She frowned in concentration. "No, I would remember if he'd been called Jesus.... I believe it started with a B. Or perhaps an I?."

"Oh, Mother." He leaned forward and closed his eyes, rubbing his temples.

"Why?" She didn't look at him, stared at the ribbon she worked so madly in her hands.

"Who the h.e.l.l is she? And where did she come from? And how did she get injured?"

She stopped suddenly, looked at him. "Oh." Her voice was a whisper, throaty with the same shame he

29.

saw in her hazel eyes. "He said something about a boating accident."

Disgusted, he turned away, stared dully at his patient. Jesus, they might never know who this woman is.

Or was.

"How will she live?" Maeve asked in a timid voice.

He didn't even try to understand the question. "What do you mean?"

"Will she be ... normal?"

There was a holy reverence in his mother's voice when she said the word normal. It was so important to her, being normal, and he supposed he understood why. She'd never been normal a day in her life. He sighed, feeling suddenly drained. "I don't know. It's unlikely."

Maeve squeezed her eyes shut, rocking faster, turning the ribbon through her fingers. "I hope she's normal... in the head. She would want to be normal."

He turned away, unable to look at her, unable to see her pain and know it mirrored his own, and know that neither one of them could change it. "Yes, Mother. Wouldn't we all?"

Ian studied the woman's maimed face, searching for some hint of the person beneath the bandages and the bruises. She smelled of wax and acid and blood; it was a smell he knew well, one that lingered in the halls of New York Hospital, clung stubbornly to the operating rooms. No amount of soap and water could remove it- and not nearly enough was spent in the effort.

The smell of death. He dumped another bucketful of ice beside her head, tucking the freezing chunks close to her bandaged skull.

Then he set the empty bucket on the floor. It hit the hardwood with a tinny clank that he barely heard.

Backing away from the bed, he turned to the open window and stared out.

The storm had long since pa.s.sed. Fog had rolled in,

30.

impenetrable and moody; the thick haze lay huddled along the sh.o.r.eline. Somewhere the sun was rising, casting uncertain light through the gray-white shroud, but from this window, there was nothing but the stifling gloom.

Will she be normal?

He couldn't forget the question. Once, he might have cared only that she survived. But if nothing else, the past few years had taught him that there was life- breathing, heart-pumping animation-and there was life. He understood the pain of abnormality now, the agony of isolation. Of being wrenchingly different from your fellow man. No longer could he tell himself that life at any cost was a triumph.

He squeezed his eyes shut and bowed his head against the cold, damp gla.s.s of the window. Don't give her half a life, G.o.d. Make it all or nothing.

"All or nothing," he whispered aloud, a small, bitter smile curving his lips. His breath clouded the clear pane.

It was the prayer he should have offered six years ago. Instead, all he'd said was let me live.

When he turned back around, he saw the faces peering at him through the open doorway.

"Come on in," he said wearily, too tired to fight them any longer. They wanted to see the woman, and he couldn't blame them. She was the most interesting thing to happen at Lethe House in years.

The inmates shuffled in slowly, silently. One by one, they pulled up chairs and formed a ring around the bed, scooting in like some macabre quilting bee for d.a.m.ned souls. The hushed murmur of their voices filled the quiet room, and suddenly he was glad for their arrival. Maybe they would somehow reach the woman beneath the bandages, maybe the sound of their voices would draw her from the coma. It wasn't much of a hope, but it was all they had.

ik * ***

31.

Pain. Immeasurable, inexpressible, it wrapped around her, invaded her bones and ate at her flesh with tiny, piercing teeth. Slicing, burning, aching, freezing ...

She wanted desperately to cry out, but all she could manage was a bleating whimper, a hesitant sound like that animal-puffy, white, four legs. Mackinaw . .. rubber. Words came at her, drifted by in a hazy kaleidoscope that had no meaning whatsoever. She thought of the animal again, pictured it, saw it moving in a herd, but no name came to her.

She moved restlessly, felt the stinging cold wrapped like an icy blanket around her body. Her teeth chattered, her fingers trembled.

"SweetLord . . . shemadea sound. .. ." It was a voice. Out there, beyond the freezing darkness . . .

She tried to speak, say something, shriek for help, but nothing made it past her chapped lips, her aching chest. Another shiver wrenched through her. She gasped at the intensity of it, clawing the wet fabric beneath her fingertips.

Lamb. The word for the animal burst into her mind. She pushed it aside, not caring anymore. The pounding in her head was excruciating. Blinding blows, a thrumming torment. Her heart pumped hard, drowned out every sound except the evidence of her own life. Where am I?

