White lies

Steve was taken out of intensive care two days later and moved to a private room, and the navy guards shifted location. The new room had a television, some- thing the ICU room had lacked, and Steve insisted on listening to every news program he could, as if he were searching for clues that would tie all the missing pieces together for him again. The problem was that he seemed to be interested in all the world situations and could discuss the politics of others nations as easily as domestic issues. That disturbed Jay; Steve had never been particularly political, and the depth of his current knowledge revealed that he had become deeply in- volved. Given that, it became more likely that he had also been more involved in the situation that had nearly killed him than perhaps even Frank knew. Or perhaps Frank did know, after all. He had had several long, private conversations with Steve, but Steve remained guarded. Only with Jay did he lose his wariness.

His various injuries kept him bed-bound much longer than he should have been, but he wasn’t able to negotiate with crutches due to his burned hands. His physical inactivity ate at him, eroding his patience and good humor. He quickly decided which television shows he liked, discarding all game shows and soap operas, but even the ones he liked lacked something, since so much of the action was visual. Merely being able to listen frustrated him, and soon he wanted the set on only for the news. Jay did everything she could think of to entertain him; he liked it when she read the newspaper to him, but for the most part he just wanted to talk.

"Tell me what you look like," he said one morning.

The demand flustered her. It was oddly embarrassing to be asked to describe oneself. "Well, I have brown hair," she began hesitantly.

"What shade of brown? Reddish? Gold?"

"Gold, I guess, but on the dark side. Honey-colored."

"Is it long?"

"No. It’s almost to my shoulders, and very straight."

"What color are your eyes?"

"Blue." "Come on," he chided after a minute when she didn’t add anything. "How tall are you?"

"Medium. Five-six."

"How tall am I? Did we fit together well?"

The thought made her throat tighten. "You’re six feet, and yes, we did dance well together."

He turned his bandaged eyes toward her. "I wasn’t talking about dancing, but so what? When I get out of these casts, let’s go dancing again. Maybe I haven’t forgotten how."

She didn’t know if she could stand being in his arms again, not with her responses running wild every time she heard his harsh, cracked voice. But he was waiting for her to answer, so she said lightly, "It’s a date."

He lifted his hands. "The bandages come off tomorrow. Next week I have the final surgery on my eyes. The casts come off in two weeks. Give me a month to build up my strength. By then the bandages should be off my eyes, and we’ll do the town."

"You’re only giving yourself a month to get your strength back? Isn’t that a little ambitious?"

"I’ve done it before," he said, then went very still. Jay held her breath as she watched him, but after a minute he swore softly. "Damn it, I know things, but I can’t remember them. I know what foods I like, I know the name of every head of state of every nation mentioned in the news, I can even recalj what they look like, but I don’t know my own face. I know who won the last World Series, but not where I was when it was played. I know the smell of the canals in Venice, but I can’t remember ever being there." He paused a minute, then said very quietly, "Sometimes I want to take this place apart with my bare hands."

"Major Lunning told you what to expect," Jay said, still shaken by what he’d said. How deeply had he involved himself in the gray world Frank had hinted at? She was very much afraid that Steve was no longer an adventurer, but a player. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself. He said your memory would probably come back in dribbles."

A slow grin touched his lips, deepening the lines that bracketed his mouth and drawing her helpless, fascinated gaze. His lips seemed firmer, fuller, as if they were still slightly swollen, or perhaps it was because his face was thinner and older. "Sorry," he said. "I’ll have to watch that."

His wry humor, especially when he had good reason to occasionally feel sorry for himself, only reminded her again of his hard inner strength and was one more blow against the shaky guard she had set up around her heart. She had to laugh at him, just as she had years before, but there was a difference now. Before, Steve had used humor as a wall to hide behind; now the wall was gone, and she could see the real man.

She was with him the next morning when the bandages came off his burned hands for good. She had been in there before when the bandages were changed, so she had seen the raw blisters on his palms and fingers when they had looked much worse than they did now. Patches of reddened skin were still visible all the way to his elbows, but his hands had caught the worst of it. Now that the danger of infection was past, the new, tender skin would heal faster without the bandages, but his hands would be too painful for him to use them much for a while.

When she compared how he looked now to the way he had looked the first time she had seen him, hooked to all those machines and monitors, with so many tubes running into his body, it seemed nothing short of a miracle. It had been only four weeks, but he had been little more than a vegetable then, and now he exerted the force of his personality over everyone who entered his room, even the doctors. His face had been swollen and bruised before; now the hard line of his jaw and the precise cut of his lips fascinated her. She knew that plastic surgeons had rebuilt his shattered face, and she wondered about the changes she would see when the bandages were completely gone and she was able to truly see him for the first time. His jaw was a little different, a little squarer, leaner, but that was to be expected, since he had lost so much weight after he’d been injured. His beard seemed darker, because he was so pale. She was very well acquainted with his jaw and beard, since she had to shave him every morning. The nurses had done it until he became conscious and made it known he wanted Jay to shave him, and no one else.