Home Again Page 9

  “You think I deserve it.”

  She drew back. For a heartbeat, she looked at him through the eyes he remembered. “I’d say you think you deserve it, and I think …”

  “What?”

  “I have no right to say anything. I don’t know you at all, do I?”

  “You did once.”

  “No.” She said the word softly, but it seemed to echo in the stillness of the room. “I only thought I did once … but the boy I fell in love with promised to be with me forever.” She laughed—a hard, brittle sound that was nothing like the laughter he remembered. “Forever turned out to be about ten seconds.”

  “I guess that’s my cue to apologize.”

  She frowned. “I don’t want your apology, Angel. I stopped wanting anything from you a long time ago. Now I’m just your doctor, and as such, I want you to live, but make no mistake about it, I’m not going to waste something as valuable as a heart on a bad-boy loser who isn’t going to change his life.”

  “You’ve learned to play hardball, Mad.”

  “This is a hardball game, Angel. No cut corners, no fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants. You’re going to have to decide how badly you want to live. Only you can answer that.”

  He was angry that she could talk about this so matter-of-factly, angry that she didn’t seem to care what he did, and angriest of all that he felt so goddamn alone. He wished for a crazy, desperate minute that he’d never abandoned or betrayed her. She was the only person he ever had really been able to talk to, the one person he could cry in front of. And he needed that intimacy right now, needed a friend.

  Angel swallowed the thick lump in his throat. It was too late to be friends with Madelaine, too late for a lot of things.

  He needed strength and faith and hope. None of which he’d ever had. He looked at her, saw the momentary flash of pity in her eyes, and he lost it. “You’ll make me into a freak.”

  “It may feel that way, Angel, but it’s not true. With a few adjustments, you can live a full, rich life. I have a patient down the hall who fathered two children and ran in the Seattle marathon after a heart transplant.”

  “I don’t want to run a goddamned marathon.” Horrifyingly, his voice broke. “I want my life back.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. Living with a transplant isn’t easy. It requires a real commitment, some follow-through.”

  She stared at him, and he knew what she was thinking—that he was a flaky asshole who’d never committed to anything or anyone in his life. “You have no right to judge me.”

  “You’re right; unfortunately, I have to.” She leaned toward him, and for a second, just a second, he thought she was going to touch him. “A new heart is a gift, Angel. Please, please don’t get in line for one if you don’t really want to change your life. Out there, somewhere, is a father who is dying from heart failure—a man to whom a new heart would mean another chance to hold his daughter, or spend another night with the wife he’s loved for years.”

  The truth of her words made him feel sick. He was a selfish prick who didn’t deserve this kind of chance. “Another party at the Viper’s Nest doesn’t cut it?”

  “Not in my book.”

  He gave her a weak smile. “We never did have the same book, did we, Mad?”

  “No.”

  He thought for a second about how different their backgrounds were—her, growing up in that mansion behind the iron gates; him, living in a shitty little trailer park on the wrong side of the tracks. No, they’d never had the same book at all. “So how is the great Alexander Hillyard these days?”

  She stiffened. “He died a long time ago.”

  He immediately felt like an idiot. “Oh. Sorry.”

  “I’m going to look over your paperwork and initiate some more testing.” She got to her feet suddenly. “Please don’t humiliate me by killing yourself before we can save your life.”

  And then she was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  Angel tried not to think about Madelaine. God knew, there were plenty of other things to think about, but she wouldn’t leave his mind.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, battling memories with everything inside him. The problem was, there was so damned little inside him. That had always been his problem. Deep, deep inside, in the place where poets and metaphysicians and priests thought there should be a soul, Angel had nothing. Ever since he was a kid, he’d known there was something vital missing in him, a true sense of honor, of right and wrong, of goodness. He was selfish in a cold, ruthless way. For years he’d tried to refashion that insight, telling himself he was simply a product of crappy parents, or the sleazy little house he’d grown up in, or the food that wasn’t on the table.

