Forever His(144)

Glass lanterns.

Someone was speaking to her. Shapes moved around her. People. Three. She could make out only their shadows looming around her, like a movie out of focus. But then her eyes adjusted, and the outlines shimmered and resolved into—

Doctors.

They wore masks over their mouths. And coverings like tight white bandanas over their hair. Aprons. And thin gloves ... like surgical gloves. She could hear the metallic clatter of instruments on a tray.

She was hallucinating. She was dead.

But she still felt the pain in her back. So intense she started to cry. She wasn’t dead ... she was in the same bedchamber she had been in before. But not in the bed. She was on a table, draped with sheets.

Where was Gaston?

The same man who had spoken before tried again, leaning closer. “Mrs. Varennes, we’re going to try to help you.”

He had shifted to English.

American English.

“I don’t have any X-rays to go by, ma’am, and I need you to tell me something. Was the bullet fragment lodged near the lumbar artery or the radicular artery? Do you remember what your doctors told you?”

He had a Texas accent. This was a dream. Had he said X-rays? A hallucination. It had to be. She felt a pain in her left arm—a needle puncture. She was too weak to lift her head, to see what was happening, but she recognized the man on her left. From where? Her pain-dazed mind would not supply a name. But the face—

He was the barber-surgeon who had worked on Gaston.

“Mrs. Varennes,” the Texan said insistently, “this is very important and there’s not much time. I’ll be able to locate that fragment much faster and easier if you can help me.”

She struggled to speak. To question them. Her mind was a fog of confusion and pain. Who were they? How did they get here?

Or was she the one who had come to them? Had she returned to her own time?

She remembered saying good-bye to Gaston. She had said good-bye and that she loved him and then—

“Her pulse has just become very fast, Dr. Ramsey.”

“Was it the lumbar or the radicular?” the Texan demanded urgently. “Did they tell you?”

Yes. Yes, of course they had told her. Her doctors had reviewed her medical condition so many endless times that she had wanted to scream at them and cover her ears.

“The radicular,” she whispered. “W-where ... when—”

“Everything’s going to be all right, ma’am.” He shifted back to French. “Thibault, get ready with suction—the glass pipette there with the inflated leather bulb on the end. Put her out, Arnaud.”

One of them put a cloth over her nose and mouth. A cloth soaked with a strong-smelling liquid.

“Count with me, milady,” the barber-surgeon on her left said. “One hundred ... ninety-nine ... ninety-eight ...”

She had been through enough surgeries to know what the countdown meant. Anesthetic. It was anesthetic. No! She didn’t want it. Didn’t want to sink back into the darkness, never knowing if she would awaken again. Not knowing if she had seen Gaston for the last time. Where was—

“Ninety-seven ... ninety-six ... ninety-five ...”

A soft black fog enveloped her.

***

A snore.

The sound she heard was definitely a snore.

It invaded the sea of strange thoughts that drifted lazily through her head. Floating to consciousness, pleased that she had finally identified the sound, Celine tried to focus on it ... grab it ... use it as an anchor.

She felt so woozy. Light-headed. Weightless. Like she had had far too much champagne ... like she was hanging suspended at the peak of a roller coaster, in that no-gravity moment before it plunged down the other side.

Not that the feeling was unpleasant. It was better than the blank nothing she had felt for a long time. In fact, it was rather ... dreamy. Like she was floating around in a warm ocean, safe, letting the tide carry her where it would.

But for some reason, she felt that it was important to open her eyes. Someone had been asking her to do that. A male voice. A very deep, familiar voice, alternately commanding and coaxing softly. She hadn’t been able to respond, though she had wanted to. She couldn’t remember when that had been.

In fact, she couldn’t remember how long she had been asleep.

Curious, confused, she fought her way through the muzzy feeling that clouded her head, up, toward that snore.

Her senses began to clear a bit. Her mouth felt dry, like she hadn’t had anything to drink in a long time. She almost unconsciously braced herself, waiting for pain ... but there was no pain. Only an uncomfortable soreness. In her back. She opened one eyelid just a bit, experimentally.

She was lying in a bed, on her stomach. That made sense somehow, but she couldn’t remember why. She felt weak. As if she would float away if it weren’t for the heavy blankets covering her. Why did she feel so weak?