Catherine Coulter - The Edge

"Jilly," he said, and I wanted to cry with the sheer relief of hearing his voice, but I didn't know if this body I couldn't feel was even capable of yielding up tears.

I wanted to ask him if they 'd gotten my Porsche out of the ocean.

Ford said, "Sweetheart, I don't know if you can hear me or not. I hope somehow that you can. I spoke to Kevin and Gwen and gave them an update. They send their love and their prayers.

"Now, Jilly, tell me about why you were depressed."

Depressed? What was this about being depressed? I've never been depressed in my life.

Who said anything about being fucking depressed? I yelled it at Ford, but naturally, he didn't hear me because my words were only bouncing about inside my skull.

"I've got to find out why you drove your Porsche off that cliff, Jilly. I find it hard to believe that you were depressed. I can't remember when you were ever depressed, even when you were a teenager and Lester Harvey dumped you for Susan, that friend of yours who had the big breasts. I remember you just shook your head, said he was a worthless shit, and moved on.

"But things change. We haven't seen all that much of each other in the past five years or so. You've been with Paul. Dammit, Jilly, what happened to you?"

Ford was leaning his forehead on my hand. I could feel the soft whistle of his breath against my skin. I wasn't depressed, I wanted to tell him. He wanted to know what had happened to me so I said, "Listen, Ford, do you like sex? I didn't used to like it all that much, but then something happened. A wonderful something."

I wondered if my mouth was curving at all into a smile. Probably not. I heard Ford's quiet, steady breathing. He was asleep. Why had he fallen asleep? Then I remembered something about him being sick. Had he been injured somehow? I seemed to remember that.

I wish I could have run my fingers through his hair. Ford had lovely hair, all dark and longer than the FBI would like it to be. But it was his eyes I'd always liked best. Dark blue eyes, just like Mom's, at least I think they were like Mom's, she'd been dead for so very long. Yes, his eyes were deep and mellow and too intense on occasion. I remember hearing he was dating a woman named Dolores from Washington, D.C. Every time I thought of her name I pictured a Spanish flamenco dancer in my mind. I wonder if she liked sex with Ford.

When it comes down to it, who cares? I'm here, a prisoner, and Paul's alive, free to do whatever he wants. But it's not Paul I'm afraid of, goodness, never Paul. It's Laura. She was dangerous, wasn't she? I knew she'd betrayed me. She'd gotten into my head and nearly killed me. Oh, Ford, if she comes back, I won't be able to bear it. I'll die.

I'm lying here, just floating about, and I think of Laura. Laura, who betrayed me. Always Laura.

I woke up with a start some hours later at the touch of a nurse's hand on my shoulder. I raised my head, looked at her face, and said, "Always Laura. Laura betrayed her."

She arched her right eyebrow, sleek and black. "Laura? Who's Laura? Are you okay?"

I looked down at Jilly, silent, pale, her skin nearly translucent. "I'm fine," I said. Who was Laura? I looked up again at the nurse. She was very short, a tiny bird of a woman, and her voice was soft and sweet as a child's. I nodded at her, then looked at Jilly, whose features were barely visible in the dim light from the corridor. Evidently someone had come into the room, seen me asleep on Jilly's hand, and turned off the lights.

"It's time to turn her over," the nurse said quietly, "and to massage her. Bedsores will come eventually if we don't take care now."

"Tell me," I said, watching her untie the back of Jilly's hospital gown, "what you know about coma. The doctors spoke to me at some length, but it was difficult to understand exactly what to expect."

She began to rub thick white cream into Jilly's shoulders and back. "Remember that movie with Steven Sea-gal a while back where he'd been in a coma for seven years, then awakened?"

I nodded, remembering how much I'd admired Steven Seagal when I was a boy.

The nurse said, "He had a long beard and he was weak, had to practice to get his strength back, and of course he did. He was jumping around, maiming folk after just a week or so. Well, that's Hollywood.

Actually, if a person's in a coma for longer than, say, a few days, the risk increases dramatically that something will be seriously wrong when and if the person ever comes out of it. I'm sorry to tell you if you don't know, but all sorts of brain damage is possible-retardation, inability to walk, to talk-any number of dreadful things.

"Most of the time, people come out of a coma very quickly, and they're usually okay. If Mrs. Bartlett comes out of this in, say, the next day or two, her chances are good that there won't be any terrible damage; but it's very possible there will be some. We just don't know. We make assumptions and predictions based on statistics, but in the end, everyone is different. We can hope and pray, and little else.

"In Mrs. Bartlett's case, there was no major damage they could see on any of her test results. Actually, she really shouldn't be in a coma at all. That just goes to show that there's so much we don't know about this sort of thing. I'm sorry, Mr. MacDougal, there's nothing else to say about it."

She'd given me a lot to think about. I fell asleep again my head next to Jilly's hand. I dreamed about Maggie Sheffield. She was screaming that Paul was a bastard and she was going to run him out of Edgerton.

When I drove back into the driveway at 12 Liverpool Street at ten o'clock the following morning, I saw Maggie Sheffield's car parked across the street as it had been the day before, but she wasn't in it.

I heard her say as I walked quietly into the living room, "Paul, I called the hospital on my way over here.

Mrs. Himmel told me there was no change. She said that Mac was still with Jilly, had been since last night."

I heard Paul grunt.

"Mac spends a lot more time there than you do, Paul. How's that?"

"Go to hell."

Paul didn't sound particularly pissed off at such a question, just incredibly tired. Personally, if she'd said that to me, I would have been tempted to slug her. I walked into the living room, a long narrow great room that ran the entire front of the house, facing the ocean. It was all windows across the front; where there had to be walls to hold up the house, they were stark white. Large square white pavers covered the floor, and all the furniture was black. It was a minimalist designer's wet dream-no compromises with kitsch or newspapers or photos anywhere. Just all these clean stark lines that set my teeth on edge. I couldn't imagine cozying up with a good book in here or setting a nice big TV set in the corner and watching football. Actually, I didn't want to be anywhere near this room when I could help it. It was a testament-not to living, but to someone's idea of perfection. Even the paintings, all of the dozen or so abstracts, were made up of paint slashes, primarily black and white, lined up like perfect little soldiers along a long white wall. I couldn't imagine how anyone could live in this sterile space, particularly Jilly. I remembered Jilly's room growing up-bright teal blues and oranges and greens. Of course she'd also had punk-rocker posters on the walls. People changed, but this much? Was this all Paul's doing?

I said to Maggie, who was seated on a long black leather sofa, a small notebook open on her lap, "Sheriff, I hope you're well." She was wearing her tan uniform, running shoes on her feet. For just an instant, I saw her without the tan uniform, just as she'd been in my dream the night before. Her hair was ruthlessly pulled back, fastened with one of those things that my FBI friend Sherlock called a banana clip.