Love Immortal (40 page)

“Something was what?” Jewell asked, coaxing
him to talk to her. She waited for several minutes before trying
again. “Why did you leave?” She wanted answers, but more than
answers, she wanted Collin to talk to her. She just wanted to hear
his voice again.

“I didn’t leave. Well, not exactly. It’s more
like I was taken.” A trickle of anger seeped into his voice.

“What? What do you mean taken?”

“It’s a long story. My uncle thought you
would be better off without me and so…well, he drugged me and drove
me across the country.”

“Why? Why didn’t your uncle…” her thought
trailed off as she realized that everything that had happened to
her, the kidnapping, the beatings; it was all because those
lunatics wanted Collin. Collin’s uncle must have known. He must’ve
known that something was going to happen and so he tried to save
her, to keep her away from Collin. “Why did they want you?” she
finally asked.

“I didn’t know!” He let the anger loose. The
anger he felt toward his uncle, the Obsidian Knights, at what they
had done to Jewell. Jewell cringed, pushing her back into the chair
and looking behind her for her father. He wasn’t there. She hadn’t
heard him leave, but she suspected that he understood that she and
Collin needed to work things out. As he shook with anger, Collin
realized that he was directing it at the wrong person. He tried to
relax, in his mind apologizing for yelling at her, searching for
the words to tell her what she needed to know.

Jewell sat up, looking at Collin as he stared
intently into her eyes. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“I can hear you, talking to me, you’re not.
It‘s like you’re inside my head. It happened while I was…” she
choked on the words, not wanting to say out loud what had happened
over the last few days. As if not talking about it would mean it
never happened.

“What did you hear?” Collin asked
cautiously.

“You said that you were sorry, that it wasn’t
me you were angry at.”

Collin considered for a minute. He looked at
the bruises, at the bandages on her arms, the swelling on her face.
She deserved to know; she had suffered for what he was. She had to
know why he couldn’t stay.

Jewell waited patiently, watching his eyes as
he considered. She tried to hear what he was thinking, but she
couldn’t. She couldn’t hear anything but the beeping of the
machines in the room.

“I want you to know…I need you to know how
much I love you,” he started.

“I love you too, Collin.…” She stopped and
swallowed the lump that was forming in her throat.

“I’m so sorry if my leaving hurt you, but now
I know that my uncle was right. I can’t stay with you. As much as I
love you, as much as I need to be with you, I love you too much to
put you in danger again. If something were to happen to you, I
don’t think I could survive without you.”

“Collin, you’re not making sense. What do you
mean? You can’t leave me again.” She choked on a sob. “Please
Collin, you can’t.”

“I don’t want to. Please believe me that
leaving you will be the hardest thing I’ll ever do in my life. But
if I leave, I know you’ll be safe. If that’s what I need to do to
keep you safe…” He shook his head.

“Is it because of what happened? That wasn’t
your fault. All those men, they were arrested. That won’t happen
again.”

“It will! Don’t you see? Because of what I am
it will happen again and again and again! You will never be
safe!”

“What those men said, about you being…” She
couldn’t say the word. It wasn’t true; it wasn’t possible. “Are you
immortal?” Collin barely nodded. Jewell started shaking her head,
staring at him. “What are you?”

“Jewell, please.” He was crying. “I didn’t
know, I swear. My uncle told me. He told me that was how I survived
the accident; that I couldn’t die. He told me that he fell in love
once, that she wasn’t like him, that his love was what killed her.
I didn’t want to come back, but I couldn’t stay away. I couldn’t
even save you.” The words came out in a rush, almost
incoherently.

“It really was you, following me; wasn’t it?”
Collin nodded. “Dr. Babineaux knows too. That’s why he’s so
interested in you. He knows what you are.” Collin nodded again.
Jewell sat silently for several minutes, trying to understand, to
believe. “And the telepathy? Is that part of it to?” Collin nodded.
Jewell sat silently for a long time while Collin watched waves of
emotion wash over her battered face. She didn’t look directly at
him, her eyes staring past him, out the window on the other side of
the bed. Finally, her head dropped slightly, her eyes looking to
the ground. “I love you,” she whispered.

