Miracles. Part 9

A state trooper brought her home at 8:00 a.m., and she went straight to her bedroom, shed her blood-caked clothes, and got into the shower. Then, giving her long hair a lick and a promise with the dryer, she left it unbraided to finish drying on its own and pulled on a pair of jeans and an oversize shirt of soft, dark green chamois. She was dead tired, but she couldn't have slept if her life had depended on it. So at eight-thirty, she clipped her pager to the waistband of her jeans and headed out the front door.

The air was warm, despite the promise of rain, and as the pickup bounced over the old lake road toward Sam's cabin, Kate rolled down the window, thinking the fresh air might clear her head so she could figure out what to say to him.

She knew what she wasn't going to say. He couldn't have realized how upset she'd been that he hadn' t gone with her to Marquette, and there was no reason to tell him. Ray c.o.o.ney hadn't needed him, and, therefore, neither had she-not really. She shouldn't have taken his refusal to go personally. Yet, after pulling to a halt in front of the cabin, she approached the door hesitantly, afraid of discovering her feelings weren't foolish at all but an accurate measure of the way things stood between them.

The door was slightly ajar, and she knocked as she called, "Sam? It's Kate." The grumbling response she heard was not encouraging, but she ventured to ask, "Can I come in?"

Several seconds later, he called something vaguely positive, and she pushed the door open.

At the far end of the big room, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, Sam was standing, absolutely still, staring out the window over the kitchen sink. She walked toward him, her wariness increasing when he didn 't turn to acknowledge her presence. Stopping beside him, she took in his worse-for-wear appearance-the rumpled hair and a day's growth of beard darkening his jaw.

"Good morning." She greeted him on a questioning note.

"Morning," came his gruff reply.

Still he didn't look at her, and she wondered if she ought to leave. For a moment, her need to talk to him warred with her suspicion that he didn't want to talk to her. The decision between the two was postponed, though, when she caught a whiff of a familiar odor, and her gaze dropped to the sink.

"Oh! You went fishing this morning," she remarked with forced cheerfulness. "Those are beauties. Four pounds apiece, I'll bet, even after you've cleaned them."

"Do you eat fish?"

"I love them," she answered, lifting her gaze from the two walleye pike to Sam's oddly still face. "I like to fish, too, but I don't get much chance these-"

"Take them."

Kate broke off, blinked at him, then began a protest. "Oh, Sam, that's really nice of you, but you'll want -"

"Take them. Please. Just . . ." He swallowed hard, squeezing his eyes shut.

Her eyes widened as she noted his growing pallor, her gaze shifting from his face . . . to the knife in his hand . . . to the fish.

"Katie, I hate to tell you this, but-"

"Leave the room, Sam." Taking his arm, she spun him around and pushed him gently away from the sink. "Go shower and change your clothes. I'll take care of this."

He muttered something crude under his breath, but he followed her directions, striding across the cabin to disappear into the bedroom.

Kate rolled up her shirt sleeves and set about disposing of the problem. Wrapping the fish in a brown paper bag, she put them in her truck. Then she opened two cabin windows for ventilation and gave the sink and countertop a thorough scrubbing with a bleach cleanser. When the cabin was rid of all traces of fishy smell, she dried her hands and went to check on Sam.

She stopped in the bedroom doorway, taking in the scene: the unmade bed, its twisted blankets evidence of a restless night; a dresser drawer hanging open, clean underwear and socks stacked in the front of it; and, in a pile near the bathroom door, the clothes he'd worn last night, jeans and shirt both stiff with dried blood. He was standing by the open window, one bare shoulder against the frame, hair still damp but neatly combed. He hadn't put on a T-shirt, but a fresh pair of jeans was slung low on his hips without a belt, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. In the pearl-gray light coming through the window, he looked lean and strong and every inch a man.

At the moment, though, the man was vulnerable-a rare occurrence and one she knew she must handle with care.

Approaching slowly, she stopped several feet away to study him. The color had returned to his face, and the lines of strain had relaxed. Yet he looked terribly unhappy, and as he gazed out at the forest, the low, gravelly words he spoke were edged in bitterness.

"My dad taught me to fish. It's the only thing we ever really did together."

She felt his deep sadness, even if she didn't understand its cause. Cautiously, she moved to stand beside him, and he shifted a little to make room for her in front of the window.

"On weekends, in California," he continued, "one of the other pilots, Sid Golden, and I used to go up to the mountains and fish. And once in a while, a bunch of us would drive down to the coast, hire a boat, and go deep-sea fishing." He paused, his lips tightening. "I like to fish. It's relaxing and easy and . . . Ah, h.e.l.l." He uttered a soft, self-deprecating sound. "I don't know why I expected it'd still be that way. Nothing else is the same as it used to be."

