Somewhere in His Arms (11 page)

             
“Alec, what’s gotten into you?” she asked in a tired voice, not feeling up to this today. “A-Are you angry with me?”

             
“Now, whatever could have given you that idea?” he muttered, his astounding eyes glowing blue fire as they raked her from head to toe.

             
“You
are
angry with me,” she breathed in wonder. “Why?”

             
“Oh, I don’t know,” he scowled at her and Lucy actually gulped back a cold lump of fear.  He gestured toward her angrily. ‘You’ve fainted once already, had a damn nosebleed that would send most people to hospital, and here you are cooking like you’re auditioning for damned
Masterchef!”

             
Lucy backed away slightly. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stammered faintly and wondered how fast she could get to the toilet should her treacherous stomach decide to betray her. “It was j-just a nosebleed,” she choked and felt her throat constrict with unshed tears.  “I’m perfectly well and---” she looked up to see Alec glowering at her still and she lost it.

             
Large, broiling tears flooded her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

             
She didn’t know what had gotten into him, but she didn’t deserve to be attacked. Her head tilted back in an instinctual gesture to stave off the inevitable, but it was too late. Lucy felt the all too familiar sensation as the warm blood gushed out of her nose, over her mouth, and down her chin. She stood there feeling like she was ten again and dripping all over Vivian’s new white Valentino gown.

             
For the first time in years, Lucy felt ashamed: ashamed at getting pregnant by some stranger; ashamed at having lost Dean, and ashamed in giving in to Alec’s irrational anger and allowing him to see her like this. She was suddenly angry with herself, but didn’t have time to indulge the feeling as she was dripping onto the cracked tile floor. “You want eggs,” she shouted angrily as she turned and fled towards the bathroom, “you can make them yourself!”

             
With that Lucy left a horrified Alec sitting numbly in his chair and swearing as his eggs began to scorch in the pan. He hurried to turn off the flame and take the pan off the burner but only succeeded in burning his hand. Muttering a string of violent oaths, he cursed himself for upsetting Lucy and went to find her.

             
He knocked fearfully and tried the knob. It was locked. “L-Lucy?” He could hear her sobbing and coughing as she gagged on the blood. “Are you…?”

             
“Go away, Alec!” she shouted through the door. “Leave me alone!”

             
“But---”

             
“Leave me!” she sobbed and sank to the floor. “Just leave me be,” she wept and wiped her eyes and face with a damp washcloth. “Just go away!” she croaked through a raw throat as he knocked again.

             
She didn’t answer as she waited for the bleeding to stop. Lucy needed it to stop. So she could think straight and figure out what to do. She didn’t need Alec and all his shitty drama weighing her down. She had her own problems.

             
He must have given up because it was eerily quiet in the little bathroom as she lay there feeling sorry for herself. She finally got up and ran a bath. Lucy took off her bloodstained clothes and sank her weary body into the hot water. She scrubbed her face and sank down into the tub, wondering idly how long she could stay under because it was quite peaceful down there.

             
For a long moment, Lucy held her breath and then with lungs bursting, came back up sputtering and spitting water out of her mouth.

             
Well
, she thought bitterly,
it was worth a try.

             
Shame flooded her in an instant and her hand slid to her belly. She was being selfish and she knew it. She just didn’t know if she had the right to bring an innocent being into this world and expose them to the fucked up mess that was her life.

             
It wasn’t fair.

             
But then, as Lucy knew firsthand, life was the bitch that kept on giving. She closed her eyes and willed the unborn baby inside her not to hate her for her weakness.

             
  For all that Vivian had taken and for all her cruelty over the years, she had been right about one thing: She
was
weak.

Chapter Seven

The rest of the week crawled by at a snail’s pace. It had gotten to the point where Lucy had called Rudy and asked him to arrange for another nurse to care for Alec. He was barely speaking to her anyway, and she decided that if she wanted to make it past her first trimester, she had better leave before she lost what self-respect she had left.

              Alec’s behavior had grown increasingly erratic and quite frankly, Lucy was more than a little concerned. He stayed up all night working on his laptop and slept all day. While he allowed her to wash his hair, he still hadn’t allowed her to give him a bath, so Lucy had simply left the wipes in his room and allowed him to wash himself. If the amount of laundry was any indication, the half-hearted attempts at grooming were reasonably successful. But the other thing that had gotten her to reconsider heading for the hills was what happened the other night.

             
The morning sickness had started early and continued throughout the day. Alec tried unsuccessfully to apologize for his behavior earlier in the week, but Lucy still feeling hurt and sick, had rebuffed him. Needless to say, Alec had not taken it well and had decided to give her the silent treatment all week, only speaking to her when he needed something or help getting into bed. If that was how he wanted to play the game, then Lucy was in no mood to play along.

