Jericho (A Redemption Novel) (6 page)

Since the incident with the tray, the other nurses wanted as little to do with him as possible. Georgia was the only one besides the doctor to touch him. She was the only one who didn’t seem to mind.

“I’m a mess, Christian,” she said as she worked. “A guilty-feeling, crying mess. I bet you would never let your life get so out of control. I bet you even put your clothes away in alphabetical order.”

“Sit down, Georgia.”

“What?” Her hands paused midaction.

“Sit. In that chair. Behind you.” He knew when she was finished with her work she would walk out the door. But tonight, even though he knew he should let her go, he wanted her to stay.

Her eyes went wide again. “I’m not supposed to.”

“Who’s going to find out? I know you come to see me last.”

She shook her head. “You’re not supposed to know that.”

“But I do. Everybody is sleeping. You can sit for a few minutes. You know you want to.”

She looked unsure for a moment, but eased into the chair. “Why do I feel as if you are tempting me with forbidden fruit? You know I’m in a dangerous mood. I’m sleep-deprived and emotional. You could have a whole mess of trouble on your hands in a few minutes.”

“I’ll risk it. Just relax for a second. You look dead on your feet.”

She shut her eyes and rested her cheek against her palm. “You’re not supposed to be feeling sorry for me. You’re the one who’s bedridden in the hospital because you were defending my freedom. I’ve got my health, and my beautiful baby. I’ve got a roof over my head and a job. I have a lot more than most people. You shouldn’t feel sorry for me.” She yawned widely. “And I shouldn’t feel sorry for myself.”

And yet he did. She was a young woman, working a hard job and raising a baby on her own. He wondered what had happened to her family but knew it was wrong to ask. She had mentioned her father in passing a few times and not in the past tense. Where the hell was he now? How could he let his daughter struggle alone? And then there was her daughter’s father. The bastard had left Georgia to raise a baby on her own. The man should be drawn and quartered.

“It’s all right to complain sometimes, Georgia. You can’t hold everything inside.”

“You do,” she countered without opening her eyes. “You don’t complain at all. I know you must be mad about what happened. You’re in pain. Your life will never be the same again and yet you never say a word about it.”

He wasn’t angry about what happened. In some ways he thought he deserved it, that this was his punishment for mistakes he’d made a long time ago. To make up for Miko. To make up for his parents, who had never gotten to see the man he became all due to his selfishness. “Marines don’t complain.”

A sleepy smile curved her lips. “Of course. Talk to me so I don’t fall asleep, honey.”

“About what?”

“Anything. Tell me a story. What’s basic training really like?”

“You ever been to hell?”

She opened her eyes, and a combination of sleepiness and laughter played there. And he wondered what she would look like after he made love to her. Hopefully the same. Her face was the kind a man wanted to fall asleep staring at.

“Nope. Haven’t been yet.”

“Marine basic training is a little like that. Only not as hot.”

She laughed and shut her eyes again. “Tell me more.”

CHAPTER 6

T
he next day Georgia was feeling a little bit better. She tried not to think that her improved mood had anything to do with Christian. It couldn’t have. Even though she’d spent nearly an hour in his room last night, he was just another patient.

No different from the rest of the men on her floor.

She needed to keep telling herself that. If she didn’t, it could be dangerous. Her slight bump in happiness must have to do with how she’d started her morning. Mrs. Sheppard gave her a short stack of pancakes, four pieces of bacon and a big of cup of coffee with so much sugar and milk it made her teeth hurt. That much carbs, bacon and sugar would lift anybody’s mood.

Plus Mrs. Sheppard had told her that Abby didn’t sleep well the night before. Georgia wanted to feel bad about it but she couldn’t, because her baby had taken a three-hour nap after breakfast, which meant Georgia got to sleep for three blissful hours in a row.

Feeling energized, she took her daughter to the park. Even if she didn’t have any energy she would have made the trip. It was important for Georgia to do as many things with her baby as possible.

Wednesday was the free day at the zoo. Fridays they went to the children’s reading hour at the library. Some days they went down to the waterfront and fed old bread to the seagulls. And on weekends they went to the museum. It was a place that Georgia had never been allowed to go as a child. Her father, being a minister, was strictly against it. There were naked bodies there. Naked bodies performing acts of depravity. Or so he said.

When she was a teenager she had taken a book out of the library about Michelangelo’s life. She had heard about the Sistine Chapel and was amazed by the amount of work it took to create such a masterpiece. She didn’t see any lewd artwork. She only saw it as art, but when her father found the book, he got angry. He told her that looking at those pictures was a sin, that the only naked man a woman should see was her husband. And instead of making her return the book he threw it in the fireplace.

Her father wasn’t always so radical. He used to be nicer. A friendly preacher who taught the word of God and welcomed everybody to church on Sunday. But that had all ended when her oldest brother, Abel, died when she was twelve. He had been murdered by his girlfriend’s estranged husband.