So many questions ran through her mind as her gaze searched the stoic line of his unshaven jaw, then skimmed quickly over the scars on the right side of his body. She didn't know where to start, which question to pick. So instead of picking any, she simply laid a hand on his arm and said softly, "Sam, talk to me. Tell me what's wrong."

His head turned slightly, but he didn't meet her gaze, and after a moment, he looked away again.

She let her hand fall from his arm, and she turned her gaze out the window, too, drawing the curtain aside a bit farther with her finger. They stood that way for a long time, side by side, listening to the eerie cry of a loon on a nearby lake and the faint rustling of the wind through tender new leaves.

After several minutes, he straightened slowly, pulling his hands from his pockets to fold his arms across his bare chest. Lifting his head a notch, he squared his shoulders, and she realized with dismay that if he spoke now, it would be the tough guy talking. His pride had taken all the beating it could stand for one morning, and so, to salvage what was left of it, he was putting on his armor. Except the armor had cracks in it, and through them she caught glimpses of the man within.

"Remember Tuesday, when I carried you here, out of the storm?" he said.

Unlikely she'd ever forget it "Yes."

"Remember when you said it was a miracle I survived the plane crash-and I said that maybe I didn't? You got disgusted, thinking I was being a smart a.s.s."

"I remember."

"I meant it. I died on the operating table after the crash. For twenty minutes, they told me later, I was dead-no heartbeat, no respiration, nothing."

"Dear Lord," she whispered. "Twenty minutes is-" She cut herself off when she saw his jaw tighten and his expression become even more closed.

"Have you ever heard of a near-death experience?" he asked.

She replied slowly. "I'm not sure what you mean. I've read about cases where trauma and surgical teams have resuscitated people whose vital functions have stopped. But I've never heard of it being done twenty minutes-"

"I wasn't resuscitated," he interrupted her. "They did all the stuff doctors do to bring people back, but after five minutes, they gave up. The head doctor had-how do you say it?-'called it.' He'd given the time of death as 2:37 p.m. At 2:52, my heart started beating again."

"But how-"

"I found out it wasn't time for me to die. So I . . . came back-let's say, with some strong encouragement."

For several seconds, she could only stare at him, her lips parted in disbelief. Finally, she swallowed and started to ask, "Encouragement from-"

He stopped her again. "It isn't something I like to talk about, okay? Most of the time, n.o.body believes me, anyway. I'm not saying you wouldn't, but right now, I'd rather not go into it. The point is, when I died, I didn't just lie there on the operating table. My body was dead, but my mind or . . . soul or whatever you want to call it went somewhere."

Kate's look went from skeptical to astounded. "You- You remember being dead? I mean, how could you know-"

"Because I was there," Sam cut in, a muscle twitching in his cheek as an emotion she couldn't begin to name pa.s.sed swiftly across his features.

A moment later, his head turned, and he looked at her with eyes so startlingly clear she felt as though she were looking through the window to infinity. He knows, she thought. He knows things I can't begin to imagine.

More gently, he told her, "It isn't a bad place, Katie. I don't want you thinking that. In fact, it's . . . beautiful. I've got some books written by people who've either had experiences like mine or who've studied them. I'll lend them to you if you're interested. And sometime, maybe, I'll tell you about it, but-" He hesitated, then glanced away. "But not now."

But now was when she needed to know. Kate wondered how long she could wait for what she was sure must be the key to understanding him. His effect on her, from the beginning, had been astonishing; it was more powerful than ever now. He had an aura about him that shimmered like heat rising from a fire. On the surface, it appeared as a brazen s.e.xual energy, the potency of which sent tendrils of arousal curling through her. There was more to it than that, though, and she was drawn to know the source of his magnetism. She was drawn to know the man.

"The thing last night was close," Sam went on. "And when it's that close, I need some time afterward to get settled. Remind myself that I'm here, in this world, not . . . over there. Otherwise, I walk around with a replay running in my head of the things that went on when I was over there. It makes it hard to go on acting like . . . like a regular person."

Well, that made sense, didn't it? As much as anything else in the past twelve hours.

"Sam, I think I understand," she began. "I won't ask you about . . . dying. But please, tell me-"

With a muttered curse, he turned and took a couple of strides away from the window to stand at the foot of the pushed-together beds. Then, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, he drew a ragged breath and whirled to face her. "Katie, I know what you want to hear. You want me to give you a reason that guy you took to the hospital is still alive. All I can tell you is that he was going to die, and I couldn't let it happen. So I put my hands on him and made the bleeding stop. I made his heartbeat get faster and his breathing get deeper. I knew it would work because I've done it-or things like it-a hundred or more times, now. But, honest to G.o.d, I don't know why it works."

