3.
He wanted to think, but found that he couldn't when the nurses and his doctor discovered he was awake. He wasn't left to himself until they had done their poking and prodding of him. To his dismay they wanted to keep him one more night for observation, but at least they removed his IV. Then Detective Carl Beckman of the Seattle Police showed up and it was nearly three hours of question and answer, signing statements and by the time he was gone Horatio had a headache that eclipsed all the muscle aches he had accumulated since his dive into Puget Sound. Trying to sleep it off was out of the question so he took to wandering the halls, once Rick Turner had brought him his robe and a change of clothes from the hotel.
After some persuasion, he managed to find out what room they had placed Schell Demereau in. He slowly made his way to it trying to figure out what he was going to say to her, if she was up to talking to him at all. He couldn't shake the memory of seeing her on the deck with a horrified look on her face in the few seconds that remained before the boat had blown up. That boat she had been on exploded for a reason and it wasn't in his nature to leave something puzzling him unsolved.
It was that thought; the picture of her looking up towards him at the sound of his yelling to get off the boat, that was in his mind when he quietly made his way into her room. The other bed was unoccupied and hers was near the window. She was on her side, her back to the door and huddled under a few extra blankets. He could see an IV drip attached but it was when he made his way silently around the end of the bed that he got a small jolt of surprise.
All this time he thought she was just a very light haired blonde, but the fact now stared him in the face. Schell Demereau had white hair. One of those strange little snippets of information stored in the depths of his brain recalled how there was a very rare percentage of the general population who had prematurely grey hair, especially those whose hair turns nearly white before they were thirty. Schell Demereau was one of those rarities. Only a very little remained a darker, pewter grey at the temples, but the rest of her hair was decidedly white.
As he studied her for a moment, he realized she was asleep, and looked utterly exhausted as well. He frowned a little and wondered if that was the track of tears running down her cheek or not. He was half deciding to beat a hasty retreat when she jerked suddenly, inhaling sharply, obviously from something startling her, then she groaned a little and her eyes flickered open.
Revealing her own stiffness and pain, she ran a hand down her face as she slowly rolled onto her back. Horatio, head dropping down and his eyes flickering away for a moment, was beginning to back up when she frowned a little and opened her eyes.
"Um…" he started to speak, could see that she was trying to focus on him, "Miss Demereau?"
Schell blinked, looking at him a moment as she marshaled her senses together, that tiny frown still creasing her features.
"I can come back later…" he finally decided, looking at her again as he began to move.
"No…" she said, in a sleepy voice. "You must be Lieutenant Caine?" she frowned again, pushing some of the blankets aside and seemed to be searching for something under the blankets, at the same time looking at the IV needle stuck in the back of her hand and moving around very gingerly because of it.
Horatio, for his part, blinked in surprise again that she knew his name. He saw what she was searching for and before he realized it he was moving around to her side of the bed, picking up the adjustment control.
"Here," he said kindly, his voice low, "Allow me."
Groaning a little, Schell flushed pink, reaching up with her free hand to rub at her eyes as he raised the bed up for her.
"I'm sorry," she apologized. "I think they have enough painkillers in my system to knock out a horse." Her voice betrayed the tiredness and exhaustion she was in.
Horatio smiled, his chin tucked in, as he finished his task. He glanced at her seeing she was a little more cognizant of her surroundings. Dark blue eyes were looking at him with frank candidness, with a eyebrow raised slightly in mild curiosity. He glanced down, hand still on the adjustment control. Rick had found his sleepwear as well as his other suit so he had on his dark green silk pants and robe, neatly cinched shut. He was also barefoot.
There was an electric pause before he cleared his throat and gently set the control volume next to her.
"You know who I am?" He asked, curiously.
Schell smiled ever so slightly. "No," she said in that soft sleepy voice. "But the nurses told me."
"Ah…" he said, eyebrows rising in comprehension.
"I just never expected a policeman to show up in my room in pajamas…"
"What else did they tell you?" he asked, suddenly aware that he was blushing.
"Just that a Lieutenant Caine would be coming in to see me…" She looked at him again, frowning, and as he glanced back at her, trying to hide the red flush in his own face, he could see a look of dawning comprehension on her face.
"Oh my…" she said softly, sinking back into her pillow and looking at him with a mixture of surprise, realization and a fleeting hint of fear. "You were the guy in the water…" she whispered.
Horatio looked down again, conquered the blush, then nodded his head. "That would be me…" he smiled gently.
