“I know.”
“It can’t be something that was sparked by your work at Milestone. Because if it’s caused by the pressure of your work or something like that—”
“—then we’d be talking about a psychological condition,” she finished for him. “A nervous breakdown.”
“Yes.”
“Which it isn’t.”
“Then how can there be a link to Milestone?”
She frowned. “I don’t know.”
“So you must be wrong.”
“I guess so. But I still...”
“Feel frightened?”
“Yes.”
“That’s easily explained,” McGee said. “You’re afraid of the Milestone Corporation for pretty much the same reason that you were afraid of the drawn curtain around Jessie’s bed. You couldn’t see what was on the other side of that curtain, which gave your imagination a chance to run wild. And your job has that same quality of the unknown about it. There’s a curtain drawn around that part of your life, and because you can’t see what lies beyond it, your imagination is given an opportunity to supply you with frightening possibilities. Perhaps because of an almost immeasurably small amount of brain damage, you’re fixated on the House of Thunder and on what happened to you in that cavern; so it follows that your imagination, whenever it
does
have a chance to run wild, invariably harkens back to those events of thirteen years ago. Your hallucinations have nothing to do with your job, they can’t have anything to do with it, because Milestone has nothing to do with the House of Thunder. You’re just trying to tie them all together because ... well, that’s what it means to be psychologically
obsessed
with a single event in your life. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Yet the Milestone Corporation still frightens you.”
“Every time you mention the name, a cold wave passes through me,” she admitted.
She could see goose bumps on her arm where the sleeve of her pajamas had slid back.
McGee had been leaning against the bed all this time. Now he boosted himself up and sat on the edge of it, still holding her hand.
“I know it scares you,” he said sympathetically. “Your hand is freezing. It wasn’t cold at all when I first took hold of it, but the moment we started talking about your job, it just turned to ice.”
“You see?”
“Yes, but those cold waves, those feelings of suspicion directed toward Milestone, all of those things are just facets of your obsession. This fear is like a miniature episode, a very small version of the kind of attack in which you thought you saw Jerry Stein’s corpse. You have no logical reason to be afraid of Milestone or of anyone who works there.”
She nodded, dismayed by the ever-complicating nature of her condition. “I guess I don’t.”
“You
know
you don’t.”
Susan sighed. “You know what I wish? I wish there were such things as ghosts. I wish this
were
a case of dead men returning from the grave to take revenge on me, like something out of one of those EC Horror Comics. I mean, Jeez, how much
easier
it would be to deal with
that.
No spinal taps. No angiograms. No sharply clawed little self-doubts tearing me apart from inside. All I’d have to do is call up a priest and ask him, please, to come over here and chase these nasty demonic spirits all the way back to Hell, where they belong.”
McGee frowned at her, and there was a troubled expression in his eyes when he said, “Hey, I don’t think I like to hear you talking that way.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Susan quickly assured him, “I’m not going to go mystical on you. I’m perfectly aware that there ain’t no such things as ghosts. Besides, if there were ghosts, and if that’s what these things were that’ve been bothering me lately, then they’d be transparent, wouldn’t they? Or they’d look like a bunch of bed sheets with eye holes cut out of them.
That’s
a ghost. They wouldn’t be warm-skinned and solid like the things I’ve been running into and away from lately.” She smiled at him. “Hey, I know why you’re so worried all of a sudden! You’re afraid that if it
did
turn out to be ghosts, then I wouldn’t need you any more. Doctors don’t perform exorcisms, right?”
He smiled, too. “Right.”
“You’re afraid that I’d cast you aside, just throw you over in favor of some priest with a prayer book in one hand and a golden crucifix in the other.”
“Would you do that to me?” he asked.
“Never. For heaven’s sake, too many things could go wrong if I relied on a priest. Like... what if I entrusted myself to a priest who’d lost his faith? Or what if I went to a Catholic priest for help—and then the ghosts all turned out to be Protestants? What good would an exorcism do me then?”
She was certain that McGee hadn’t been conned by her forced good humor; he knew that she was still depressed and scared. But he played along with her anyway, for he apparently sensed, as she had done, that she’d dwelt on her problems far too much this morning and that chewing them over any longer would be harmful to her. She needed a change of subject, needed to kid around for a while, and McGee obliged.
“Well,” he said, “as I understand it, the exorcism is supposed to work regardless of the spirit’s religious affiliation in any prior life it might have lived. After all, what kind of mess would the supernatural world be in if it had to take logic into account? I mean, if Catholic exorcisms didn’t work against Protestant ghosts, then a crucifix wouldn’t repel a Jewish vampire.”
“In that case, how
would
you repel a Jewish vampire?”
“You’d probably have to brandish a mezuzah at him instead of a crucifix.”
“Or maybe you could just offer him a ham dinner,” Susan said.
“That would only repel him if he was a devout, practicing Jewish vampire. And then what about Moslem vampires?”