  But Francis had grown up in that trailer, too, hadn’t he? Gone to the same schools, listened to the same drunken lectures from parents who didn’t really care, and everyone knew that Francis had no puncture in his soul. Hell, Francis had more soul than the saint he was named for.

  There had only been one time in Angel’s life when he thought maybe he was wrong about himself. Thought maybe he had a chance.

  That summer. The memories of that time were set apart in his mind, a brief and shining Camelot amidst the seedy taverns and dark holes he’d lived in since. And like Camelot, it was probably wrought more of myth than fact.

  Still, he remembered what it had felt like to have hope, however transitory. When he’d looked into Madelaine’s eyes, felt the warm comfort of her small hand tucked into his, clung to her body in the wet sand beneath the piers, he’d told himself he’d found a sliver of goodness at last, something worth fighting for, worth living for.

  But then he’d gone into that silent, sparkling house on the hill, and faced the dark night of his own soul. He’d looked into Alexander Hillyard’s fathomless eyes, and seen the debilitating truth. They were the same, he and Alex. Ruthless, selfish, ugly to the bone.

  Francis had known it, of course. Don’t do it, man. Don’t just run away. Whatever it is, we can talk about it. Figure out what to do.

  Ah, Angel thought, rubbing his temples, exhaling tiredly. Francis was right. Francis was always right. That was one of the things that stuck in Angel’s craw, one of the things that kept him always running, harder, faster, going nowhere like a gerbil stuck in Habitrail hell. He was constantly trying to outrun the ghost of good old Francis.

  He’d thought success would do it, that finally he would come out the winner, but no. He couldn’t even do that right. He was a world-famous actor and richer than God. He was also a boozing, drugging, lying slut of a human being. And he liked being that way. He wasn’t even a good enough person to feel regret at the way he’d wasted his life, and he knew that given the chance, he’d screw it up again.

  And Francis loved him—had loved him anyway; he probably didn’t anymore—through it all. Through all Angel’s drunken harangues, the belligerent tauntings, the cruel jokes Angel made at his brother’s expense. Francis had always known that he was the favored child in the family, their mother’s sole ticket to Heaven, and he’d always been ashamed of her unequal affection, apologizing so often. But Angel had never wanted to listen. It hurt too much to be the screw-up, the one brought home by the police, the loser. He’d put up a brave, obnoxious front, hoping no one would notice his inner torment and pain, his sense of worthlessness, but Francis had noticed, of course, noticed and understood and forgiven. Angel had seen the forgiveness time and again, felt its soothing warmth. Still he couldn’t cross the bridge back to brotherhood, could never reach out his hand and smile and say my brother, the way he wanted to. Could never control his temper long enough to apologize.

  And so he was alone.

  Someone knocked on his door, and before he could answer, it opened.

  Madelaine strode into the room, wearing a taut, false smile that made her eyes crinkle in the corners. He realized for the first time that she had no laugh lines around her mouth or eyes, and he wondered why that was.

  She stared down at h
im. “I lied and reported that you were a good psychological risk for the transplant.”

  “Great. I’ll just lie here and hope someone gets hit by a bus. Hey, try and get me an athlete’s ticker, will you? I like my sex rough-and-tumble.”

  He said it to see if he could get even a second’s worth of human emotion from those eyes, the eyes that once had stared at him as if he’d hung the stars.

  She looked at him with disappointment. God, he’d seen that look a thousand times in his life. It was not the emotion he’d wanted, and it pissed him off. “Don’t look at me that way.”

  “You’re going to be here awhile, Angel. Francis is going to want to visit you.” She handed him a scrap of paper. “Here’s the phone number.”

  “No.” The word shot out, surprising him with its ferocity. He knew instantly that he’d erred. He’d thrown his vulnerability on the floor between them. “I mean, I don’t want any visitors. I’m a celebrity,” he said, realizing too late that he was yelling. “I don’t want anyone to know I’m here.”

  “He’s your brother, Angel. Not a reporter.” She moved closer. “Don’t do this to him, Angel. He’s not like you. He hurts easily.”