She had the one coherent thought before another volcanic blast of pain slammed through her head. She squeezed her eyes shut, breathing hard. Oh, G.o.d, it hurts it hurts it hurts. She couldn't take it anymore.

She screamed-or thought she did, wished she did-and then it was over.

She was drifting again, moving back into the comforting black waters of oblivion.

Back to the place where there was no pain.

Chapter Three.

Ian glanced at the bottle of scotch on the green bedside table. He ached for a comforting drink, but it was a pleasure he'd forcibly denied himself for the last four days. He wanted to be sober when she awoke. If she awoke. "Please wake up." He said the words softly, hearing the throaty catch in his voice and not caring. He was tired, so tired. He'd been sitting by her bed for days. One hour blurred into the next and the next and the next. He stared at her in morbid fascination, watching every struggling breath she took, wishing with everything in his soul that he could breathe for her. In the past days, she'd become more than his patient. She'd become his world. He'd tried at first to remain detached and professional, but such distance was beyond him now. The coldness he'd once worn like a frock coat was now impossible to find. He wanted her to live so badly that sometimes he couldn't breathe. Every time he looked at her, he got an aching pain in his chest, and he knew what caused it. She would probably die without ever once waking up. "Just open your eyes," he whispered. "Please .. ." He sat perched on the small, straw-seated mahogany chair, his long legs folded tightly against the painted green bed frame. Moonlight fell through the open windows, puddling on the pale woman in the bed. Diamond 32 33 chips of ice lay melting all around her. Yet, even so, her fever climbed higher and higher, and there wasn't a d.a.m.ned thing he could do to stop it. Her bruising was so much worse now; there was no hint whatsoever of her face. But not all of the news was bad, and Ian clung to the good news like a lifeline. She'd accepted the feeding tube well, and the third set of bandages around her head was finally beginning to stay white. The bleeding had eased off and the swelling on her brain had abated. She might actually have a chance ... if the pneumonia didn't kill her. She wanted to live as much as he wanted her to. He could see it in every laboring breath she took. He leaned forward and took one of her hands in his. It lay limp and unresponsive in his grasp. He stroked her hot, damp fingers, noticing the soft pliancy of her flesh, the whispery hairs at her wrist, the hard calluses at each fingertip. She was making him a little mad, and even though he knew it, he couldn't stop it. Didn't really even care, because for the first time in years, he felt truly alive. Sometimes, when it was late at night and he was alone with her, he could close his eyes and imagine her waking up, smiling, laughing, beckoning to him. Madness ... Madness to care about her, to even pray for a complete recovery, but he couldn't seem to stop himself. He needed her to awaken, needed to save just one more person in his sorry life. Needed to be a doctor again. He smiled down at her, his patient. He couldn't see her face at all because of the bruising, but it didn't matter. She was beautiful to him, the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. His G.o.ddess, his mystery, his chance to practice medicine again. That's what he would call her. A name that reflected the magic and mystery of the moon. "Selena ..." He brushed a matted, bloodied streak of hair from her cheek. "Fight the fever, Selena...."

34.

In the next instant, a Gatling-gun burst of whispers shot through the silence.

Ian spun in his seat and glared at the people huddled along the wall. Lord, he should have thrown the crazy lot of them out yesterday. They had no business here. "Shut up or leave."

Johann strolled forward. Flinging his angular hip to one side, he planted a thin hand on it and sighed with his usual drama. "Apparently, Herr Doctor, there's some dissension about your right to name the human sausage."

Ian's brows pulled together in a low, forbidding frown intended to silence the fool. He stood and strode toward the group. "Now, look here-"

"Where?" Maeve interrupted.

Ian glanced at his mother. Her eyes were clouded and vague, and she clutched one of his father's old hunting trophies against her chest. Today it was a badger, frozen forever in a defensive snarl, its padded body stiff and rock-hard. She was certain that Herbert's soul resided in one of the animals-she simply wasn't sure which one.

He looked away, disgusted, sweeping the rest of the misfits with cold eyes. Before he could speak, they started talking again, arguing among themselves like magpies.

"I found her-" someone said.

"I opened the door-" Edith argued.

"I believe I carried her to the sofa," Johann drawled. "Without me, she'd still be a b.l.o.o.d.y spot on the carpet."

"I'm the queen; I shall bestow a name on my poor, unknown subject."

"I-I believe we should vote," Andrew said softly, looking to Ian for confidence. The boy raised a cautious, shaking hand. "I vote for Selena."

"Weakling," Johann hissed. "I vote for Violet ... in deference to her skin color. What's your vote, Maeve?"

