Chapter 11

The speed limit on I-75 in northern Tennessee was seventy-five miles per hour, which was precisely five miles less than the top speed of Bob's geriatric truck. Will drove almost all the way back to Knoxville with the gas pedal firmly pressed to the floor, and only the slow traffic just before the downtown interchange forced him to take his foot off the gas.

"I should trade this piece of crap in on a real car while your dad can't protest," Will muttered when they pulled into the parking garage of the medical complex, and Erica nodded emphatically.

When they walked into Bob's room, Christa and Kate were sitting at his bedside. Christa was holding his hand, and Will's heart did a leap in his chest when he saw that Bob's eyes were open and focused on his wife. He still looked like he had gone fifteen rounds with a world heavyweight champion, and his left eye was a disturbing shade of crimson, but he was obviously conscious and aware.

Erica rushed to Bob's bedside with a suppressed little wail. Will watched as his eyes focused on his daughter as she crossed the room, and when she wrapped her arms around him in a careful hug, he returned it with one arm. His mouth formed a one-sided smile that didn't reach the left half of his face.

"What do you know?" Will said. "Decided to join the living again, did you?"

Bob let out a low chuckle and shook his head slowly. He murmured a reply, but it sounded like the voice of a man who was under the combined influence of a fifth of vodka and an oral injection of Novocaine.

"Speaking's iffy," Christa explained to Will. "The doctor says that the brain injury caused paralysis of his left side."

"They've been milling around in here for the last three hours," Kate said. "I thought they'd never leave us alone."

"How are you feeling?" he asked his brother, and Bob shrugged and wiggled his hand in a so-so motion.

"I imagine you have a bitch of a headache," Will smiled, and Bob chuckled again.

"Do you remember what happened?"

Bob shook his head curtly and shrugged his shoulders again.

"Plenty of time to get you caught up on current events," Will said. "Right now, just take it easy, and tell us if you need anything."

This time, Bob replied in his thick and garbled voice, and even though the word was distorted, Will had no problem interpreting his brother's request.

"Beer."

They spent another hour with Bob, until the next delegation of doctors and nurses walked in and ushered them out of the room again. Will turned on his cell phone to call Claire as soon as they were in the elevator to the parking garage.

"The Lost Savant, this is Claire."

"Bob's awake," he said. "Kate and Christa didn't have your number in their cell phones, or they would have called you."

"Oh, Will, that's awesome. How is he doing?"

Will knew what she meant, even though she didn't voice her concern directly.

"He seems okay. He's alert and aware. Didn't have any problems recognizing us. Speech is shot all to hell, though. The whole left side of his face is still paralyzed. He looks like Sylvester freakin' Stallone when he smiles."

"I can't tell you how relieved I am," Claire said. "Are you guys at the hospital?"

"No, they shooed us out for tests, or treatment, or something. We're heading back to the house right now."

"I'll come over as soon as I can get the place locked up."

"I'll see you at the house," Will said. "There will be drinking tonight, so steel yourself."

Will had fully intended to smuggle a bottle of cold beer into the hospital, but the visitation hours and rules for the ICU were far stricter than the ones for the rest of the hospital. There was some logic to that, he supposed, lest some well-meaning idiot carried buckets of fried chicken to a heart bypass patient, but he still felt cheated out of seeing Bob's likely delight at the sight of a chilled bottle of beer. Christa didn't want to leave Bob's bedside, now that he was conscious again, but Will convinced her that getting into a fight with hospital security was a lose-lose proposition, and she grudgingly returned home with the other three family members.

Back at the house, Christa retrieved a bottle of fizzy stuff from the back of the fridge, and the contents of it were just enough to fill glasses for everyone, including Erica. Claire walked through the door just a minute after Christa had taken out the glass cover of her own songbird clock with the plastic bottle cork.

"Hey there," Will said, and handed Claire a glass. She took it gingerly and kissed him on the mouth.

"Hey there yourself," she smiled. "Awesome news."

"No kidding. I wish we could have this party over in the ICU, but they kicked us out."

"Party poopers," Claire grinned. "How dare they not let their intensive care patients get hammered with their families."