She reached up and pressed the nurse call
button on the side of his bed without looking at him. Kelly Wills
was on duty. When she came in all Jewell said was, “I’m ready to
leave now.”

As the door to Collin’s room closed, she
heard him whisper in her head, “I love you, too.”

In her room, Jewell tried to think about what
Collin had told her. She wasn’t thinking about him telling her that
he was immortal, but that he loved her. She knew she loved him, but
what kind of a relationship could she have with him. Even if they
stayed together, she would cause him so much pain. She knew the
pain of watching someone you love die, she had experience it.

She must have fallen asleep because it was
dark outside her window when the door opened and Dr. Babineaux
strode in. He smiled, picked up her chart and pulled a chair up to
the side of the bed so he could sit down. This time he was dressed
in his work clothes. His white jacket had his name embroidered in
italic letters across the left breast and hung down to the middle
of his thigh. It hung open to reveal a pair of perfectly pressed,
tailored, probably custom, gray dress slacks, a light blue button
down oxford, also perfectly pressed, and a silk jacquard tie. His
classic black oxfords looked like they had been spit-shined. This
was obviously not a social visit.

As he sat down, he opened Jewell’s medical
chart and started scanning the notes made by her other doctors.
When he was finished, he looked up and asked, “How are you
feeling?”

“I don’t hurt as much as I did yesterday. As
long as I don’t touch any of the really sore parts like my face, or
my wrist, it’s not so bad.”

Dr. Babineaux glanced at the IV drip still
attached to her arm. “You haven’t been using the morphine for
pain.” It was more of a statement than a question. Jewell shook her
head. “I’ll have Sarah take that IV out then and prescribe some
Tylenol with Codeine instead and we’ll see how you do. If you
aren’t hurting too bad tomorrow, we can probably let you go home.”
He wrote a few notes in her chart and signed his name with a
flourish. When he looked up, he watched as a tear trickled down
Jewell’s face. He reached out and gently wiped it away with his
thumb. “Now, do you want to tell me how you’re really feeling?”

Jewell turned her head to look at him. He sat
silently, watching her, his eyes filled with compassion. “Have you
talked to Collin?” she asked. He nodded sympathetically. “So you
know that he told me”.

“I do. I’m here to answer any questions you
might have.”

“You told me everyone dies. If he’s immortal,
he won’t die, will he?”

“Well, he won’t die in the same time frame as
you or I. Eventually, he’ll die from old age; but it won’t be for a
very long time.”

“How long?”

“Well, I’ve been involved in this research
for about twenty years, and the oldest Infinitas I’ve met was
almost a millennium old.”

“A thousand years?” Jewell asked
incredulously.

“Well, just like us, they all have different
life spans. I think the average is somewhere around eleven hundred
years.”

“Does Dr. Knighton know? I mean, does he know
his nephew is like this?” Dr. Babineaux nodded in response. “And
does he help you with your research?”

“Actually, Dr. Knighton is trying to find a
cure. He views this as a disease, similar to cancer or leukemia.
The difference is, while cancer tends to shorten life, what Collin
has will extend his.”

Jewell nodded her head. “It is.”

“It is what?” Dr. Babineaux asked.

“A disease. It’s not something that people
should see as a gift, but as a curse, a burden.”

“You don’t dream of immortality?”

Jewell gave him a dismayed look. “No, death
is essential to continued life. We shouldn’t try to cheat it.” She
thought for a moment. “Why is he like this? What makes him
different?”

“Without getting into too much detail, it’s a
genetic anomaly that’s triggered sometime after puberty. Some
people carry the anomaly, but it’s never triggered.”

“What triggers it?”

Dr. Babineaux shrugged. “We don’t know.”

“How many people have the anomaly?”

“More than you would think. About one in
every ten thousand people has the anomaly, but it’s only triggered
in about one in every fifteen thousand who carry the anomaly. There
are fewer than five hundred people in the world like Collin.”

Jewell nodded once. “So, then it’s sort of
like cancer in reverse?”

