Anya and the rest of your stuff over later, but I wanted you to have a chance to settle in.” Alex helped her up the staircase as though assisting an invalid, and the fact that climbing stairs winded her pissed her off even more. She glared at the oxygen concentrator slung over Alex’s shoulder. When it didn’t explode under the force of her hate, she slouched down the hall, shoulders slumped and Alex’s arm a vise around her waist.

She eased into an armchair in the sitting area by the windows while Alex fluffed pillows and pulled back the comforter. After more than a month away, the house had become a place in which she no longer quite belonged. Alex’s joy at having her there again, however, proved irrepressible. He’d do for her all the things she should have done for him in Seattle, which did not improve her mood.

“I’ll get your bag. Do you need anything else?”

“No. Thank you.” She rose from the chair. Alex was immediately at her side to assist her into bed, but she shrugged him off. “I can do it myself, Alex.”

He stepped back, his green eyes luminous with hurt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” Stephanie buried herself beneath the comforter and hoped the bed swallowed her like Johnny Depp’s character in
A Nightmare on Elm Street
.

Alex sat on the edge of the bed. “Tell me what to do. What I
can
do.” He smoothed the comforter over her legs, then bowed his head, the pause gravid with subjects too intense to speak. “If you don’t want to be here…”

She stared at him, her lips quivering, tears rising. “We’ve both been through a lot lately. Let’s not do this right now.”

“I know. I’m sorry—”

“Alex,
stop apologizing
.”

His face paled.

“You apologize for what you do. You apologize for what you don’t do. You never used to apologize for anything, and now I don’t know which is worse. It’s like you’re sorry you exist at all.”

“Why shouldn’t I be? Look what I’ve done.”

“You didn’t do it! You didn’t rape that woman. You didn’t make my father rape
me
. You didn’t turn my co-host into an asshole. You didn’t make yourself bipolar, and you didn’t give me lung cancer. But you carry a cross that Jesus would envy, and you have
got
to put it down.”

Spots of color ignited high in his cheeks. He gazed blankly out the window, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a buoy in a hurricane. “I’ll go get your bag,” he said softly, rising from the bed. “I’ll sleep in the guest room so you can recover in peace.” He stopped in the doorway but didn’t turn around. “They said it was suicide. That there was no way Natasha accidentally swallowed so many pills. Plus, you know, all the alcohol. I told her to go back to Russia, and I left her there. Alone. When maybe her whole reason for coming here was a cry for help.”

“You can’t beat yourself up over it. I’ve done it to myself over you. Remember what you told me? At some point, you would’ve tried to kill yourself no matter what. Whether here or in Russia, it’s the same thing with her. It’s not your fault.”

“She wanted to be with me all these years, and I refused her. Meanwhile, my wife can barely stand to be around me. How am I supposed to feel anything except guilt? I make people unhappy. That’s what I’m good at now.” Alex glanced over his shoulder, his eyes shining. He darted his gaze away before she made meaningful contact. “I’ll check on you in a little while.”

***

Stephanie spent most of the afternoon dozing or browsing the internet for something that held her attention. With no progress in Alex’s case, media attention had died down. She watched half a movie before drifting into sleep again, and woke to the sound of running bath water. Alex poked his head out of the en suite. “I thought you might want a bath. Since you haven’t had a proper shower in a week.”

She had avoided mirrors like a vampire precisely because her bob was a greasy, tangled bird’s nest, her lips were cracked and flaking, and her face mottled with the worst breakout in ten years. Never mind her unshaven armpits, legs, and bikini area. Hard to stay clean when standing had become too great a drain on her limited stamina. And she had not yet figured out the logistics of cleaning her scar without resorting to Alex’s help.

The lengthy incision followed the curve of her ribs on the right side and stretched upward toward her shoulder blade. A bloody mouth with black gaps where sutures held her back together. She had accidentally caught sight of it yesterday morning, when her gown flapped open on the way to the hospital room’s toilet. She had burst into tears at its unexpected horror and vowed that, whatever the mental and physical contortions performed, she must prevent Alex from seeing it.

“It’s time for your antibiotic too.”

“Thank you.” She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and paused to catch her breath.

“Do you…need help?” The subtext, of course:
Please let me help. Let me be your husband.

“I’d rather do it myself. But thank you.”

“If it’s the scar—”

“Please, Alex. For now, I need to do it myself.”

“All right.” His voice was toneless. He scurried out of the en suite.

“Alex—”

He dashed into the hallway and slammed the door behind him.

Why are you pushing him away again?