"Yeah, I know," Erica quipped. "I'll put that on one of the little comment cards they have sitting out in the lobby."

"So what did they tell you before we got there?" Will asked Christa when they were all seated in the living room, glasses in hand.

"The doctor held a little lecture about the brain," Christa smirked. "He told us about how the different brain halves control the opposing sides of the body. Left brain, right side, and vice versa."

Will nodded. "Sounds familiar."

"Well, he said Bob was lucky that it was the right side of his head. The abstract stuff like language and numbers happens in the other side of the brain. It looks like the damage is mostly physical. He can't use his left arm or leg, and his face... well, you've seen it. Left-sided hemiparesis, they call it."

"Did they say whether it was going to be permanent?" Claire asked.

Kate snorted in response. "They said they don't have a clue. He might be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, or he might be skipping out of there on his own two feet."

Christa shuddered a little, undoubtedly at the thought of Bob being confined to a wheelchair, and drained her glass.

"Let's be glad they put him back together the way they did," Will said. "Even a wheelchair beats the living hell out of a coffin, you know?"

Later, back at Claire's house, Will and Claire finished the job started at the Liebkind house by sharing a chilled bottle of honey mead. Claire liked to shop around at the local package stores and try out new kinds of wine. She had discovered the mead a few days ago, and both of them liked it. It was a dessert wine, sweet almost to the point of being cloying, but it had a very clean and pleasant honey aftertaste.

"So how did the day with Erica go?" Claire asked as they sat across from each other at the kitchen table.

"It went pretty well. I remembered about her thing for horses, and you could tell she was all excited about being on horseback again. Of course, the news at the end of the day did a lot more for her mood than the riding."

"Still, it was the right thing for her. Got her out of the house and away from that hospital."

"Yeah." Will flashed a sheepish grin. "Did I tell you that the writer who owns that ranch is someone I used to date?"

"Really?" Claire smiled and rested her chin on her folded hands. Tell me more, her expression said.

"Really. You may know her—Anne Barcza?"

"You used to date Anne Barcza?" Claire laughed.

"Yes, ma'am. Anyway, she came on to me. Renewed her offer for some casual boffing on the side."

"And what did you say?"

"I told her I was flattered, but very much committed at the moment. She said it wouldn't make a difference."

"Whoa," Claire said. "She's a bit more liberal in that respect than her characters, I guess."

"Oh, you have no idea," Will smiled. "If her characters shared her philosophy on sex and dating, you wouldn't find her books in the Young Adult section. She'd be tucked away on the upper shelves in the section where they keep those pictorial guides to better sex. You know, one thousand and one positions, on high-gloss paper?"

"Oh, yeah," Claire smiled. "I was very fond of that section when I was a teenager. Very interesting. Educational, too."

Will grinned at the idea of teenage Claire sneaking glances of the new color photo edition of The Joy of Sex in some New Hampshire bookstore back in the Eighties. She reached across the desk and slapped his forearm lightly.

"Oh, stop that smirk. Don't tell me you boys never looked at nudie pictures when you were teenagers."

"Hell, yeah," Will said. "The dad of one of our classmates owned a travel shop at the airport in Bangor. We used to get our Playboy from him at a buck over store price, every month. No need to try and sneak them out of our dad's collection. It's amazing his dad never caught on to the fact that he sold ten times more Playboys every month than ever crossed his store counter."

"Are you kidding? He was probably in on it. I bet you anything he ordered extra copies for Junior's little school business, and then collected fifty percent of the profits."

"I never thought of that," Will said. "You're probably right on the money."

They shared a chuckle and a smile.

"So what are you going to do?" Claire asked. "You've been trapped in Knoxville for a few weeks now. Are you anxious to get back to Maine?"

Her tone was casual, but he could tell from her expression that the matter was anything but casual to her. Will thought about it for a moment, and shook his head.

"I have a few good reasons to stay here for a while," he said. "There's Bob, of course, but even if he came home all fixed up tomorrow, and I went back to Maine the next day, we both know I'd just look for an excuse to come down here and see you. Might as well save the travel money and the long-distance bills, right?"

"Right," she smiled, obviously pleased with his answer.