“Well, at a very basic level I guess you
could say that. Do you have any other questions?” Jewell shook her
head.

Dr. Babineaux stood to leave. As he started
to walk away, Jewell reached out and grabbed his hand. “Thank you.”
Dr. Babineaux nodded a serious look on his face. He knew all that
she wanted to say with those two simple words.

Chapter 52

It was early in the morning when Dr. Wilson
came in to sign Jewell’s release papers. Jewell waited for Dr.
Wilson to leave and then carefully got up and walked over to the
duffle bag that Ashley had brought for her. She took out a
hairbrush and ran it through her hair, then pulled it back in a
high ponytail like she usually wore to work. She dug through the
bag for some clean clothes and found a pair of light weight pants,
a shirt with long sleeves, obviously designed for summer wear, and
a pair of shoes, all with tags still on them with the price
carefully marked out. A note was stuffed in one of the shoes. “I
left the tags on in case they didn’t fit. Ash.”

Jewell pulled on the new clothes and looked
at herself in the mirror. Her face, except for a little swelling,
looked like her face. She smiled at Ashley’s thoughtfulness in
choosing clothes that would cover her bruised and battered body.
She grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste and went into the
bathroom to brush her teeth.

Finally, she took a deep breath, opened the
door and stepped out into the hallway. Jewell looked over at
Collin’s room. When Jewell pushed open the door, she heard the
television. Collin turned his head and smiled. When he smiled,
Jewell’s heart started racing. “Wow! You look like an angel.”

Collin reached his hand out to her. She took
his hand and felt the familiar lightening of his touch shoot
through her. He pulled her around so she was sitting on the bed
next to him.

“How are you feeling?” She asked, and then
laughed. “Never mind; I’m sure you’re tired of answering that
question. I know I am.”

He flashed his most brilliant smile at her.
“With you sitting beside me, I feel like I’m in heaven.”

“I can’t stay. My dad is waiting for me
downstairs,” she sighed.

“Would it hurt too much to give me a kiss
before you leave?”

Jewell leaned down and gently brushed his
lips with hers. Before she could sit up, his arm tightened around
her shoulders, pulling her closer. She pressed against him when all
of a sudden she felt a shooting pain run through her lip and up
into her head. She sat up, her hand moving to her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Collin whispered. “I forgot for
a minute. I just…wanted you so badly.”

“I know. Me too.” She brushed her fingers
over his lips. “I’ll talk to you later?” Collin just nodded
silently as he watched her leave.

Collin watched Jewell leave. Even though he
knew that he would see her again, it still hurt every time he had
to say good-bye. He wondered what would happen if they decided it
would be best to say goodbye forever. He tried to change the
direction of his thoughts. Something would happen. Something would
make it work out. He thought about what his Uncle Percy had said
about Avelyn. He had let Avelyn make her own choice, and Percy
believed that his selfishness let her make the wrong one. He
believed that Avelyn would have been better off if she had stayed
with her family.

All Jewell had was her father. Would it be
right to let her choose him over her father? Could he take her away
from him knowing that there was a chance that she would never see
him again? And if she made that choice, if she chose to leave
everything behind for him, could he let her do it? Could he tell
her that she had made the wrong choice? Could he tell her goodbye?
Should he tell her goodbye? The questions were pouring over him
like a waterfall. The morphine was making him dizzy and his
circling thoughts weren’t helping. What he knew now was that he
would see her again.

As he lay there thinking about all of the
ramifications of maintaining a relationship with Jewell; his Uncle
Percy walked in. “Well kid, we’re going to keep you in this prison
for another week or so. That’ll give your bones time to set so that
it doesn’t hurt when you breathe. It’s a good thing that you have a
hard head too. I’ve never seen the effect of brain damage on one of
our kind and frankly, the thought of feeding you baby food for the
next thousand years is not pleasant.” He sat down on the edge of
Collin’s bed. “What’s with the face? You look like you’ve been
pondering the meaning of life.”

“Jewell left today. She wants to talk to me.
She wants to talk about us. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Collin slowly blinked, the effects of the morphine pushing him
toward sleep again.