“See?” she said. “It’s all too complicated. I can’t possibly fire you and hire a priest.”
“Ah, it’s so nice to know I’m needed.”
“Oh, you’re definitely needed,” she assured him. “I need you. I
do
need you.” She heard her voice change abruptly as she was speaking, heard the bantering tone evaporate in the intense heat of her true feelings for him. “There’s no doubt about
that.”
She was as startled by her own boldness as McGee appeared to be, but she couldn’t stop herself. She could only plunge ahead recklessly, speaking too fast, in too much of a rush to express what had been on her mind and in her heart for the past day or two. “I need you, Jeff McGee. And if you want me to, I’ll sit here all day, saying it over and over again, until my voice wears out.”
He stared at her, his beautiful blue eyes a darker and more intense blue than she had ever seen them before.
She tried to read those eyes, but she couldn’t tell a thing about the thoughts behind them.
As she waited for him to respond to her, Susan wondered if she had done something stupid. Had she misinterpreted his treatment of her and his reactions to her during the past few days? Where she had thought she’d seen romantic interest—was there really only doctorly concern? If she had mistaken his usual bedside manner for special interest, the next few minutes were going to be among the most socially awkward in her life.
She wished desperately that she could call back the words she had spoken, roll back the clock just one minute.
Then McGee kissed her.
It was not like any of the kisses that he had planted on her cheek or on the corner of her mouth during the past couple of days. There was nothing chaste or timid about it this time. He kissed her full upon the lips, tenderly yet forcefully, both giving and taking, seeking and demanding. She responded to him with an instancy and with a heat that were not at all like her; this time, there was no trace of the ice maiden in her, nothing whatsoever held in reserve, no part of her that stopped to think about keeping control of the situation and of the relationship that might follow. This would be different from all other love affairs she’d ever known. This time she, too, was being swept away. This kiss involved not only lips and tongues, but passion, hunger, need. He put his hands on her face, one on each side of her face, holding her gently but firmly, as if he was afraid that she would reconsider her commitment and would pull back from him—as if he could not bear the thought of her doing so.
When at last the kiss ended and they drew apart a few inches to look at each other, to decide how the kiss had changed them, Susan saw a mixture of emotions in McGee’s face: happiness, surprise, awe, confusion, embarrassment, and more.
His breathing was fast.
Hers was faster.
For a moment she thought she saw something else in his eyes, too; something ... darker. For only a second or two, she thought she saw fear in his eyes, just a flicker of it, a fluttering bat-wing apprehension.
Fear?
Before she could decide what that might mean, before she could even be sure that she had actually seen fear in his eyes, the silence was broken, and the spell, too.
“You surprised me,” Jeff said. “I didn’t ...”
“I was afraid I’d offended you or ...”
“No, no. I just ... didn’t realize ...”
“... that both of us ...”
“... the feeling was mutual.”
“I thought I understood and ... Well, the signals you were sending out seemed ...”
“... the kiss put an end to any doubts that you ...”
“God, yes!”
“What a kiss,” he said.
“Some kiss.”
He kissed her again, but only briefly, glancing at the door with evident uneasiness. She couldn’t blame him for holding back. He was a doctor, after all, and she was a patient; and necking with the patients was a couple of thousand miles below the level of decorum that was expected of a physician. She wanted to throw her arms around him and draw him tight against her; she wanted to possess him and be possessed by him. But she knew this was neither the right time nor the right place, and she let him draw back from her.
She said, “How long have you ...”
“I don’t know. Maybe even before you came out of the coma.”
“Before that? Loved me ... ?”
“You were so beautiful.”
“But you didn’t even know me then.”
“So it probably really wasn’t love at that point. But something. Even then, I felt
something.”
“I’m glad.”
“And after you came out of the coma ...”
“You found out what a charmer I am, and you were hooked.”
He smiled. “Exactly. And I found out that you had what Mrs. Baker calls ‘moxie.’ I like a woman with moxie.”
For a few seconds they were silent again, just staring at each other.
Then she said, “Can it really happen this fast?”
“It has.”
“There’s so much to talk about.”
“A million things,” he said.
“A billion,” she said. “I hardly know a thing about your background.”
“It’s shady.”
“I want to know everything there is to know about you,” she said, holding one of his hands in both of hers. “Everything. But I guess ... here, in this place ...”
“It’s too awkward here.”
“Yes. It’s hardly the right place for new lovers to become better acquainted with each other.”
“I think we ought to keep our relationship on a strictly doctor-patient basis as long as you’ve got to be here. Later, when you’re feeling better, when you’ve been discharged and our time together isn’t so public ...”
“That’s probably wise,” she said, although she wanted to touch him and to be touched by him in ways that doctors and patients didn’t touch each other. “But does it have to be
strictly
doctor-patient? Can’t we bend a little? Can’t you at least kiss me on the cheek now and then?”