A/N: I continue to appreciate all the great reviews you're sending my way. It's so nice hearing what you think. This chapter switches gears a bit, and we hear from Shane, then go back to Oliver again. I hope you like what I do here.
Chapter 5
Shane
What has kept me going these last two months, during the times when I've been alternately lonely, homesick, or terrified for my life, is the thought of the last night I saw Oliver. He had never appeared so handsome to me, so debonair, so confident in his dark suit when he knocked on my front door. That entire day I had felt wired, as if I'd had double my usual amount of caffeine. My heart and my stomach took turns doing somersaults, and I knew that every time I looked at him, my cheeks turned pink. The air between us fairly crackled with tension and excitement, and I wondered if Rita and Norman could sense it too—the promise that something was about to happen, that tonight was THE night.
All of our missteps in the past were well behind us, and in a funny way, I found myself almost grateful for them. Everything had led us to this night, had prepared us for what would be the beginning of something new and deep and meaningful. We were finally on the same page, with nothing to interfere or hold us back. Or so we thought…
But I don't want to think about that yet. I want to remember that night and all its perfect imperfections. Could there be anything more romantic than walking in the rain with someone you—okay, yes, with someone you love? Halfway to the E-Phlat, the rain came pouring from the heavens, and we laughed and ran from tree to awning to alcove on the way to the downtown club. I pulled my coat up over my head, and Oliver guided me, pulling me blindly along by the hand. "Puddle!" he would warn, and he'd help me skirt it or leap over it in my impractical heels. When we finally got there, I made some wisecrack about God trying to tell us something, but what I really should have said was that He was telling us that the rain was worth the sunshine and flowers to come.
For once, we forgot about the time. We had cocktails that we barely touched, too busy laughing and talking and playfully debating. The smooth jazz enveloped us in an intimate cocoon, and if I hadn't known before, there was no doubt I was in love with him then, if only for the way I felt when he looked at me when he didn't think I felt his heavy gaze, or when he gave me that shy, appreciative smile.
He's a complicated man, my Oliver. Proud and honorable. Taciturn yet quietly comical. A man of deep stubbornness and deeper faith, but also vulnerable and fragile. He drives me crazy in every way a man can do that to a woman, and I'm in a constant state of wanting to take him in my arms and either hug him or strangle him-some days, it's definitely a toss-up. I have the sneaking suspicion he feels the same about me, which is oddly comforting and at the same time infinitely exhilarating. We are definitely a pair, Oliver and I. Some would say we are too different, but we see in each other a kindred spirit, damaged but not broken by the agonies of our past. Works in progress, both of us, but we are trying, and have become better people because of what we've learned from each other along the way.
Outside the club, I didn't want to let go of his hand, and when we climbed the stairs to the street, I stopped him, no longer able to hide my desire for us to literally and figuratively take the next step. He took a few steps down to meet me, and my heart pounded almost painfully at the unmistakable intention in his blue eyes. I barely had time to register the thought: Is this really happening? before his mouth was on mine, his hand gently caressing my heated cheek.
His lips were firm and smooth, slightly parted, molding perfectly to mine. A gasp of surprised pleasure escaped from my throat, and he deepened the kiss for one too-brief moment before he raised his head again, his eyes now dark navy. But in what I perceived as a Herculean effort, he held himself back—the stairwell in the middle of the city was way too public a place for a man like Oliver to kiss a lady like he really wanted to.
I must have floated the rest of the way up the stairs, thankful his fingers were laced with mine to keep me tethered to the ground. It was still raining, but neither of us seemed to care. My pulse was racing, and I couldn't stop smiling—it was an odd kind of shock, I suppose, the kind you feel when you finally get what you've always wanted and don't quite know how to wrap your mind around the enormity of it all. Oliver looked up at the sky and laughed for the sheer joy of living, before pulling me to his side, securing my arm in his; I think it was to steady us both.
