THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART THIRTY-EIGHT:

When Eden got back to where Marshall was, two orderlies had just arrived and announced it was time for Marshall's move to a private room. "I'm here," she said over the clatter the orderlies were making as they positioned the gurney beside Marshall's bed in preparation to shift him over onto it.

"I'm not sick enough any more for the ICU," Marshall said in her general direction. "They're kicking me out."

"Can you slide toward the edge, Dr. Sinclair?" one of the orderlies asked.

Marshall tried, but every muscle he'd use to push himself with protested most firmly. He still tried a bit, but the two orderlies moved close and each one got a good grip and did most of the lifting and scooting for him. They had him halfway between the two beds when a man in green scrubs darted in the doorway. "Dr. Sinclair," he said in a rather hurried voice, "can I have a statement about just how it was the two convicts left you up there atop Coopers Ridge? I'd

like to...."

"Who ARE you?" Eden said loudly. She looked closely at the man. "Press! You're from the press, aren't you?"

The man just tried to push closer to Marshall. The orderly with his hands on Marshall's upper body, shifted a bit to block the reporter from getting access to the patient. "Security!" he called loudly, leaning more to look out the doorway. The reporter bumped the orderly's shoulder, which combined with his forward lean, over-balanced him and he lurched wildly, trying to

keep to his feet, somehow sending the gurney out of position. His grip on Marshall slipped and the top half of Marshall's body twisted and dropped toward the space that had opened up between the two beds.

Eden shrieked, the reporter collided with the IV stand, almost knocking it over before finally
managing to clutch it and keep it upright, though the bag itself still continued to swing. The second orderly made a grab for Marshall's hips as the other one scrabbled after his shoulders, both catching him in a rather awkward fashion and hefting him up and onto the gurney. Marshall came down flat on his back, completely and utterly jarred. His face went white and

he lay there making deep sounds in his throat, that came out half gasp-half moan through his clenched teeth. He thought for sure he was going to pass out.

Maria, who had hurried to the scene in time to witness the final hefting of Marshall, called immediately for Hersholtz. "Stand back!" she ordered the reporter and the orderlies as her fingers moved quickly to check the chest tube. By some miracle, it was still where it belonged.

Hersholtz had been checking a near-by patient and was there almost immediately. "Somebody throw that man out of the hospital!" he said brusquely, pushing past the reporter to turn his attention to Marshall.  Marshall had stopped moaning and was now almost gagging for breath. "Suction!" Hersholtz snapped, but Maria was already handing him what he'd need.

After a few moment's intense concentration, Marshall was breathing again and moaning in

pain again as well. "What happened?" Eden asked, her pulse still racing.

"The percussion of landing so hard on his back loosened large amounts of secretions from his lungs," Hersholtz explained, his eyes still on Marshall. They moved up into his airways. Was more than he could handle all at once." He leaned toward Maria, whispering some directions, and she moved to inject something into his IV.

"Is he still able to be moved to his private room?" Eden asked.

Hersholtz nodded. "I'm just going to have the nurses keep really close tabs on him for a while, however."

During the awkward move, the sheet had slipped off Marshall's legs and Eden got a clear look

at his swollen, purple right knee, as well as the many scrapes and bruises covering his legs fairly solidly.  She closed her eyes briefly, seeing again in her mind all the signs of his falls as they had trailed him.

Maria covered his legs.  Hersholtz was gone. "You two wait out in the hall just a minute," she directed the orderlies. "Give Dr. Sinclair a respite here to gather himself together."

He had his teeth clenched again now that the suctioning was over. He was beginning to feel like a grasshopper pinned to a 10th grade biology table with some teenaged boy ready to dissect

him. He knew the kid had already ripped off his legs and knocked them on the floor. The drop there between the beds had twisted his whole frame just enough to set every muscle and tendon screaming, and then the heavy impact atop the gurney had exploded his chest. He couldn't speak. He'd have to unclench his teeth and somehow stop those little desperate sounds
his throat insisted on making even though his mind tried to shut them up. But Maria had put something in his IV drip that seemed to be soothing things a bit and he was vaguely aware the tension he'd maintained in his body was loosening. He'd had his eyes scrinched tightly shut,

but now his lids settled into just being closed and his jaw relaxed enough that even his lips parted slightly as he drifted away to someplace warm and soft.

"Is...is he all right?" Eden asked anxiously.

"He'll probably sleep a while now."  She called the orderlies back. "It will be easier on him if they continue the move now. Will you take the CD player with you? He can have it in his room."  She smiled warmly at Eden. "Might be good if you just stepped out a while until they get him all settled."