  Not like you, Angel. Christ, she didn’t know him at all. Otherwise, she’d know Angel DeMarco’s dirty little truth that he was the most easily hurt human being alive. “No shit. What are you, married to him or something?”

  She sighed. “Get some sleep, Angel.”

  It rattled him, that unexpected avoidance. She hadn’t answered his question, and the silence sent doubt flooding into him. What if she had married Francis? Or lived with him, or was his great and true love?

  Angel had never even considered it. All these years he’d imagined Francis as the perfect parish priest, and Madelaine pining away for her lost first love. But Mad wasn’t pining—didn’t look as if she’d ever pined. Maybe he was as wrong about Francis as he’d been about her. Maybe his brother had quit the seminary and moved to suburbia, maybe he sold Cadillacs at the corner dealership….

  Not once in all these years had it occurred to Angel that he’d left a door wide open, and that Francis—Francis the good and perfect—might have walked right through it.

  He shouldn’t care.

  But he did. Suddenly, irrationally, he did. He didn’t want Madelaine to be his brother’s wife, his brother’s love. He wanted her the way she’d always been. A brilliantly colored photograph in the sepia-toned memories of his life. His and his alone.

  She stared at him for a long moment, looking disappointed, then, very quietly, she said, “You can get as famous as God, and it doesn’t change the facts.” She leaned close, so close he could smell her perfume. “You’ll always be Francis DeMarco’s kid brother.”

  “I forbid you to tell him I’m here.”

  “Oh, Angel.”

  At that moment, in that tone of voice, she made his name sound like a curse.

  Madelaine moved woodenly toward her desk. She sat down, her back ramrod-straight, then, very slowly, she sagged forward, plopped her elbows on the desk, and closed her eyes.

  It had taken considerable self-control to appear cold and disinterested. Of course, discipline was the one thing she had in spades. She’d practiced it since her hair was in pigtails—lying, pretending. In that big house on the hill, appearances had been everything.

  Yes, Father, of course, Father. Certainly I will.

  She was a master of such deception, but she’d never quite been able to overcome the unpleasant side effects—the dry mouth, the clattering heart, the sweaty palms. Any time she had to stand up for herself, she was a wreck afterward.

  She’d expected Angel to have changed more. World-famous now, rich and good-looking and successful, he should have been surrounded by friends. But no flowers or cards or phone calls had come for him. There was no woman waiting in the hallway, no friend hovering about his bed. Now, when push came to shove, he was utterly alone.

  What did he have now? she wondered. Where did his joy come from? Drug use, free sex, a brawl or two at some seedy tavern, an Oscar nomination? She wondered if all the photographs she’d seen of him over the years were lies—brittle smiles for a flashing camera.

  In the old days she’d known his soul—or thought she had. He’d always been all bluster and anger on the outside, but inside, he hurt as badly as she did. She’d known always that he had a hole inside him, a deep secret place from which he bled. She knew it because she had the same hole in her own soul. In her it had been born of loneliness and fed by the hard realization that her father despised her. Over the years she’d covered it with a sheer, thin wall of glass that made her feel fragile and easily bruised, but it was some protection at least.

  With Angel, who knew?

  The phone on her desk rang, interrupting her thoughts. She reached for it and heard Hilda’s voice. “It’s Tom, Madelaine. He’s coding.”

  “Shit!” Madelaine threw the papers down on her desk and ran for the door. As she raced down the hallway, she heard the alarm blaring through the paging system. Code blue, ICU … code blue, ICU.

  She skidded into the room. White- and blue-clad people clustered around the bed, yelling at one another, reaching for things. Hilda was already there, hunched over Tom, her hands clasped and pressing on his chest. She saw Madelaine and flashed her a panicked look. “We’re losing him.”

  “Get me the cart,” Madelaine barked, shoving through the crowd to the bedside. The cart skidded to a stop beside her. “Intubate him,” she said.