The look he gave her was an odd mixture of defiance that she might dare not to believe him and hope that she would. Kate didn't know what to think.

"Are you trying to tell me-" she began.

Sam waved her off with an arm flung wide. "Something happened to me," he said urgently. "When I was dead, I mean. The experience . . . changed me-except, I didn't find out until months later, after I got out of the hospital."

"How could you not-" She stopped herself this time, realizing she was asking the wrong question. He couldn't give her reasons. Perhaps, though, he'd give her facts.

Choosing her words, she asked, "How did you find out?"

He stared at her for an instant, then turned and paced toward the door. She thought the conversation had ended, but he stopped in the doorway, standing in silence for several moments, his hands gripping the door frame on either side of him. Then, with a heavy sigh, he spoke in a flat, matter-of-fact tone.

"There was an accident. It was a few weeks after I got out of the hospital. Sid and I were helping another friend put a deck on the back of his house." Shrugging slightly, he admitted, "I was mostly watching, since I wasn't walking too well at that point. Anyway, Sid was working with a power saw, and his hand slipped. The blade hit him, and it cut his leg open at the groin. I was standing maybe five feet away, and in the couple of seconds it took me to get my hands on him, the ground was covered with blood. When the medics got there, they shoved me out of the way and started working on him. One of them said something about it being the femoral artery that was cut, and he said it like that meant Sid was already dead. But then the other one realized the bleeding had stopped. Sid had pa.s.sed out, but he was alive. They took him to the hospital, and . . . well, that was that."

That was what?

The starkness of Sam's speech sent chills up Kate's spine. The understatement with which he described what must have been a horrifying event was unbelievable, as was the complete absence of description as to what he'd actually done in those moments before the medics arrived. Where was the emotion she'd seen in his expression last night when he'd put his hands on Ray c.o.o.ney?

She had her answer when he turned to look at her from across the room; the lines on his desert-bronzed face were deep with strain and exhaustion, and she knew the words he'd left out, the details of the scene, were as vivid in his mind as if it were happening at that very moment. It was costing him a great deal to tell her this story.

"Go on," she said softly. "That was the first time you healed someone?"

"Yeah," Sam replied in the same emotionless tone. Then, with a brooding frown, he added, "But I'd been feeling . . . well, different for a while."

"Different?"

He lifted a shoulder and let it fall. "It started in the hospital, with the TV. I couldn't watch anything where people were killing or beating on each other. And I hated being around other sick people. Then, after I got out of there, I'd be in a place like, say, the grocery store, and I'd see a person with some kind of physical problem-a crippled leg, maybe-and I'd get this urge to make it go away."

Kate gave him a bewildered look.

"To fix it," he explained succinctly. "The thing with Sid triggered it, though. After that, it got so I had to try to fix it. Then, one day, I was driving home from visiting Sid, after he got home from the hospital, and I pa.s.sed an accident. Except, I couldn't pa.s.s it." His breath caught for an instant. "It was a kid. He'd been riding a bike, and a car had hit him. He had a cracked skull, and I don't think there were two breaths left in him. But I put my hands on his head, and . . ." He trailed off, then gave her a quick glance. "I understand he's still got some problems with his eyesight, but otherwise, he's okay."

Kate shook her head, trying to translate images from the previous night into the scene Sam described. "Weren't there other people there?" she asked. "Had the ambulance come?"

"Lots of people. No ambulance yet. But there was a cop."

"And how did you get him to let you near the child?"

He hesitated a moment. "I told him I was a doctor. It didn't matter. I would have said whatever I had to say to get my hands on that boy."

"And what did the hospital say? Dear heavens, Sam, how did you get away with such a thing?"

He snorted. "I didn't."

When he didn't immediately explain, she struggled to control the rush of impatience that coursed through her, watching as he pushed off from the door frame to wander restlessly around the small room.

"The next morning, a neurosurgeon named Martin Anderson called and asked if I'd come to the hospital to tell him about my role in saving the kid's life. I went because . . . well . . ."

He came to a halt, staring down at the b.l.o.o.d.y clothes lying at his feet. Then, bending slowly to pick them up, he kept looking at them as he continued. "I knew what had happened to me when I died was related to what I'd done with the boy and with Sid. I hadn't been able to get anybody to listen when I tried to tell them about the near-death experience. The nurses and doctors at the hospital thought I was hallucinating. I knew I wasn't, but I shut up about it because I didn't want them putting it in my medical records that I was crazy. But when Marty Anderson called, something about him made me think he might listen. I went to talk to him because I had to know what was happening to me."

"I should think so," Kate murmured. Then, seeing his confusion over what to do with the stained garments, she crossed the room and gently took them from him. Turning to walk in the direction of the kitchen, she spoke over her shoulder. "So, what did this Dr. Anderson have to say?"