Maeve whispered to the stuffed badger in her arms,

35.

then gave Johann a serious look. "Ian's father votes for Colleen."

"Aagh! Guard! Off to the Tower with all of them," Queen Victoria said, puffing her mammoth chest out, rapping the floor with her pinewood scepter. "My subject shall be called Alberta."

"Enough." Ian yelled the word so loudly that everyone gasped. "Her name is irrelevant. When she wakes-if she wakes-she will tell us her given name. Until then, I shall call her Selena. You may each do as you wish."

"No!" Dotty hissed. "You must never use real names. It's too dangerous. Call her the seabird."

Johann rolled his eyes. "Someone has got to convince oatmeal-head here that the War Between the States is over. However, I do believe that we must choose one name. Otherwise she'll be confused."

"Who will?" Maeve asked, stroking the badger.

Ian forced himself to take a deep breath. He needed that scotch now more than ever. His mother's dementia was hard enough to handle without the whole d.a.m.ned circus. "I believe he's speaking of our patient, Mother."

"Oh."

"We must follow Dr. Carrick's lead," Andrew pleaded, looking at his housemates.

"All right then," Johann conceded. "Selena it is."

"Then we are agreed," Ian said, thoroughly disgusted by the entire affair.

"On what?" Maeve asked, frowning.

"The patient, Mother. We shall call her Selena."

Maeve's frown deepened. "Oh. I thought you'd decided that hours ago."

"Her fever's gone."

Ian heard Edith's words through a fog of exhaustion. It took a moment to register. Fever ... gone. He snapped up so quickly, the chair wobbled beneath

36 him. Suddenly he was wide-awake. He ran a hand through his dirty hair and surged to his feet. "Are you certain?" "Aye, Doctor. I am." She handed him the long, narrow thermometer designed by Hicks. He took the prismatic strip of gla.s.s and looked down at it. His knees almost buckled in relief. He realized in that instant the magnitude of his obsession with her. As desperately as he wanted her to live, he hadn't thought it would happen. Not really. Not with his view of the Almighty. He reached out for the back of the chair and clutched it for support. "Jesus, it is almost normal." "You said if her fever went away, the poor wee thing might have a chance." He gave Edith a grin. "It's a start, anyway, Edith. Hurry up now, let's get this ice off of her and close the windows. Get her a warm flannel nightdress and drawers, and new sheets and blankets." "Aye, Doctor," Edith answered with a smile, and bustled from the room, leaving him-for once-alone with his patient. Ian pulled his chair back to Selena's bedside and sank onto the familiar straw seat, leaning toward her. He felt an overwhelming surge of emotion for the woman who lay motionless before him. "You did it." His voice broke. "You did it." He took one of her hands in his, reveling in the warm, dry, healthy temperature of her skin. "That's it, Selena. You're doing my work for me." She lay there as always, limp and unresponsive, the slack opening of her mouth invaded by tubing. The rough, rattling determination of her breathing was the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard. It was the fight for life, and she hadn't once given up. "I never tried as hard as you're trying right now," he whispered, surprised by his own confession and the 37 truth of it. All his life, he'd taken the easy road and run away from anything that frightened or confused him. Normally he didn't think about his cowardice or his failures, but now, sitting here all alone with his G.o.ddess, he couldn't avoid thinking about them, his lost and broken dreams. He remembered a dozen moments, memories he'd thought had seeped away. Times Maeve had taken him in her arms and read him stories and stroked his hair and kissed his brow; times she'd stared at him, unable to remember his name; times she'd screeched at him in front of his boyhood friends, railing at him about some imagined slight. And then there were the dark days, after his father's death, when she'd strolled through the manse like a lost spirit, moaning, crying, unrecognizing of everything and everyone. For almost two years, she hadn't spoken a word to anyone except those d.a.m.ned stuffed animals she kept in her room. He remembered so many nights, standing at her open door, his slim, adolescent body pressed into the shadows, watching her talk to those animals. They both needed consolation in those days, but she'd never come to him, never even looked him in the eyes. So many failures. So many lost chances .. . He leaned back, sighing heavily. "Christ, Selena, why can't I forget? What's wrong with me?" He looked down at his silent patient, realizing he'd just said more to her than he'd ever said to another person. It was a little frightening. In the endless hours he'd sat at Selena's bedside, he'd somehow given her a personality, a past and a future. Even worse, even more warped, he'd begun to fall in love with the fiction he'd created. A woman who didn't really exist. G.o.d help him. She was floating. The wind around her was warm finally. It buffeted her on soothing currents, rocked

38.

her as gently as a ... thing, small, green, stuck on a branch....