Stephanie swallowed her pill with a sip of water, then dropped her T-shirt and lounge pants on the floor. As her nurse had instructed, she lathered up some antibiotic soap and patted it over the scar, cringing at the raised sutures beneath her fingertips. Her doctor was removing them next week. She left the soap in place for twenty seconds and rinsed it away, her arm cocked at an awkward angle unnecessary if she’d tucked her tail and let Alex do it.

Anya must have been downstairs with him, where he was banging out the dark strains of Liszt on the baby grand. Stephanie winced again.

She scrubbed a week’s worth of sweat, dead skin, and hospital germs from her skin, the filth a daily bedside sponge bath couldn’t conquer. Then she shaved and sat in the bath until the water started to cool. She put on fresh pajamas and climbed back into bed, already bored out of her mind after a few hours and wondering how Alex had managed half a year of it.

Well, he hadn’t, had he? He’d gone on a coke binge and tried to kill himself. Hardly “managing.”

The door opened, and Alex walked in carrying a tray of Chinese food, which he delivered in silence. He set it on the nightstand.

“You’re angry,” Stephanie said.

“I’m supposed to be taking care of you, and you won’t let me. Steph, we talked about this before the surgery. I know how you are, but this isn’t doing either of us any good.”

“I have to be able to look at myself before I can let you look at me. Does that make sense?”

“You’re not that woman, Stephanie. Not the kind of woman who lets a scar keep her husband from even touching her. Do you think I just want sex? Come on. You know I can’t get it up, or keep it up, half the time.”

Her breath snagged, and she looked away.

“I want to kiss you. I want to hold your hand. I want to hold
you
. And you won’t fucking let me. The only thing that has changed between that morning at the park and now is your surgery, and I do not care about a fucking scar. Do you understand?” His nose had reddened, and tears spilled from his bloodshot eyes. “You told me, when I was in a bad place less than a year ago, to let you love me. I am, Stephanie. It’s all I ever wanted. Please let me do that for you.”

She smeared her hand over her eyes. “It hurts to cry,” she whispered. The mattress dipped with Alex’s weight, and she sagged into his arms, into his safe and familiar sanctuary.

“Just tell me what to do,” he murmured against her hair.

“Please be patient with me. I have to get used to this.”

“We’re in this together. You and me against the world.” He kissed her forehead. “Forever.”

***

Stephanie was typing up a story on a blockbuster trade of captains between the Bruins and the Kings, and the fallout on both sides, when her phone jingled beside her on the comforter. She glanced at the number, then at the closed door, before answering.

“Hi, Kevin. Got anything for me?”

“Yeah, but you’re not going to like it. Your husband has been fishing for her contact information.”

She slumped against the pillows.
The stubborn ass.
“He’s going to destroy his case. They’ll assume he’s trying to threaten her.” And he didn’t realize they’d lock him up even longer than for a second-degree rape charge. She didn’t have to be psychic to deduce his motivation. All he saw was living the rest of his life as a sex offender and its effect on Anya. “Give me the info.”

Kevin recited the name, phone number, and email address. “Stephanie, they can get
you
on witness tampering too.”

“What can I do to her? I’m sucking oxygen from a can.”
Not that having a lung riddled with cancer stopped me from threatening Courtney.

“She has a long psychiatric history. Histrionic personality disorder. Heard of it?”

“No.” Stephanie typed it into the document.

“I think you’ll quickly learn why she’s accusing Aleksandr of rape.”

“Thank you for your help. I’ll be in touch.” Stephanie disconnected, then clicked on the web browser and typed “histrionic personality disorder” into the search box.

A pattern of excessive attention-seeking…including inappropriately seductive behavior….Associated features include egocentrism, self-indulgence…and persistent manipulative behavior to achieve their own needs.

The woman was sick, like Alex was, and Alex had done vastly stupid things in the throes of his illness. But he had never potentially destroyed someone’s life by accusing them of a felony and worse, possibly committing one himself.

He’d never accept that she might have sexually assaulted him—no one would believe him anyway—and Stephanie sympathized all too deeply. The differences in circumstances mattered little in the end. Denied justice of her own, she’d take up the mantle for Alex before he inflicted irreversible damage on them all.

***

Alex had not been pleased when Stephanie asked him to wait in the lobby while her doctor removed the stitches. She hadn’t yet come to terms with the thing, and now it was changing form. Healed, and without sutures, it was the same color as the one on Alex’s face. What was that called? French puce. So fancy for such a vile color. Hideous. Where his scar gave him an edge he hadn’t possessed as a kid, hers taunted her with its ugliness.