Chapter 2

A light shone in Keith’s eyes. Something held them open and he couldn’t block out the light. He tried to speak, but no sound came out. In fact, there was no sound anywhere. When the light went out, he was alone in silent darkness. He must have slept, but there was no sensation of sleeping.

The light came on. How long had it been? He couldn’t see anything. It was just light. He heard muffled noises as if he had cotton stuffed in his ears. The noises—voices, he thought—were too remote to understand. He wondered briefly if he had been abducted by aliens. That is what people said. You wake up but can’t move or see or hear. It would make a great story if he had been abducted. He would tell Maddie. A prickling sensation all over his body, like he was being stuck by pins, became more intense. Suddenly sharp pains stabbed at his face and chest. In a burst of awareness, he remembered being knocked down by the blast and the million shards of glass coming toward him. He could feel them hitting his body and spasmed. There was more urgency in the noises. Then the light and sound faded.

He could hear a soft rustle punctuated by beeps from a machine. Hospital, he thought. The bitter smell of iodine filled his nose. He opened his eyes. Eye. One seemed glued shut. The soft light seemed farther away and he registered vague shapes. He needed his glasses. A shadow moved nearby and a blurry figure approach his bed.

“Maddie,” he croaked. He could scarcely hear himself. It wasn’t Maddie, but he could almost focus on the face, one feature at a time, as it leaned near. The lips moved and he strained to hear through the feeling of cotton in his ears. Doctor. The man came into his focal range. He heard a whisper of sound.

“Welcome back, Dr. Drucker. You’ve had quite a time of it. You may not be able to hear well right now, but don’t let that worry you. Your hearing is returning gradually. It may take a while.”

“Maddie,” Keith repeated.

“The woman who comes and sits by your bed all day?” the doctor said. “I’m sure she’ll be back in the morning.” He reached up to adjust the I.V. drip. “We’re giving you liquids and nourishment intravenously, and keeping you on painkillers to help you rest. The best thing you can do right now is sleep.” In seconds, the darkness returned.

There was a faraway murmur that he slowly realized was voices. He turned his head toward the sound and opened the eye that he could. Only Maddie could have that color hair, even though he couldn’t see her clearly. She was standing in the doorway talking to a man who, though not in focus, had the light hair and bronzed skin of someone who spent too much time in a tanning booth. The man gestured at him. Maddie turned toward Keith and the man walked away.

“Keith! You’re awake!” Maddie exclaimed rushing toward him. She’s using her library voice, he thought. He no more than thought it than it seemed insanely funny. The sound that came out when he laughed, though, was more like he was choking.

“Do you need something?” she asked, drawing closer. “I’ll call the doctor.” Her voice became louder as she got nearer and Keith remembered the doctor saying his hearing would improve.

“Maddie. You’re okay,” he managed to say. He was overwhelmed. A tear stung his right cheek. He had dreamed in this most recent sleep; books exploded around Maddie and as the two of them tried to gather up all the pages, she turned into notes from a loose-leaf binder that scattered in the wind. Seeing her was such a relief he couldn’t care about his own injuries. He was so afraid he had lost her.

“I’m fine,” Maddie said as she leaned in to kiss him lightly on the lips. He winced involuntarily. “I don’t know how to touch you; you’ve got so many little cuts.”

“What happened?” he pointed at a nearby water glass with the hand that wasn’t connected to a tube and saw that even this hand was bandaged.

“Someone blew up the front of the library,” Maddie said as she held the straw to his lips. It hurt a little to suck, but the liquid felt good once it was in his mouth.

“You’re okay?” he said, his voice gaining some clarity with the moisture in his mouth.

“It would take a lot more than that to bring down The Whit,” she laughed. “I was stuck in the vault for six hours before they overrode the lock-down controls. I was frantic trying to get information about you. There was no smoke or it would have flooded the vault with inert gas. Remind me to find out how long the oxygen tanks will support a person if that happens.”

“You’re okay,” he repeated, reaching toward her.

She stroked his hair gently. Even that hurt a little, but it was worth it just to know she was touching him. “I’m okay and I’m babbling. I was so worried about you, I’ve been almost insane. You could have been killed.”

“You were in there.”

“My hero,” she said. “Oh God, Keith, I think I’m falling in love with you.” It was the first time she had said it aloud and he let the feeling wash over him. He knew he was in love.

“Okay.”

“Yes,” Maddie affirmed. “Very okay.”

“How long?” he asked. “What day is it?”

“It’s Monday,” Maddie said. “Three days.”

“We should be in Jamaica,” Keith sighed.

Maddie was already in the chair by his bed when he awoke the next day. His eye felt less filmy, but he still didn’t have his glasses to see clearly. The left eye was still bandaged. A larger shard of flying glass had broken that lens of his glasses and pierced the cornea. He would find out today if it was healing. The right lens had actually protected the other eye. He was very lucky, they told him. If he had been in the atrium where the large chunks of glass had fallen, he would certainly have been killed. As it was, he had been hit by the tiny bits of glass that had flown farthest, many of which pierced his clothing and cut his face. The doctors had gone over every inch of his body and done MRI scans to be sure they had removed all the fragments.