Schell seemed to pale before his eyes, as she reached a shaky hand up to her face. "I thought you were another policeman coming in to question me, and I can hardly think straight at the moment, but that threw me off." she murmured, nodding at his attire.
"No, I was coming in to see how you are. I made a promise to you out there," his smile flickered, as he watched her absorb this information.
"A promise?" she whispered trying to remember, she glanced at him again. "How can I ever thank you?" she asked quietly, gazing at him.
Horatio shook his head, his smile still gentle, "You just did."
Seeing she was speechless as she let this information sink in he gently cleared his throat. "Do you mind?" he asked nodding at a nearby chair. Schell looked at him a little puzzled, but then nodded as she struggled with a tangle of emotions and thoughts.
"No, please, go ahead, are you staying in here too?" she asked referring to the hospital.
"Yeah," he said with a sigh. "One more night; just for observation." He pulled the chair up close, then sat down with a grateful sigh.
"I'm sor…" she started again before he raised a hand, and leaned forward.
"I'm fine, and apparently so are you, but we are both a little sore. That was quite a series of dramatic events that occurred yesterday. So tell me, how are you?"
Schell paused and looked at him, noting the red hair and the very gentle bright blue eyes. He was genuinely concerned. She seemed to wilt into the bed.
"I don't know," she said truthfully, sounding lost. "They told me I have a pretty bad concussion. Something about a percussion effect? And that I had hypothermia from being in the water so long."
"That would be right. My guess is that when the boat exploded, the engine compartment doorway acted as a funnel to channel the main energy away from you before the actual blast literally blew you off the boat. The shock from the explosion would have caused you to receive a concussion. Then we were in the water nearly twenty minutes."
That seemed to bring her into more clarity. She knew full well that twenty minutes in near freezing water was potentially lethal. She looked at him again.
"How do you know all this stuff?"
Horatio paused, then glanced down at the knot in his sash.
"Perhaps I had better reintroduce myself," he said with a hint of humour in his voice. "My name is Horatio Caine and I am a police officer for the Miami-Dade County Crime Lab."
Her reaction to his name was what he had long ago come to expect from everyone; she paused, blinked and raised her eyebrows in surprise before recovering herself and asking, "Miami?" she asked, "Really?"
"Yes... Have you been there?" he asked her. Schell smiled a little and shook her head no.
"I'm going to be headed there next month though…" she said.
Horatio smiled. "Really? Why?"
Here Schell paused and smiled slightly. "Well Lieutenant Caine… my name is Schell Demereau and I am a marine artist who accepted a three year commission to do a series of paintings on Florida shipwrecks."
She saw the look of curiosity light his eyes as he studied her in a different light. "Really?" he asked. She nodded and smiled.
A different smile, he noted, one more to the real person.
"Why are you in Seattle?" she asked.
"Convention. Crime scene investigators from around the country met here this week. Miami-Dade sent me."
"And your name really is Horatio?" she asked. He nodded, then looked at her with a hint of a wry smile.
"And yours is really Schell, not Shelly. Let me guess, your mother was a fan of Maximilian?"
"And yours either enjoyed classic dime store novels or CS Forrester," she replied.
"The classic dime store novels," he confirmed then they both paused looking at each other for a moment, before Schell broke eye contact and snorted silently in amusement. The ice had broken and Horatio sat back in the chair, relaxing a little.
"I know you have probably been questioned by Detective Beckman…" he stated and could see the weariness settle back down around her shoulders as the moment of lightness between them passed.
"Yes..." she said softly and he could see the fear and anguish creep back into her eyes. "They are considering bringing charges against me for endangerment because of the ferry…" she glanced at him, then looked back down at the IV in her hand. She was smoothing the tape in place and was looking at it with distaste. He could see in her eyes the confusion and distress this caused and silently damned Beckman for being an inconsiderate idiot.
"Will you do something for me?" he asked her abruptly, his voice gentle.
She looked up at him, puzzled.
"How about you let me handle this," he said, "and you concentrate on getting well?" He looked at her with an almost boyish sincerity in his eyes. "I'm still here for the convention, but I have accrued vacation time so that will allow me a chance to sort some things for you about this. Think you can do that?"
She gazed at him long and hard, utterly taken back by his offer.
"Why?" she finally asked. "…why would you do that? I'm a total stranger to you."
The words were out of his mouth before he fully realized what he was saying.
"Well, maybe by the time this is all sorted out we won't be such strangers?"