She’d never known her brother well and she’d been too young to understand the circumstances around his death. Her parents had thought it was too sordid to explain to them, and maybe it was. But ever since then her father had become harsh. Strict. Even his sermons had changed. He no longer preached about love, but about sinners and repentance.

My daughters will not be the kind of women who lead men into temptation.

From that point on everything a normal teenage girl thought or felt became a sin. They were barely allowed out of the house without an escort. They weren’t allowed to watch TV, listen to the radio or see any movies. Georgia and Carolina were woefully ignorant about everything. And that had become clear when Georgia was finally allowed to attend college. It was a women’s Christian college, but those girls knew a hell of a lot more about the world than she ever did.

She was not allowed to take up residence there. Only go to class and come back, but even then she relished her tiny bit of freedom. She stayed in the library as long as she could, looking at art books and studying classics. She was just trying to learn a little more about the world she was a part of. But while she did it she knew she was doing something her father disapproved of. She felt guilty then.

It took her nearly two months of counseling at the women’s center to realize that what she had done wasn’t wrong. It was normal to be curious about the world.

Now she made sure her daughter was exposed to as much as possible. She wouldn’t have her feeling left out or less than others. And if she had questions about anything, Georgia would do her best to answer them. She wouldn’t make her daughter feel guilty for wanting to live life.

“You want to go down the slide again, baby?”

“No!” she said, smiling. That was Abby’s favorite word these days, and Georgia was never sure if she didn’t really want something or she just liked saying it.

“No?” She took her daughter by the hand and led her to the bench. “Well, how about some juice, then? I brought some animal crackers, too.”

“Oooo.”

She placed Abby on her lap and cuddled her close while her daughter had her snack. She was so absorbed in watching her baby eat that she barely took note of the man sitting on the next bench.

“Conner!” He looked up from his laptop. “Please don’t climb up the slide. I would like to make it through this week without a trip to the doctor.”

Georgia spotted a little sandy-haired boy rushing up the slide as if he could outrun his father’s order.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” he said to Georgia. “He’s just like me when I was his age.”

Georgia smiled and nodded and handed Abby another cracker.

“I think little boys are meant to get hurt sometimes, but my ex-wife will skin me alive if he comes back with even a scratch on him.”

“You’d better go get him, then.” She motioned toward the playground. “He’s hanging upside down from the monkey bars by one leg.”

“Connor!”

The man was off, and Georgia kissed Abby’s shoulder. “Sometimes I’m really glad you’re a girl, baby cakes.”

Abby loved pretty sundresses and patent leather shoes, but even if she didn’t, even if she wanted to play in the dirt, that would be okay. Whatever Abby wanted to do with herself would be okay.

The man came back slightly out of breath and stood before her. “That kid is going to be the death of me. Even when he was your daughter’s age, he was running me ragged. How old is she anyway? About one?”

She nodded. “Her first birthday is next week.”

“First birthdays are the best.” He stepped closer and reached out to take Abby’s hand. A tiny bit of panic seized Georgia. She had seen this man before. At this very park with his son. He seemed like a nice man. And they were in public, but for some reason, his nearness, his interaction with her daughter, made her breath come short. “What’s your name, beautiful?”

“Her—her name is Abby,” Georgia replied, forcing the words to come out.

“Hi, Abby.” He looked up at Georgia. “I’m Rick. I’ve seen you here a few times, but we’ve never met.”

“Georgia.”

“Georgia.” He smiled, showing off perfectly white teeth. “What a beautiful name.”

“Thanks.” She dug in her bag for baby wipes to clean Abby’s hands and face. She needed something to do to distract her from his gaze.

“Are you named after somebody?” His face broke out into a mischievous grin. “Or is it something crazy, like you were conceived in the great state?”

He was hitting on her. The tips of her ears started to burn.

“My mother just liked the name, I guess.”

She didn’t get hit on very often, being homeschooled and going to an all-girls college. So when it did happen on the rare occasion, she didn’t know how to handle it. Of course, the boys at the hospital flirted with her when she came to check on them, but that was nothing. Military men were the most respectful men she had encountered.

Rick was different, and not physically injured. And wasn’t a bad-looking man. Most women would probably find him attractive, with his long, lean frame and dark hair, but Georgia could barely look past her anxious twitchy feeling to see that. Most men had that effect on her.

And then there was Christian, who was overpoweringly big, looked like a beast and tended to grab her when she least expected it. He had a totally different effect on her. He made her exceedingly uncomfortable, too, but not in the way Rick did. She should be scared of Christian. She shouldn’t even be thinking about him now. Instead she should be flattered by Rick’s attentions. She should want to get to know the nice man who seemed to enjoy spending time with his son at the park. But she didn’t. She was royally screwed up.

“As you can tell, I’m no good at picking up women at the park.” He grinned bashfully. “But there’s something about you, Georgia, that captures my attention every time I see you. What do you say we get the kids together and get some ice cream?”

“I say...”
Say yes. It might be good for you. It’s time for you to move on.
But she didn’t say that. “Your son is standing on top of the swing set.”

“Shit. Connor!”