The morning and the eye exam passed slowly, but Keith was able to engage more fully. Maddie brought his spare glasses from his apartment and he forced them over the bandages so he could see clearly out of his one good eye. The wounds would itch as they healed, the doctor said, but he was no longer in any serious danger. The eye would take a week or two to heal enough to check his vision thoroughly as the glass had pierced the vitreous humor. In most instances that type of injury healed, but he would need a new corrective prescription. He was able to hear better, but had to concentrate fully to catch everything. Maddie helped bathe his face and it was worth the discomfort to have her kiss his lips once the iodine was completely washed away.

He looked around his hospital room. It was large and private. In fact, he’d almost call it comfortable if it weren’t for his injuries. He was pretty sure his meager health insurance wouldn’t cover this kind of treatment and had to wonder why he wasn’t in a dormitory with half a dozen old men waiting to die.

“I’ve got to get out of here before it bankrupts me,” he said. “Unless the University is paying for my stay?” he added hopefully.

“Actually,” Maddie hesitated. “Derek’s covered all the expenses.”

“Who is Derek?” Keith asked.

“He was here when you woke up yesterday, but he didn’t stay around long enough to be introduced,” Maddie said.

“So who is he?”

“Derek Zayne, wealthy American playboy and benefactor to those in need,” she said lightly.

“Your brother?”

“No, unfortunately,” Maddie sighed. “He’s my ex. He’s a jerk, but a very wealthy jerk who enjoys spreading it around. Somehow he always shows up when I’m ... Well, he thinks his money will...” Keith looked at Maddie with a growing unease. He knew she had been married once, but didn’t know the ex was still in the picture.

“Your ex is paying for my hospital stay?” he asked, in amazement. “All the more reason to get out of here. What does he expect you to do because he helped me?”

“There’s nothing to worry about on that account,” Maddie said, seeing the expression on Keith’s face. “I divorced Derek over irreconcilable differences, and she’s still around.”

“Tell me about it,” he said, not completely sure that he wanted to know, but feeling compelled to find out.

“It was either divorce him or kill him,” Maddie said. “He was a rich, younger man, my brother’s age, who swept me off my feet with his charm, wit, and generosity. It wasn’t until after we were married that I discovered he possessed two traits that I couldn’t tolerate.”

“Those were?”

“In spite of his generosity, he is possessive. He couldn’t understand that I could spend a day in a library just being with books, and I couldn’t make myself be interested in the computers that were the most important thing to him,” Maddie said.

“And the other?”

“He likes other women.” Keith cringed. It served the guy right to lose Maddie then.

“I still don’t like the idea of him paying for my hospital stay. I don’t need a penthouse suite,” he stated as he sat upright. That was a task that was still exhausting. Maddie moved to support him. Her arm around his back felt wonderful. It was bruised but not cut. The glass had all hit him from the front. He turned toward her slightly and the support turned to an embrace as they kissed passionately, ignoring his raw lips.

In the midst of this a nurse entered the room and coughed politely to announce her presence.

“You have a visitor, Mr. Drucker,” she said. “I mean another visitor.” Keith turned to see a dark-haired, mustachioed man materialize from behind the nurse. He strode across the room with authority and nodded to Keith without offering to shake hands.

“Keith Drucker?” the man said. “I am Special Agent Fry of Homeland Security.” He produced a badge to identify himself.

“Pleased to meet you,” Keith said. Maddie arranged pillows behind him so he could continue to sit up and look at the Agent more easily.

“And you are Mrs. Drucker?” the agent turned to Maddie.

“Oh. No. I’m not!” Maddie said, a little too emphatically. She was flustered by the assumption. “I’m Madeline Zayne. We’re colleagues,” she said recovering herself. Keith could not help but notice she had turned bright red. He chuckled to himself.

“Oh, yes,” the agent said. “The librarian who was stuck on the sixth floor. Sorry. I’m still getting up to speed. They thought this was some kind of student protest at first but nothing turned up, so the police called the Feds and the Feds called other Feds and eventually somebody called me.”

“I always wondered how that worked,” Keith mumbled.

“Oh, if you’d been killed we would have been called in much sooner, but injury and property damage don’t often get kicked up the ladder,” Fry said.

“What gives us the honor?” Keith asked.

Agent Fry ignored the sarcastic question. “I’ve been talking to people for the past couple of days, but the hospital kept putting me off. They say you are pretty coherent now. Is that so?” he asked.

“I guess so,” Keith said. “They’ve still got me on painkillers with a warning not to operate heavy equipment or sign any contracts, but I’m not taking the heavy sleep drugs they had me on. Of course, I’ll answer any questions about this that I can.”

“I’m noting that medication may affect your memory or recall of details,” Fry said as he wrote in his notebook. “That way if a moment of clarity strikes you in the future you will be able to change your statement without repercussion.”

“Is this a deposition?”