             
She was merely counting the days until his cast would be removed and she could live again. But there had been a pressing matter that she had to attend to---a job. After this stint with Alec, Lucy would need to find employment elsewhere and fast. She had decided early on that she would keep the baby and leave Los Angeles. That den of inequity was no place to raise a child.

             
So needing to job hunt on the Internet, she’d gone to the local library and had mild success. The small library’s Internet arsenal was at least five years behind the rest of California, and the connections were limited at best. Waiting ten minutes for her resume to upload wasn’t a luxury she could afford.

             
Lucy’s old laptop had died a slow horrendous death years ago, and she’d never gotten around to saving up for one when she was still paying off her student loans. So she’d gotten the brilliant idea to use Alec’s. Even if things were a bit icy between them, she would ask nicely...

             
Oh, she’d asked nicely. More like begged shamelessly and was immediately shot down by a clearly still pissed off Alec. But Lucy wasn’t about to let that stop her. She’d given him his sedative and waited till he’d fallen asleep before absconding with his treasured laptop.

             
There, in the safety of her room and feeling like a criminal Rudy should be tossing in jail, she’d plugged in the machine and marveled at the wonders of wireless internet. Lucy researched and uploaded her resume to several sites before she found a job to her liking. A small hospital in Astoria, Oregon was looking for nurses, and the position of floor nurse in the ICU fit the bill perfectly.              

              Of course, she’d have to find a house or apartment but she’d cross that bridge when she got there.

             
Lucy sat back feeling a little relieved and brewed some tea. As she sipped and nibbled on saltine crackers, she decided to catch up on world events. She clicked on the usual fare of gutless politicians, the scandal of the week, and in spite of herself, some celebrity gossip. She sorely wished she hadn’t. There, for entire world to feed on, were the salacious details of Vivian and Dean. Page after page of mindless blathering of how they met, the marathon sex session that brought them together, how Lucy found them in her bed, etc.

             
She clicked onto another story in disgust and cleared the browser history. Sighing, she decided to watch a movie and typed a title into the search box. To her horror, the search engine automatically completed the word for her and several hardcore porn sites popped up in all their X-rated glory. Lucy clicked in panic, trying to rid the screen of the filth but the browser seemed hell bent on loading one site in particular.

             
She had nothing against a person’s sexual predilections as she was in no position to judge how someone got off, but to her fragile state of mind it was too much. Swearing under her breath, she tried to click her way out of the miasma of fornication but something caught her eye. There was a theme attached to some of the sites---mostly your garden variety BDSM---the sort of thing usually found in nightmares or in movies by the name of
Hellraiser
and
Saw
.

             
Lucy could find no other explanation for it unless the information had been deliberately sought out. Feeling suddenly ill, she quit and restarted the browser, hoping it would erase any evidence of her accidental foray into Alec’s personal life. She quickly replaced the laptop where she found it and checked on Alec. He still slept like a baby.               Thank god for Lorazepam!

             
She took a long bath and put on a nightgown. As she combed the tangles out of her hair, she couldn’t help but wonder what sort of emptiness drove Alec to those sites. What was he looking for?

             
Lucy couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, as it seemed he had no real direction in life. Perhaps the trial had broken something inside him. Rudy had often told her about the poor hapless jurors who struggled to get back to their mundane lives after sifting through graphic crimes scene photos and even more graphic testimony. He told her sometimes they were so shattered by their experience that some suffered from a form of PTSD.

             
If perusing porn sites were Alec’s way of coping, Lucy wouldn’t condemn him for it. She knew better than anyone about that kind of coping. She glanced down at the thin scars over her wrists. She’d tried to cope after her mother’s suicide and failed miserably. Over the years she’d found better ways to deal with the pain, but none ever really stopped the ache that had set up housekeeping in her heart. Sighing she turned off the lamp, pulled the quilt over her head, and tried to get some much needed sleep.

              Her eyes fluttered open in the darkness, not knowing what awakened her. The room was cold and damp with the sea air that crept in through a cracked window, and the lacy curtains fluttered eerily with the breeze. Shivering, Lucy rose and shut the window. Hugging herself, she peered out into the darkness and caught the faint gleam of a lighthouse; its distant eye sparkling across the treacherous water like a lone diamond against a black sheet.

             
She turned around and suddenly there was Alec watching her. A startled shriek tore itself from her throat. When she recovered what lives she had left, she let him have it. “Would you
stop
doing that?”

             
“Sorry,” he muttered ruefully, his eyes roving over the thin nightgown that was transparent in the dimly lit room.  “I couldn’t sleep anymore.”