  “Lidocaine’s started,” the staff nurse answered.

  Madeline’s gaze shot to the monitor. “Shit,” she hissed again. It wasn’t working. “Shit. Defib.”

  Someone handed her the defibrillator paddles, ready to go. Hilda wrenched Tom’s gown open, and Madelaine pressed the paddles over the ugly red scar that bisected his chest. “Clear!”

  Electricity slammed through Tom’s battered body. His back arched off the table, then collapsed back down. All eyes went to the monitor. Rat line.

  “Again,” Madelaine said.

  Once more Tom jerked off the table in an inhuman spasm. Madeline’s breath caught; she stared at the black box. A tiny blip-blip-blip came from the monitor; a pink line humped and waved and skidded across.

  “We’ve got a pulse…. BP’s eighty over fifty and rising….”

  Madelaine sighed in relief—a sound she heard echoed by everyone in the room.

  “Too close for government work,” Hilda said with a tired smile as she extubated Tom.

  Madelaine didn’t answer. One by one the staff left the room, talking among themselves. Already the emergency was over and it was back to life as usual.

  Hilda remained behind. She put a hand on Madelaine’s shoulder. “He’s been doing well up to this point. Handling meds well. Biopsy came back negative.”

  Madelaine nodded. She tried to smile, but it took too much effort. “Thanks, Hilda. I’ll stay with him a minute.”

  Hilda bustled out of the room and closed the door behind her.

  Madelaine leaned down and whispered in Tom’s ear. “Keep fighting, Tom. Keep working hard. You’re going to be fine.” She knew that most members of the medical community didn’t agree; but Madelaine believed in the power of the mind and spirit to heal the body. At least, she wanted it to be true.

  Tom’s eyes fluttered open. “Hiya, Doc,” he said in a scratchy voice. “It feels like someone drove a monster truck over my chest.”

  She smiled down at him. “Guilty as charged. I hit a good man when he was down.”

  “You women libbers … you’re all the same.”

  She laughed quietly. “Women libbers. Now, there’s a phrase I haven’t heard in a while. You’re dating yourself, Tom.”

  “Believe me …” He coughed and rubbed his throat. “In my position, you’re proud of getting older.” Then he touched her hand, so gently that for a second she didn’t even recognize what he’d done. “Stay for a while.”

  She saw the fear
in Tom’s eyes, the emotion he was trying so hard to hide beneath a shield of jokes and easy comebacks. “When will Susan be here?”

  “After work. Not too much longer.”

  Madelaine picked up the phone and dialed the rectory. The housekeeper got Francis on the line.

  “Hi, Francis,” she said softly. “Could you pick Lina up from school?”

  “You bet. You want me to take her out for dinner?”

  ’That would be great,” she answered. “I’ll be home in a few hours.”

  She hung up the phone, then reached backward and pulled up a chair. Sitting down, she leaned close to the bed. “Last night you were telling me about your daughter’s riding lessons….”

  Francis stood beneath the old oak tree on Pacific Street. Pale sunlight streamed through the yellowing leaves, creating a tangle of gold on the grass.

  The bell rang. Within moments kids spilled from the brick building, loping down the wide cement steps. In the center area they split into lines and fanned out, walking toward the row of buses that were parked in the driveway.

  As he’d expected, Lina was among the last to exit. She was walking with that hard-core group of hers—they looked like a bunch of refugees from a Red Cross emergency station.

  He stepped away from the tree and waved at her. “Lina! Over here.”

  He knew the instant she saw him—she smiled instinctively, then copped an attitude. Murmuring her goodbyes to the crowd, she hitched up her oversized jeans and ambled toward him, her chopped hair bouncing with each step, her backpack hanging limply from her left hand. The canvas fabric grated along the cement sidewalk as she headed his way.

  He smiled at her. “Still hanging out with the honor roll, I see.”

  “Tsk, tsk—that’s not a very Christian comment.” She gave him an arch look. “Besides, some of them are perfect Catholic candidates … They dig the missionary position.”