White lies

"I’m here." Her cool fingers touched his arm.

How many times had he heard those two words, and how many times had they provided him with a link to consciousness? They seemed embedded in his mind, as if they were his one memory. Hell, they probably were. He reached for her with his free hand. "Thirsty."

He heard the sound of water pouring; then a straw touched his lips and he gratefully sucked the cold liquid into his dry mouth and down his raw throat. She took the straw away after only a couple of swallows. "Not too much at first," she said in that calm way of hers. "The anesthesia may make you sick."

He moved his hand and felt the needle tugging at it again. Swift irritation filled him. "Get a nurse to take this damned needle out."

"You need glucose after surgery to keep from going into shock," she argued. "And it probably has an antibiotic in it–"

"Then they can give me pills," he rasped. "I don’t like being restricted like this." It was bad enough that his legs were still in casts; he’d had enough of having to lie still to last him a lifetime.

She was silent for a moment, and he could sense her understanding. Sometimes it was as if they didn’t need words, as if there were a link between them that transcended the verbal. She knew exactly how frustrated it made him to have to lie in bed day after day; it was not only boring, it went against every survival instinct he possessed. "All right," she finally said, her cool fingers drifting against his arm. "I’ll get a nurse."

He listened as she left the room, then lay quietly, waiting to see if Frank Payne would identify himself. It was a subtle game; he didn’t even know why he was playing it. But Payne was hiding something, and Steve didn’t trust him. He’d do anything he could to gain an edge, even if it was something so trivial as pretending to sleep while he eavesdropped. He hadn’t even learned anything, other than that Payne had "plans" for him.

"Are you in any pain?" Frank asked.

Steve cautiously turned his head. "Frank?" Another part of the game, pretending he didn’t recognize the other man’s voice.

"Yes."

"No, not much pain. Groggy." That much was true; the anesthesia made him feel limp and sleepy. But he could force himself to mental alertness, and that was the important part. He would rather be in pain than be so doped up he didn’t know what was going on around him. The barbiturate coma had been a nightmare of darkness, of nothingness, which he didn’t want to experience again, even in a mild form. Even amnesia was better than that total lack of self.

"That’s the last of it. No more surgery, no more tubes, no more needles. When the casts come off your legs, you can start getting back to your old shape." Frank had a quiet voice, and there was often a note of familiarity in it, as if they had known each other well. His words touched a chord of recognition in Steve; his old shape hadn’t been bulky muscles, but rather speed and stamina, a steely core of strength that kept him going when other men would have collapsed.

"Is Jay in any danger?" he asked, cutting through the cautious maneuvering to what was most important to him.

"Because of what you may have seen?"

"Yes."

"We don’t anticipate any danger," Frank replied, his voice cautious. "You are important to us only because we need to know exactly what happened, and you might provide us with some answers."

Steve smiled wryly. "Yeah, I know. Important enough to cut through red tape and coordinate two, maybe three, separate agencies, as well as pulling in people from different branches of the service and from the private sector. I’m just an innocent bystander, aren’t I? Jay may buy that, but I don’t. So cut the crap and give me a yes or no answer. Is Jay in any danger?"

"No," Frank said firmly, and after a second Steve gave a fractional nod, all he could manage. Regardless of what Frank was hiding, he was still fond of Jay and protective of her. Jay was safe enough. Steve could deal with the rest later; Jay was what mattered now.

His legs were thin and weak after having been encased in plaster for six weeks; he ran his hands down them, getting himself accustomed to their peculiar lightness. He could move them, but his movements were jerky and uncontrolled. For the past couple of days he had been sitting in a wheelchair or in the bedside chair, letting his body adjust to movement and different postures. His hands had healed enough that he had been able to stand, using a walker for support, for a few minutes each day. His store of knowledge was increasing all the time. He now knew that even when he was bent forward to hold the walker, he was several inches taller than Jay. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her against him, to feel her soft body adjust to his size as he bent his head to kiss her. He’d been holding off, taking it slow, but now that was at an end.

Jay watched him massage his thighs and calves, his long fingers kneading the muscles with sure strokes. He was scheduled for a session in physical therapy that afternoon, but he wasn’t waiting for someone else to do the work for him. He had been like a coiled spring since the surgery on his eyes: tense, waiting, but under iron control. It had been a month and a half since the explosion, and perhaps lesser people would still have been lying in bed and taking pills for the pain, but Steve had been pushing himself from the moment he’d regained consciousness. His hands had to be tender, but he used them and never winced. His ribs and legs had to hurt, but he didn’t let that stop him. He never complained of a headache, though Major Lunning had told Jay he would probably have headaches for several months.

She glanced at her watch. He’d been massaging his legs for half an hour. "I think that’s enough," she said firmly. "Don’t you want to go back to bed?"