"He asked questions, mostly," Sam replied, following her slowly. "But when I told him about the crash and the neardeath experience, he went wild."

"You mean, he didn't believe you?"

"Oh, he believed me, all right. He gave me a book and sent me home to read it. The next day I was back there, looking for him. The descriptions in the book of what people said it had been like to die sounded just like what had happened to me." Watching as she ran cold water over his clothes in the kitchen sink, he added, "Truth is, it was d.a.m.ned rea.s.suring to find out I wasn't the only one. But I still didn't understand what the near-death experience had to do with this crazy thing with Sid and the boy."

Swishing the clothes with a squirt of dishwashing detergent, Kate turned off the water. "And Dr. Anderson told you?"

"h.e.l.l, no," Sam grated, wandering around the kitchen. Marty didn't have answers-only suspicions. He took me to see a couple of his patients in the hospital, and he didn't have to ask for me to want to help them. Every time I even glanced at a sick person, I . . . well, this thing happens to me where I . . . want to make them well."

The hint of embarra.s.sment in his tone made her frown in puzzlement, and she watched the interplay of emotions flickering across his features as he picked up a box of cereal off the table, stared at it, then tossed it down again to move on.

"The business with my hands only worked on two out of five of Marty's patients," he said. "But that was enough for Marty. The next thing I knew, he was on the phone with some friend of his at a hospital in New England. A couple of days later, I was headed back east to this place where they study people who have what they call paranormal abilities."

"What sort of place was it?" she asked, unable to keep the note of suspicion out of her tone.

He heard it and c.o.c.ked one eyebrow in her direction. "A research center," he replied, and when he named the major university to which the center was connected, her eyes widened. "Yeah, it's legitimate. No hocus-pocus. It's run by scientists with M.D.s and Ph.D.s in everything under the sun. For three weeks, I filled out questionnaires and sat through hours of interviews and let them hook me up to machines that measure brain waves and dreams and electromagnetic fields and G.o.d only knows what else. They tested my blood cells and my skin cells and every other cell they could put on a slide or in a test tube. And I've got to say, after putting up with seven months of the same kind of stuff in the hospital, I wasn't the most cooperative subject they ever had."

And I'll bet that's putting it mildly. Kate watched with growing concern as Sam made his third trip around the kitchen table, each time pulling out and pushing in the end chair as he pa.s.sed. "Would you like to go for a walk?" she asked.

He gave her a quick, relieved look. "h.e.l.l, yes, let's get out of here." And with that, he headed for the front door.

Biting her tongue against the urge to tell him that he might get cold without a shirt, she followed.

Outside, he started down the cleared track that led to the old lake road. He'd gotten about ten yards when his steps slowed and he glanced over his shoulder, watching as she hurried to catch up. When she reached him, he mumbled an apology, shoving his hands into his pockets as he continued at a slower pace.

They walked for a few minutes in silence, Kate looking at the spring beauty and bloodroot that had bloomed that week, all the while casting sideways glances at Sam, who was staring straight ahead.

Finally, when she thought he seemed a little more relaxed, she asked, "So, what did all that testing tell you?"

He let out a sigh. "Not much. The only thing they had me do that seemed worthwhile was work on patients from the university hospital. They'd tell me what was wrong with them, and I'd try to cure them. It turns out this weird thing I've got is selective. It doesn't work on birth defects or disease, which is why I'd had such bad luck with Marty's patients. Once in a while-about five percent of the time-I can slow down a progressive illness. But so far, at least, I haven't been able to stop or cure one."

Leaning to s.n.a.t.c.h a small pebble off the ground, he flicked it into the woods. "On the other hand, about ninety-eight percent of the time, I can stop bleeding. And I do almost that well with problems caused by an injury or an illness-like bad circulation from diabetes or arthritis that develops around an old break. Once I worked on a woman who'd had polio. Afterwards, she could lift her arms above her head, where she couldn't before, and not long after that, her leg muscles developed to where she could walk without braces."

Kate's eyes grew wide. "Sam, that's wonderful!"

He pa.s.sed off her praise with a shrug. "Yeah, I was pleased."

Pleased? Not elated or wild with excitement? He was just pleased? She didn't believe it, not for a minute. He might talk about this amazing power he'd acquired as though it were so mundane as to be boring-"this weird thing I've got," he called it-but she knew he couldn't possibly feel that way about it.

But how did he feel? He certainly seemed less than thrilled, and for the life of her, Kate didn't understand why. She herself had barely begun to accept what he was telling her, and, still, she was in awe. It was astonishing enough to learn that someone she knew had the kind of gift Sam was describing; it was incomprehensible to think he might not want it.

"So, what happened?" she asked. "Did the center just send you home when they'd finished their tests?"