Resonance - J. B. Everett (best novels to read for students TXT) 📗

gotten over being given partial information. If she kept him up to date, the man might worry about his son, and Becky wasn’t about to go spreading rumors that she couldn’t substantiate, not to Carter Senior. No, she would wait until she had all her numbers, then she would tell him the facts.

 

But she could see what wasn’t being said. There were frowns, and stethoscopes, heads nodding, followed by electrodes being attached. While she stood silently, the river of activity flowed around her on all sides. Her breath heaved in when she saw one of the women return with fistfuls of supplies. Becky recognized the IV bags and needles even in their sterile plastic casings. She had seen enough of it over the past week to know what it was all about. She knew that it wasn’t good. And she knew that she should help. She just wasn’t sure how.

 

So she stepped back to the edge of the square tent and bent her head. It had been far too long since she had done anything like it. She had missed church for a month of Sundays, always neck deep in one project or another. But her mother had pointed out, that with what had happened and all, the churches were now full.

 

It came as no surprise that people would turn to God. But for the first time, she felt the need for it herself.

 

The words rattled in her brain, rusty from misuse, but she felt her way around until they became clearer, cleaner.

 

Please God, help my friends. Guide me to help them. Show me how I can do your work.Help me to understand. Help them to understand. She didn’t feel her hands clasp together in front of her. Didn’t know her lips were moving. Didn’t feel the activity in the tent slowly come to a standstill around her. But she felt the peace. Help all of us here to help them. To come back healthyand whole, or to find your kingdom in heaven.

 

Becky didn’t worry too much about the sex the two had clearly engaged in. There was too much biology ingrained in her as deep as the Baptist teachings she’d grown up with. God wouldn’t punish them for doing what he had evolved them for. This was about finding the way. Whichever way was right for each of them.

 

“Help me to be helpful.”

 

“Amen.”

 

“Amen.”

 

The chorus of voices startled her head up, shaking her from the cocoon of prayer she had woven around herself. Her eyes shifted, focusing on the roomful of medical techs and nurses, splashes of color in varied shades of blues and greens against the white of the canvas tent.

 

But, to a person, every head looked up from where it had been bent. Eyes met hers. Nods were directed her way. And hands went back to work.

 

Jillian fought the yawn that escaped her mouth. She knew it would simply cause Jordan more worry. But she wasn’t good enough to hide it from him. Hell, no one was.

 

“Stay awake, Jillian. Walk.”

 

His fingers grasped her arm in a purely clinical manner and she had to wonder why that was. He was Jordan. And he’d never distanced himself from her before. Not when she’d thought he should. Nor when she’d wanted him to. He was always Jordan. But right now she’d have ground out the formal title “Dr. Abellard” if she could have found the energy. “Walking makes me tired!”

 

“You have to stay awake!” His breath washed over her face, he was so close. And for a moment she thought of the mint gum he had been chewing. That was Jordan, friendly even when he was hauling her around, trying to keep her awake even though it was late in the evening. The sun was setting and her nerves and brain were setting with it.

 

Her body pulled away from her thoughts, creating a sense memory of one of the better hotel beds where she had curled up next to Jordan’s heat, and sunk into warm soft sheets, the covers velvety beneath her fingers and across her cheeks.

 

She almost drifted off there on her feet.

 

But Jordan yanked her arm nearly out of the socket, and she was catapulted back into the cold night and away from her reverie.

 

She sniffed in, her lungs and nose searing from the tiny icicles in the air. “Medicate me-”

 

“No.” He didn’t even look at her, just interrupted before the last sound was out, his mind made up.

 

“Then I’m going to bed.”

 

That got his attention. And as he spun around and glared at her it dawned that that was exactly what she had intended to do - shake Dr. Abellard back into being Jordan. “If you go to sleep, you might die.” His own breath was ragged, and for a moment she snapped fully alert, realizing that maybe the cold, clinical Jordan was easier to deal with, rather than this face of fear and pain. But what would she feel if it was the other way around? And in fact it was the other way around as well. If she slipped off, she would lose Jordan …

 

His voice cracked even as it cut a path through her thoughts. “We don’t know what the medication will do to you.”

 

“True, but we have a good idea what sleep will do, and it isn’t pretty.”

 

He started to walk away, conversation closed, but she held back, stopping him when her arm and body didn’t follow his lead. “You know, I have slept and woken up on the same side before.”

 

“But that was several times before. It hasn’t happened recently, and I sure as hell don’t trust it.” He let go of her arm and it felt as though the night seeped under her skin, chilling her where the heat of him had comforted just a moment before. “I just wish David would go under.” His hand, now without purpose, scrubbed aimlessly through his hair. As usual a few pieces stood up on end, leaving him looking as frazzled as she knew he felt. “I feel like fate is fighting us here. That your body is trying to get you back over there and his is trying its damnedest to stay here.”