The rain was letting up, so we stood beneath an awning of a closed boutique to wait it out. Close at his side, his cologne—vetiver and sandalwood—combined with the heady fragrance of fresh spring rain. I leaned my head on his shoulder and breathed him in. I felt his kiss on my hair just above my temple, and I longed for him to turn me in his arms, to throw propriety aside and kiss me again, uncaring of who might see. Instead, he lifted my hand to his lips in the heart melting way he'd done that day in the hospital chapel. Our eyes met, and my heart skipped a beat. Unspoken feeling passed between us, everything exposed that we were too frightened yet to say.
The patter of rain stopped all at once, and the moon came from behind the clouds, lighting our way home. He kept my hand in his as we walked, unhurried now, neither of us wanting to end our date. We spoke little at first; tongue-tied I suppose, scared of how vulnerable we were feeling, not wanting to break out of our protective cocoon just yet. There would be more kisses, I thought in giddy anticipation, when he finally walked me up the steps of my porch. Maybe we could sit on the swing he'd given me, or he would pull me close under my porch light and continue what we started in the stairwell.
We'd only nibbled on hors d'oeuvres at the club, and I wondered if it would be too forward to invite him in. A quick mental assessment of my kitchen, and I realized all I could make was canned soup and a grilled cheese—but somehow I knew anything would taste like a gourmet meal with him that night. I thought about the time I almost quit the DLO, about how I would have missed all of this in my incorrect assumption that he'd still wanted to be with his wife. And there we were again, about to find each other on my porch.
"What are you thinking about?" he finally asked. So many things, I thought in that moment. I chose the least revealing and spoke of my quitting the DLO, but our conversation was cut short by the squeaking of the porch swing, and the inopportune appearance of my ex.
From there, things became a disappointing blur. There would be no grilled cheese or porch swings or goodnight kisses. I was leaving, and Oliver wasn't stopping me; he was almost, albeit reluctantly, encouraging me to go. Later, I wouldn't know exactly how to feel about that. Being a modern woman, I wouldn't want any man to try to stop me from doing what I felt called to do, but I was old-fashioned enough to want him to at least tell me he didn't want me to go, that he would miss me, that he was as angry as I was at Steve's interruption. But he let me go without a fight, and I was to shed many a confused tear in the following weeks over that.
Once the plane took off, the shock of everything began to wear off, and I borrowed a notepad from Steve, who was too busy on the phone to talk to me and explain in any more detail what my job would entail. I found Oliver's pen in my coat pocket, and with a sad smile, I began to write the first of many letters to him. I let my heart pour out onto those pages, starting from the beginning when we first met and I felt my new job was a terrible mistake. How wrong I was! Over the weeks that followed, I wrote long, rambling letters, half of which I knew I would not and could not send.
I would never be able to tell him the classified details of my job, and it was too soon to confess my love for him—especially not in a letter—but I wrote about all of it anyway, afterwards condensing them into unclassified, Reader's Digest versions and placing them into envelopes (provided by a kind officer with my promise they wouldn't be sent from there) that I fully intended to give to Oliver when I got back home. As I wrote Oliver's name on the front of each envelope, numbering them in chronological order on the back, there was also the thought that if I didn't survive this, they would hopefully somehow find their way into his hands and not wind up in some foreign country's DLO. Thinking of this was sometimes too heartbreaking to bear, and I would blink away tears and refocus on my job to try to get through each day.
My quarters was a blessedly airconditioned modified shipping container. It had one tiny window, but I felt relatively safe there. Steve and the other soldiers shared theirs, and I was grateful for the special treatment of having one to myself where I could decompress and be alone to write and read in the evenings.
The situation around us became extremely dangerous, and sometimes I would cling blindly to Steve, in fear for my life as bombs and gunfire rained all around us, and shake our makeshift command center. In the back of my mind I knew there was the danger of Steve's misinterpreting things, but I was too frightened some days to give that a second thought. This was life and death, and I knew Steve cared about me, that he would protect me if he could, and without Oliver there, he was my only tie to the safety of the world outside of sand and heat and unbridled fear.