             
Lucy crossed her arms protectively over her chest. Why did she have to choose the gauze nightgown? She should have worn the flannel set Rudy got her for Christmas. At least you couldn’t see London
and
France. Embarrassed, she snatched her robe and held it in front of her like a shield. “D-Did you need anything?” she croaked, her heart nervously flinging itself about in her chest.

             
“No,” he replied, his deep voice sounding strained. “I heard you up and wanted to see if you were okay.”

             
“I was cold,” she sighed and started to straighten her bedding. She glanced up, her eyes straining to see him in the light from the hallway. “Are you in pain? I could fix some tea.”

             
“No, thank you,” he replied smoothly.

             
He was still staring at her and it was making her uncomfortable. “I-I’m fine now,” she told him in a trembling voice, not knowing why she was feeling out of sorts. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

             
“Oh, I’m swell,” he said irritably, as he started to wheel himself out of her room. “I am just dandy!”

             
“Alec...?”

             
He turned suddenly. “Were you in my room earlier?”

             
“W-What?” she stammered, caught off guard by his question. Had he
seen
her? “I just checked in on you---why?”

             
“Oh, nothing!” he growled as he entered the hallway. He hesitated for a minute then wheeled himself the rest of the way to his room, fulminating against nosy women. Just as Lucy started after him he gave her a look that would have shriveled wallpaper and shut the door with a resounding
SLAM!

             
Lucy was so startled she nearly jumped out of her skin. Her legs shook as she crawled back into bed. He
had
seen her and what’s more she had invaded his privacy. That was something no nurse should ever do. In fact, it was downright unforgivable. She fully expected Alec to rain divine retribution down upon her sorry head, but she’d already decided to beat him to the punch.

              Now she understood. The nurses hadn’t been the problem. It was Alec.              

             
She’d call Rudy in the morning and have him arrange for a replacement. As her head settled into her pillow, she realized she should just admit to using the laptop. After all, it was for a noble cause...wasn’t it? She’d been job hunting and it wasn’t her fault she’d stumbled upon his nocturnal activities. If that was what he wanted to do with his life, then who was she to stop him?

             
She was so damned tired of taking care of everyone else and neglecting herself. She had her own problems. Lucy decided from now on she’d start to put herself and the baby first. Her hand slid down over her still flat belly and promised the little one that she would always do her best. And that was all she or anyone could ever ask of herself.

             
Her eyes closed on unshed tears, and for the first time in months, slept without dreaming.

Chapter Eight

Lucy’s replacement wasn’t due until Monday morning, so she busied herself with the usual chores of cooking and cleaning and caring for a patient who was in for a rude awakening. Rudy had been hesitant at first but then had literally chewed her out over shucking her obligation. But Lucy had had enough.

             
She was no caregiver. Not in the classic sense anyway. When she’d first gone into nursing, she’d come to the horrifying realization that certain people were made to be nurses, and she wasn’t one of them. Her guidance counselor had assured her that once she was in the thick of things that it would come just as naturally as breathing.

             
So she’d continued with the course at the local university. Though it was advertised as four years, Lucy had had to wait a whole year and a half before she made the acceptance list. During that time she supported herself through several menial jobs, none of them paying enough to stay, just enough to put aside for textbooks and supplies. Rudy had helped with the rent by allowing her to stay in the guesthouse with the proviso that she complete her education.

             
When she finally enrolled, Lucy had gotten quite the sticker shock as everything from scrubs to lab materials cost twice what she’d allotted for school. She’d had too much pride to go running to Rudy yet again, so against her better judgment had taken out the loan. It was the biggest mistake of her life---well that and getting pregnant by some stranger she’d just met.

             
After all the blood, sweat, and tears. After the all night study sessions, and after all the grueling clinicals, Lucy had decided she didn’t want to be a nurse. She’d only chosen the vocation out of expediency, and the money had already been spent. When she finally graduated, she’d gotten a job as a scrub nurse. The hours had been long, but the stress levels were tolerable. Eventually, she made it to the emergency room where she met Dean. What it all came down to was that nursing was a job--- whether or not it was a calling was moot.

             
The long weekend passed uneventfully much to Lucy’s relief, who spent Sunday night packing her meager belongings. Alec didn’t suspect a thing. She felt a little guilty at abandoning him, but when she’d taken in his dinner he was still in a bit of a snit the way he’d glowered at her. So he knew she’d pilfered his laptop and probably wouldn’t forgive the invasion of his privacy. Oh, she’d tried to apologize but Alec wasn’t having any of it. He’d just sat there, unmoving and unfeeling, still looking as if the whole world weighed upon his sturdy shoulders.