He was off, and while his back was turned Georgia took her baby and went home.

* * *

“Okay, toss me another one.”

Tobias held out his hands, waiting for Christian to throw him another object. They had been playing this game for the better part of a half hour. Tobias had somehow managed to make his way into Christian’s daily routine, often spending hours in his room just talking or listening to baseball games on the radio. Christian wasn’t the type of man who was easily impressed, but he had to admit he was amazed by Tobias. He was the type of soldier that he would have liked to have had in his unit in Iraq. The kid was good for morale. He always seemed so damn happy.

Christian never met somebody so damn accepting of his fate. He was nineteen years old and suddenly blind. Why the hell wasn’t he mad? Or at least acting like a bratty teenager about it? But he took everything in stride. Christian wished he could feel the same way about his fate as Tobias.

“Ready?” He threw the item so it hit him square in the chest. “What do you think that is?”

Tobias rubbed his hands over it, then put it to his cheek for a feel before finally bringing it to his nose to smell. “Is it a plum?”

“It is. Good work, kid.”

“Thanks.” His grinned widely at the praise. “Throw me another, sir.”

“Can’t. Ran out of stuff.” He had already thrown an empty water pitcher, a tube of toothpaste and the socks Georgia had given him that had been freshly laundered. Christian didn’t have any other personal possessions.

“What you need is a mama. Mine brings me all types of stuff. My room is getting so full we’re going to need a moving truck when I get out of here.”

Christian thought back to his mother for a moment. He tried not to think about her often—the pain of her death, even after more than ten years, was still fresh. She would have brought him whatever he wanted. She would have made him chicken soup. She would have knitted him a sweater. She would have done anything.

As a kid, he’d never appreciated her mothering. He’d felt smothered by it. That was another thing he would change if he could go back in time. He would let her know how much he loved her. His dad, too. Joining the marines was the last thing his parents would have wanted him to do, but after he lost them there didn’t seem like any other choice. But he didn’t want to think about a past he couldn’t change, so he turned the conversation back to Tobias instead.

“When are you leaving here?”

He shrugged. “Nobody’s said for sure. They want to try one more surgery. A corneal transplant, but I don’t know. Nothing’s helped so far and they said this operation only has a thirty percent chance of working due to my type of injury. I’m not sure if I want to go through all of that for something that might not work.”

“So you’re going to give up on your eyesight?”

Tobias turned his head, his sightless sunglasses-covered eyes nearly connecting with Christian’s. “Does it seem like I’m giving up, sir?”

He wasn’t judging Tobias’s choice. He just wanted to make sure he understood him. “Don’t you want to see again?”

“You know I do.” For the first time since they met, the boy’s face grew stormy. “You know what’s worse than not being able to see? Getting your hopes up that the next thing will work only to find that it only made things worse. I could see shadows before the last surgery. Now I can’t. I can barely tell if it’s day or night. What’s the next thing that’s going to happen? Total fucking darkness? And even if it does take, I have to be worried that my body’s going to reject the transplant for the rest of my life, and where will I be then?”

“I don’t know. But if it were me, I wouldn’t give up until I knew there was nothing else left for me try.”

“You think I’m a coward, don’t you?”

“No, I—”

“I have to go.” He got out of his chair a little quicker than he should have and knocked into Christian’s nightstand, banging his hip. He didn’t react. He just kept feeling his way along the wall until he was gone from Christian’s sight.

* * *

Later that night, Georgia forced herself to sit at the nurses’ station after seeing to her patients. She hadn’t gone in to see Christian yet. She could have. She could have been in and out of there by now, because one of her patients had been discharged. But she made herself sit and complete her paperwork. She had the entire night to check on him.

Her shift was usually very quiet after she saw to all the men on her floor, and at times she often found herself scrounging for something to do.

There were other nurses in other wings there, too. They sometimes left the orderlies in charge while they congregated in the break room and gossiped about what was going on in the hospital. Georgia had joined them once, but she never felt as if she fit in. It must be another one of those drawbacks of growing up so isolated. She never had many girlfriends. There were the girls she used to go to church with, the children she would see in Sunday school, but as a child her best friend was her sister. Carolina was the only person she had really been able to speak to.

Ever since her letter showed up, Georgia had been missing her more and more almost to the point where it was painful. What would be the harm of talking to her sister? She could use a friend.

But just when she was about to break down and call her, some of the bitterness returned. The betrayal. She tried to pull up one of her father’s old sermons about forgiveness but none came to mind. It must not be time yet.

Georgia threw down her pen. Paperwork wasn’t enough to take her mind off her family. It was 12:15 a.m. The last of her patients seemed to have drifted off to sleep soon after eleven. Except for Christian. He never went to sleep until after she came. She didn’t want to think that he waited up for her. But sometimes she would loop back around again and peek in his room one more time. She told herself it was just to check on him. Not to get one more glimpse of him. He was always asleep when she did. She wondered if the day would ever come when she walked into his room and he wouldn’t be awake to greet her. So far that day hadn’t come. And she was glad for it.