We'd been in one place for about two months when the word came we would have to move, and move quickly. The computers and other necessary military supplies were quickly dismantled and loaded up into a trailer pulled by a Humvee and it moved out minutes before the SUV I was to ride in with Steve. At the last minute, Steve was called back, and he ordered the driver to go on ahead without him, to get me away from the imminent attack that we'd been warned was coming.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I want you to get to safety. I'll be along in a few minutes, I promise." He squeezed my hand, trying in vain to reassure me.
I was beside myself with terror. I wanted out of there, for sure, but I didn't want anything to happen to Steve, and I definitely didn't want to be on the road without him. I'd come to depend on him so much for everyday survival, that I debated jumping out and staying with him. But he'd slammed the back seat door before I could make a move, banging the side as a signal for the corporal at the wheel to take off. We pulled immediately onto the road, and I looked back, but Steve was lost in the dust the SUV had kicked up behind us. I buckled my seatbelt and we drove quickly on the east road, a road famous for hidden IEDs, the only way out of the war-torn area.
From what I'd heard, the road was regularly swept for roadside bombs, but they kept finding more every time. With that I mind, I gripped the arm rest tightly as my driver expertly maneuvered around other military and civilian vehicles making their way out of the area. A mile away from camp, a loud explosion violently rocked the vehicle, and I heard the corporal curse as he lost control. He over-corrected, and I felt the SUV begin to roll. It was all so surreal, like I was watching a movie. I think I screamed. My last thought was of Oliver before everything went black…
Oliver
The next day, Mrs. McInerney comes back in the room after a quick coffee break, a smile transforming the entire character of her face—which I'd only seen so far as either somber or upset. While I have been sitting with Shane, her stack of letters unread in my jacket pocket, her mother has been speaking to the doctor.
"They're going to bring her out of the coma!" she exclaims breathlessly, going to her daughter to touch her cheek. I rise to give her the chair, my heart squeezing in tentative relief.
"It will take her awhile to wake up, they say, but they're hopeful that the swelling has come down enough that she should have no lasting damage. She'll be tired and weak, and her head will hurt like the dickens for awhile, but she should be all right."
"Thank goodness," I mutter, and my throat constricts with emotion.
About an hour later, nurses descend and begin trading her medicated IV bag for plain fluids, and remove her oxygen mask so she can begin to breathe on her own. For the first time, I can see her entire face, and I see beyond the bruises and the paleness to the beautiful woman whom I have missed so desperately, whom I love with all my heart.
"We'll be monitoring her vitals, but let us know when she starts to wake up," the doctor advises us. "Talk to her a little—that might help. She'll be groggy and disoriented, and will likely experience amnesia surrounding the day or two before her accident. Be patient, and don't tell her everything at once—it could just overwhelm and upset her."
"Of course," says Mrs. McInerney, and I nod my understanding.
She doesn't wake up right away, despite her mother's constant chatter, and my spoken prayers when I'm alone with her. I suggest Mrs. McInerney get some rest at Shane's house and she reluctantly leaves with my promise that I'll call her the moment Shane awakens. I can tell the poor woman is exhausted, though much more positive than before. The other POstables arrive after work, and it doesn't take much encouragement for the two of them to talk to her while I take a break to stretch and get more coffee from the coffee cart in the lobby. It's there that I meet Dad, on his way to see how things are going.
I fill him in on the news that Shane is no longer in her medically induced coma, and he hugs me in his happiness. We both get coffee and ride up on the elevator together.
After everyone leaves, I'm alone once more with Shane, and I take my place by her side. Mrs. McInerney has arranged it with the doctor and nurses that I am considered close family, and should be afforded all the uninterrupted time I need to be with Shane. Sharon McInerney is a woman to be reckoned with, and her wishes are granted as if she ran the hospital herself. Needless to say, I'm quite touched by the gesture, and take full advantage of it.