Eden took the player with her back out to the waiting area. Mike was with a buddy of his by

the coffee machine. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her come into the room. He turned

to go but noticed the slump to her shoulders. Then she sat down, the CD player sliding heedlessly
the last couple of inches from her fingers to the floor.

Idiot! he said to himself, walking toward her. He hadn't been going to say anything, just leave

a message with someone that her car was now in the lot. "Something the matter?" he asked, stopping about 5 feet out in front of her.

"They dropped him?"

"Marshall? They dropped Marshall?"

"Sort of. A reporter got in disguised as some kind of hospital personnel. Came into ICU just as the orderlies were moving Marshall onto a gurney. Everything went haywire, Mike. Everything. IV almost toppled over and the orderlies kind of let Marshall start to fall between the gurney and the bed. Really hurt him when they grabbed him. Then he couldn't breathe and Hersholtz did some kind of suction thing and, anyway, now he's sort of out of it and they're moving him

to a private room."  She'd been rubbing one palm across the other as she talked, but now she looked up at him...just waiting.

"So that's what that ruckus outside the entrance was," he said, shaking his head. "Somebody was being hustled off pretty fast."  He sized Eden up. She looked rather shaken, still upset. He wanted to squat in front of her, put his hand on her knee...or sit beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. "Car's in the lot now," is what he said, however, still standing where he had been.

"Thanks, Mike," she said. "I appreciate it."  She sighed. "I guess I should go to the inn and take care of Wadsworth, huh?  Did you have a chance to make any arrangements for him to be allowed into the hospital?"

He hadn't. Not that he hadn't had a chance, but that he had put up such a barrier this morning that he'd actually forgotten about the dog. He didn't want to be that involved with this whole thing any more. He scratched at his cheek. "No, Eden, I haven't had a chance to do that."

"Would you? It'd mean so much to Marshall. You know just as well as I do how much he's been through, and now they've gone and caused him more pain, useless, senseless pain. If Waddy could be there when he wakes up....  That would be so wonderful. Could you do that, Mike?"

There he was...trapped.  Trapped by a pair of luminous green eyes and by the right thing to do. He'd always been a sucker for the right thing to do. Not to mention green eyes. Her green eyes. Why couldn't he just blurt out that he was too busy? Or the truth? That he didn't want to because it hurt his heart too much to have to be close to her?

"Sure," he said, trying to manage a little smile. "I'll go talk to Hersholtz and if he says yes, I'll go on out to the inn, walk Wadsworth and bring him back."

She smiled up at him, a wide, clear smile that sliced right into his heart. Please, he prayed, please, please don't let her say the "F" word. He just did not want her to call him "friend"

right here, right now.

"I don't know what I'd do without you," she said. She'd said that before. He didn't know what he was going to do without her, without her when she went back to Pittsburgh, went back to Pittsburgh with Marshall.

"I'd better catch Hersholtz while he's still around in ICU," he replied. "Hang in there, Eden. Everything's going to be ok. Marshall's going to be ok." Then he turned and walked quickly away, never having gotten closer than those five feet.

This time she did go to the cafeteria for lunch, plopping some sort of ham sandwich and a small dish of fruit salad on her tray. She sat alone at a table near a square pillar painted an unpleasant shade of sickly green. It was hard to choke the food down. She decided to pull off the thick crust to make it easier, but ended up pulling off large portions of the sandwich in the process.

Absently she stabbed at the squishy slices of bananas mixed in with the grapes and bites of pineapple. What if they'd completely dropped him? All the way to the floor? His chest tube would have been yanked out right along with his IV. She could tell he was hurting so badly after that, even as much as they did drop him.

She returned her tray and found a chair that faced a bank of large windows, just sitting and staring out at the winter landscape beyond. The sky was completely grey and a few stray flakes blew past sideways in the wind. She shivered, looking at it, despite being in the warm cafeteria. All she wanted was to be back in the inn, one of Harold's fires crackling, the scent of Martha's cookies wafting from the kitchen, Marshall singing softly into her hair.  Interesting. That was what came to her now when she thought of 'home'. When they decided to move to Florida, her parents had sold the old brick house where she'd grown up. That had been home...once...but

now that was gone. Her apartment, even though it had her things, had never really become for her what something with the profoundly meaningful name of 'home' should be. But the inn, that was different. It wasn't hers and she only had a few things there, mostly clothes, but the people in it and even the look and the smells and the sounds of it...that did. And that was what she wanted. To be there...with Marshall.

She sighed longingly, heavily, and looked at the sickly green paint again. Institutional green. And she was here because Marshall was here, and he was here because he wouldn't let those men take her with them into the woods. "Marshall," she murmured aloud, "I love you."

ON TO PART 39

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