CHAPTER 46
Linda came when she could. I was sitting up having some beef broth when she came an her lunch hour. The drain was still in my side, but most of the raw feeling was gone, and the IV apparatus was unhooked. She kissed me as hard as my condition permitted.
"Have you talked with Susan yet?" she said.
"No. She called and Paul told her I was out of town."
"Why don't you tell her?"
"Because she'd come," I said. "She'd come because she'd feel I needed her, not because she simply wanted to be with me."
"And that won't do?"
"No. When she wants to see me just because she wants to, not because I've been shot, or she might lose me, or she's afraid of something in her life, then I will want to see her."
"She will," Linda said.
"We'll see."
"She will. I would." I held her hand.
"I don't know what will become of us if that happens," I said.
"You mean we might not be able to be lovers?"
"Maybe not," I said. "I don't know. I can't say for sure. But maybe not."
Linda began to cry. As she cried she talked. "For crissake," she said. "She's screwing another guy, she walked out and left you, and won't even tell you where she is. She hasn't even explained why she left exactly."
"She doesn't know," I said. "Exactly."
"So how long, for crissake, will you wait for her. What does she have to do to make you give it up?"
I put my soup down, and tried to keep my breathing easy.
"There's no deadline," I said. "And no conditions."
"So the fact we love each other and might be happy together and she's banging some guy in California, or maybe several, that doesn't mean anything. If she comes back, you chase right home to her?"
"I don't know," I said. "I don't know who she'll be or who I'll be, or what will come out of this. I'm saying only that I can't promise. You've known that since we started."
"And you won't give up," she said.
I shook my head. Linda put her hands over her face.
I reached out from the bed, but I couldn't reach her. Her eyes were red and her face was puffy when she lifted her head from her hands.
"What kind of a man accepts that," she said. "Allows a woman to treat him that way and keeps hanging on."
"My kind," I said. "It's why I wouldn't die. I'm going to see this through. I'm going to find out how it comes out. I love you, Linda. But I . . ." It was hard to say.
The room was quiet. Linda and I looked at each other. While the hospital went about its routine we stayed poised on this silent epicenter. Then Linda stood and bent over the bed and put her cheek against mine.
"God, you're strong," she said. "No wonder they couldn't kill you."
I stroked her hip with my left hand. "What will become of us," she murmured as she rubbed her cheek slowly up and down against mine.
I continued to stroke her hip. "I don't know," I said. "The past is painful, maybe even fraudulent, the future is uncertain, maybe scary. What we have is a continuing present, honey. I think we should do what we can with that."
She shook her head against me. "I don't think so," she said.