I begin again by taking her hand and praying, and then I try to think of things to say to her that I haven't already, in hopes that the sound of my voice will bring her out of that deep, dark place where she's been confined for days now. I recite some of my favorite verses from Psalms, then move on to 1 Corinthians. From there I meander to the most beautiful of Shakespeare's sonnets.
Someone once said that reciting Shakespeare feels like holding jewels in your mouth, and I am inclined to agree. And so I regale my captive audience with the gems that are Sonnets number 116 and the amusing tongue-in-cheek of number 130. But it is Sonnet 29 that speaks the most to me in these past few days, and I recite it to her now with a lump in my throat and a quaver in my voice:
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
I move on to Shakespeare's best soliloquys, from Hamlet, from Macbeth, from Romeo and Juliet. I recite the works from other poets whose words seem most apt now, whose poems about love and longing I have always considered beautiful, yet now seem sublime as I realize I had never truly known what love was until now. Until Shane. And so I indulge myself in the great poems of whom I call the Three B's—Browning and Burns and Byron. Unfortunately, I don't seem to be reaching her, and my sleeping princess sleeps on.
I briefly lay my forehead on the edge of her bred, frustrated and fearful that she might not in fact awaken. I wish I had thought to bring a book with me, something meaningful and filled with wise words that would comfort both of us. There are many speeches, poems and verses that I have stored in my brain over the years, but I feel as if I have exhausted my mental library, and I cannot seem to summon anything else that might be relevant or inspiring enough to bring her back to me.
It is then that I remember her letters. Do I dare read them? I take the neat stack from my suitcoat pocket. My quandary since Mrs. McInerney placed them in my hand re-emerges, regarding the respect I have for Shane's privacy, for the privacy of all of the letters I've had no choice to read in order to solve the mystery of their authors or their destined recipients. I don't deny that my curiosity for her written words has offered an almost irresistible temptation. I have never received a letter from Shane, and I long to discover whether she writes as she speaks, or if her letters are more formal in their shape and scope. I tend to think it is the former, and the idea that I could "hear" her voice again in her writing is what compels me to reach into my inside breast pocket and retrieve the small letter opener I always keep there.
I justify this trespass with the hope that perhaps hearing her own words read aloud might awaken her, and further reason that the envelopes do have my name written on them, so it isn't as if I'm reading letters intended for someone else. I sigh at my own flawed rationalization, but I have made my decision. Letter number one is on top, and, with a brief glance of apology at my beloved Shane, I begin to read:
Dear Oliver,
When we lifted off and flew into the clouds, I realized that you have made a believer out of me. It was no mistake that I was transferred to the Dead Letter Office instead of Direct Line Operations. We could not have begun dancing together so long ago without learning the steps we needed to find our way back to each other, and I am convinced now that step one was the destiny that pulled me into your dance space at the DLO. Step two of our dance was the day you officially made me your dance partner. Step three was our growing friendship, and step four the first time you finally asked me out (never mind that unmitigated disaster). Step five was that time I thought I lost you, and I discovered the value of prayer. Step six…Oh, Oliver, step six. You know what I'm going to say, don't you? Our perfect night. Our perfect date. Our perfect kiss on the most perfect steps of all.
Here I stop reading, for I find I am simply too overwhelmed to go on. I do hear her voice in this letter, as if she were awake and speaking to me right now. She remembers that night as clearly as I do, and values it with the same momentous appreciation. I clear my throat and read on, but feel my face flushing as her words take me back to that night two months ago…
I want you to know just how much that kiss meant to me, how much it has changed me. It will forever remain one of the most precious moments of my life, for it was then that I found the soul-deep connection I've been waiting for but never knew I'd been missing. I can't wait to get home to continue what we've begun, to feel your arms around me, to collect that second goodnight kiss that I am due, that we were cheated of when Steve—
"US Postal Code…18, Subsection…1709…"
My eyes fly from Shane's letter to the source of the weak, halting voice spouting out a postal regulation regarding unauthorized possession of private mail. My heart leaps with joy and I laugh while my gaze goes blurry with tears.