"Look," he said after a few moments. "I'm not too great at courting someone, and we're still at the stage where we're supposed to guard ourselves against disappointment, but I think we both know that neither of us has any intention of just saying, 'It's been nice, but see you later', right?"

"Right," Claire confirmed.

There you have it, his shrug said.

"I can go and do those lecture trips from here, I suppose. Maybe I can even get you to come along on a few, if you can stand the idea of leaving the shop in Lauren's hands every now and then."

"That might be fun," Claire said. "There are so many places I wouldn't mind seeing."

"Don't get too excited about it," he laughed. "For every Boston or Chicago, there are three Peorias or Missoulas. They put bookstores and colleges in the smallest towns these days, you know. We may get stuck in the middle of Cornpoke, Iowa for two days."

Claire smiled mischievously.

"Oh, I'm sure we'd find something fun to do."

In the morning, Will came to the bookstore with Claire, since the hospital didn't admit visitors to the ICU until nine o'clock. Lauren, Claire's new help, was now used to his presence, and she was no longer tongue-tied when he was around. They bantered for a while, sipping tea and waiting for customers to show up.

The first customer of the day was Libby, the woman who had clued Claire in on Will's identity the first time he had been in the store. Will suspected that Claire had spilled the beans about them, because Libby wasn't completely surprised to see them behind the counter together.

"Well, good morning there, Mr. Liebkind," Libby said when she stepped into the store, smiling jovially.

"Call me Will, please," he replied. She beamed at him, obviously pleased to be offered this degree of informality.

"Will," she repeated. "It's so good to see you again."

"Good to see you, too. Did you come to restock the home library?"

"Actually, no," Libby smiled. "I came by to remind Claire of our book club meeting tonight."

"Is it that time of the month again?" Claire asked, and consulted the little calendar on the wall next to her corkboard.

"Well, what do you know. It's the end of the month again." She looked at Will and shrugged her shoulders with a smile. "Every fourth Friday of the month. I fear I am committed tonight."

"That's okay," Will replied. "I'll have dinner with the women back at the house. Hey, maybe I'll swing by and say 'hi' to the book club."

"Oh, would you?" Libby was positively humming with excitement. "That would be fantastic. They would all just freak out."

"You're not discussing my book, I hope."

"No, not tonight. It's Europe on Ten Grand a Day, by Anne Barcza."

Will snorted a surprised laugh, and then feigned a cough to cover up his amusement.

"Yeah, I know the book. I hear the author is a real peach."

Claire, who was in on the joke, gave Will an amused smile behind Libby's back.

"Oh, is she?" Libby said, blissfully unaware of the sudden amusement she caused. "I wouldn't doubt it. Her writing is so honest and warm."

"I'll be there at seven," Claire told Libby. "We'll see if we can get Mr. Celebrity Author here to make an appearance, too."

After Libby had departed, her ubiquitous cell phone pressed to her ear, Will shared a chuckle with Claire.

"'So honest and warm'," he mimicked Libby. "I should call Anne and ask her if she wants to come down here tonight and make a few friends for life. I'm sure poor Libby would have a seizure if you came through the door with me on one arm and Anne Barcza on the other. Her standing with the book club would go into the stratosphere."

Around ten o'clock, business in Claire's store had picked up, and Will excused himself to head over to the hospital. There were more customers in the store than usual, and most of them either greeted him by name or shot him excited looks while they were shopping, so he concluded that word had gotten around a little. He didn't mind contributing to the increased walk-in traffic, since every other person who came into the store out of curiosity seemed to buy a book or two as an alibi.

"See you tonight?" Claire asked when Will put on his jacket.

"I'll be there, unless there's something going on at the hospital," Will replied. He leaned in and kissed her, keenly aware of at least a half dozen set of customer eyes on them.

"Give my best to Bob," she smiled. "Tell him I'll come out there as soon as I can get away."

"Will do."

When Will walked into Bob's room, he found his brother awake. There was a device on his lap that looked like a cross between a laptop and a Speak-n-Spell, a keyboard with multicolored buttons mated to a small LCD screen.

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A Bettered Life

Michael Lindgren

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