 

“Medicate me.”

 

All his peripheral movement stopped. His gaze squared on hers. “And if I kill you?”

 

“I have to stay awake long enough for David to go under and to wake up and get the job done.” She couldn’t give explanation to David’s job. “There’s no way I’ll make it now. Not that long. We have to try it. My brain is shutting down. I’m beginning to not care that I might not wake up. My body wants sleep.”

 

He blinked, leaving his eyes sheened in a glaze, and then he blinked again and it was gone. She wasn’t sure but that she might have imagined it or maybe she was just looking through her own frustration. Her muscles ached, and her eyelids fought for closure. She was ready to sit on the hard earth and simply cry at the injustice and frustration of it all. But the earth was too cold. Her butt would freeze. And while that might keep her good and well awake for a little while, it would quickly lead to hypothermia, and blissful, if deadly, sleep. Since that death wouldn’t be due to the coma-state sleep induced she was pretty certain it would actually kill her.

 

Jillian made the best decision she was capable of, her shoulders slumping, and her head tipping forward to allow her hair to hide the tears brewing in her eyes. “Please.” The word fell out of her mouth, with no force behind it.

 

But Jordan heard it. He always did. And as she started to drift away right there, she knew he was taking all of it in. The slumped shoulders, the exhaustion, the tears, he would know they were there even if he didn’t see them.

 

She felt his hands, cold, on either side of her face. With all the energy she could muster, which wasn’t much, she fought against him seeing into her when he lifted her face to look in her eyes. All she could do was glance away and pray that the tears didn’t fall in fat, rolling drops and embarrass her.

 

“Okay. But you stay awake until we get to the medication tent.” He stared right into her eyes, waiting for her to make visual contact and acknowledge what he’d said. But then he slapped her cheeks a little bit, jolting her. Jillian wanted to be mad about it, but knew that the startle had woken her up, just a little.

 

His hand encompassed hers and, without looking back, he pulled her one shuffling step at a time to the meds tent. Her butt immediately located a chair that was upholstered but still remarkably hard. Government chair. The words flitted through her brain as she slouched into the corner, waiting while he checked the meds.

 

He kept up a steady stream of chatter, but she couldn’t have said about what.

 

When her brain worked enough, she threw in an “uh-huh” or “mmmhmmm” and he didn’t slap her again so she guessed she had him fooled. The poles of the tent came up slowly behind her, cradling her head and making the chair just the tiniest bit comfortable. Comfortable enough. Tension drifted from her shoulders as she thought of fluffy beds and hammocks on beaches. The ocean sounded so soothing, and she inhaled deeply, enjoying the scent and the heat of the sun rising in front of her.

 

Shit.

 

Someone was upset.

 

Jordan was upset.

 

But the sunrise was beautiful and the day was so warm. Her hammock swayed in the heat. All was orderly until a fly began to buzz in her face. She waved it away, swatting at it haphazardly, but thinking that it was surprisingly heavy when she did hit it.

 

Something landed on her arm, and in curiosity she turned her head down to see a large chameleon. It was purple and slow moving and made her smile.

 

Until it bit her.

 

“Ow!”

 

“Jillian!” Jordan’s voice was in her face. And as she blinked she realized that his eyes were too.

A panic attack overtook her, her hands shaking, her breath pushing in and out far faster than her usual eighteen breaths per minute. Her eyes scrambled through the scene before her, searching for some sort of purchase, some reason for the growing dread.

 

But there was nothing of concern. The space heater sat directly in front of her, its warm glow heating her face and chest and leaving her back feeling chilly.

 

“Jillian.” Again Jordan’s face swam before her. “I gave you some adrenaline to snap you out of it.”

 

That explained the panic attack. She would feel all the effects because of the medication, but her brain had back-figured that, if she felt it, she must also have been alarmed. She managed to slow her breathing for the most part, but couldn’t stop the shaking in her hands. Then the damn chameleon bit her again.

 

As she looked down at the little fucker, she realized that Jordan had a second needle in her arm. It wasn’t much more than a sting once she had identified it.

 

He quickly removed the needle and shelved the medications, letting her sit through the seeming eternity while he did all of it in close to slow motion.

 

Jillian knew that she was experiencing the adrenaline the same way people felt in the middle of a car accident, that time stretched and they could stop and think things through. She almost laughed as she realized that he had simply medicated her to feel like she was awake for a long time. In reality, the adrenaline would wear off soon and she would slip back asleep.

 

But he had given her something else, too … he had explained it while he shelved the medications. She could dig that much out of her memory, but she couldn’t remember what he said he had given her. Truth be told, she didn’t really think she cared, just as long as it worked.

 

The palm of his hand