"Shane! Oh, my goodness!"
I stand, then lean over her, taking her all in as if I haven't been staring at this lovely face for days. Her eyes are still closed, for she is groggy as the doctor forewarned, but I can't resist touching her parched lips briefly with mine, gingerly touching her cheek, her hair, as if she were Lazarus returned to life and not merely sleeping.
"Oliver," she says, her voice hoarse from disuse. "Water…"
"Oh, of course!" I find the nurse's call button and push it with a clumsy, shaking finger. "She's awake," I announce through the intercom, "and in desperate need of a drink of water."
I want to barrage Shane with a million questions, and an equal number of kisses, but I hold myself back. Instead, I take her hand again, kissing it as I've been wont to do these long days. It's like she is squeezing my very heart when she at last squeezes my hand in return.
"Where am I?" she croaks.
"You're in the hospital, in Denver. How do you feel?"
"My head hurts, and…my arm. What happened?"
"Shhh. You've been sleeping. Let's let the nurse see to you before you try to talk too much."
Her nurse arrives, checking her vitals, raising her heavy eyelids to shine a penlight on her eyes. I step back out of the way, my heart pounding with love and gratitude. Thank you, God, echoes over and over in my brain as I stare at her, absorbing her every waking movement. They give her a sip of water from a straw, and she swallows gratefully. I have never been so thrilled to see someone use a straw.
"I'll let the doctor know she's awake," says Nurse Janine.
"And could you please call her mother's cell phone? I don't have one myself."
"Of course. I'll be right back."
I am back at her side in an instant, and I take her hand again as her eyes finally open. Sapphire blue focuses upon me blearily and I know I am crying again but I don't care. I've wept more these past few days than I have in years, but I can't seem to help it—my emotions are so close to the surface. I am so filled with relief that I feel I will break down and sob at any moment.
"Are you okay?" she asks me, and its just like her, to be concerned with someone else when she is obviously in much worse shape.
"I am now." It's on the tip of my tongue to confess my love for her—God knows that I want to. But I also want her to remember it when I say it, to be physically and emotionally ready to hear it, and God willing, be prepared to say it back to me.
"Were you—" she begins, and coughs and clears her throat. I retrieve the cup of water and straw, directing it to her lips. She drinks thirstily, and closes her eyes as if gathering her strength again. This time, her voice is definitely stronger, with the teasing tone that I love and have missed so very much. "Were you reading my letters, Mr. O'Toole?"
"Yes," I confess sheepishly. "Well, just the one. The first one. I'm sorry. It wasn't my place, I know, but my name was on them, and—"
She laughs—actually laughs, I observe in wonder. "It's okay. I want you to. I need you to."
I nod reverently. "Me too," I say softly.
We stare at each other, and she is more alert now. My entire body warms to her, and I devour her every word, her every expression like a starving man.
"I believe, Miss McInerney, the regulation you meant was Subsection 1710," I say, because I can't resist baiting her. Sometimes I admit I'm like a little boy pulling her pigtails, but of course, it's only because I like her so much. I'm pleased when her eyes narrow in that achingly familiar way when I'm about to get a serious set-down. She doesn't disappoint.
"You would think that you'd stop being such a know-it-all when I'm obviously laid up in the hospital. And by the way, what in the world happened to your face?"
Oliver, I say to myself wryly, in the words of the immortal Mr. Arnaz: you have a lot of explaining to do.
A/N: The plan is one more chapter, depending on if I can get where I want to go in one more. I'll be exploring more of Shane's voice along with Oliver's. (I enjoy being inside their minds.) Thanks for reading!
