Diamond in the Rough Read online

  She nodded, only marginally aware of what he was telling her. Her mind was crowded with so many memories, so many things she wanted to tell her father. So many things she was afraid he might never hear her say.

  The sense of loss inside of her grew almost oppressive. And with it came fear. Not just the fear that her father would die, but the fear that anytime she opened herself up to hope, she ultimately opened herself up to grief and heartache. She couldn’t stand it.

  It was only a matter of time before Mike left, too. She might as well rip off the Band-Aid quickly rather than wait in anticipation of the pain.

  “You know,” she began slowly, her voice distant as she tried to numb herself. “You don’t need to stay here. There’s no telling how long it’ll be before they take my father to his room.”

  Mike shrugged casually. “I’ve got no place else to be.”

  Something inside her rebelled against the sympathetic look in his eyes. Rebelled against all the feelings that being with Mike had stirred up. Feelings that led to attachments. And attachments led to heartache because inevitably, in her case, abandonment was never far behind. Just once, she needed to be the one who broke things off, who walked away.

  “If you don’t mind,” she told him almost stiffly, “I’d like to be alone right now.”

  Mike caught himself thinking that it hardly sounded like her. Something was wrong and he wanted to be there to help when she needed it. “I do mind. And I don’t think you should be—”

  “What you think doesn’t matter,” she retorted. “This is my father, my pain, my call. I don’t want you here, I want you to go, do you understand? Go. Leave. Now,” she insisted when he neither made a response nor a move to do as she asked.

  At a loss, all he could think was that maybe he’d been right in the first place, maybe for him relationships just didn’t work and there was no point in trying. He didn’t need this. And she obviously didn’t want him there.

  “Okay,” he agreed finally, “but I’ll check back in with you.”

  Her face was hard, removed, as she answered, “Don’t.”

  “Have it your way.” Turning from her, Mike walked away.

  She knew she’d never see him again and almost cried out to get him to stay. But that was only postponing the inevitable.

  She didn’t cry until she was sure he was really gone.

  It was Day Five.

  Day Five of what seemed like an endless vigil that had no end in sight. Miranda sat by her father’s bed, hoping, praying, sleeping when she could manage to drift off. Her father never opened his eyes, never stirred. With each day that passed, she could feel her heart sink a little more.

  Mike did as she requested and stayed away. And even though she knew she’d been the one to discharge him, she found herself listening for his step, hoping he’d come back anyway. Knowing in her heart that he wouldn’t. He was gone for good.

  And she felt all the more lost for it.

  Tilda had brought her a change of clothes and told her that everyone at Promise Pharmaceuticals was pulling for her father. Pulling for her.

  Miranda thanked her. She had no idea when she would be back. For now, she couldn’t think beyond the borders of the day, but she’d amassed nearly a month of vacation time, hardly taking more than a day here and there. It afforded her a comfort zone.

  But what if her father’s comatose state continued beyond that? What if it didn’t and he just slipped away from her?

  She tried to numb herself, to sleepwalk through everything, and failed. She felt searing sadness over her father. And over Mike.

  As she sat there, watching the sun enter her father’s room and then disappear, she desperately tried to distance herself emotionally from Mike. It was stupid to feel like this about a man she’d sent away. Stupid to feel anything for anyone.

  She’d already walked that road too many times, given her heart too many times, only to have it run over as if it was of no consequence.

  Ariel had been more than her sister. She’d been her best friend, her confidante, her mentor. Ariel had been her shelter and her light. Until that light had cruelly and abruptly gone out.

  Ariel died. And then her parents’ marriage died. Followed closely by her mother’s equally untimely death.

  They’d all deserted her.

  And each departure had left scars in its wake, scars from which she didn’t think she could ever recover. Scars that made her so afraid of reaching out—to anyone.

  Restless, Miranda got up from the chair beside her father’s bed and began to pace, the way she did at least several times a day.

  Why wouldn’t he wake up?

  Exasperated, she glanced toward the opened door. One of the nurses walked by, looked in and nodded a silent, sympathetic greeting.

  She’d learned the names of the nurses on duty, made it a point to become familiar with the orderlies. Most of the latter turned out to be fans. It helped somewhat. Her father was getting the best care possible. But the coma continued.

  When he made his daily rounds, the surgeon gave up trying to talk her into going home to rest. She was relentless in her vigil.

  “There might be no change for days. Weeks,” he’d emphasized during his last attempt to get her to pick up the threads of her life.

  “And there might be—for the worse.” She couldn’t bring herself to say that her father might die. “And I won’t be here.”

  Dr. Reese tried one last time to convince her. “Maybe it’d be better that way,” he advised gently. “Death isn’t a pleasant thing to witness.”

  He’d get no argument from her, but this wasn’t about her. It was about her father. And she couldn’t desert him, even if he didn’t know that she was here. “He shouldn’t have to die alone.”

  Outmaneuvered, the orthopedic surgeon didn’t counter her remark, so he finished making notes in the oversized chart and left. Left Miranda to listen to the sounds of the life-support machines as they hummed and kept her father alive.

  Left her to listen to the sound of her own heart as it continued breaking.

  The rails on her father’s bed were up. As if he would fall out. She’d give anything if he would just make a tiny movement. An eyelash flutter, a moan, something, anything to indicate that he was still with her. That he would remain with her for a while longer.

  “I’m not ready, you know,” she said in a hoarse whisper as she moved closer. She took his hand in hers. It felt cold. A sign of things to come? She tried not to shiver. “I’m not ready for you to go. You hear that, old man?” she demanded, raising her voice just a little. “I’m not ready to have you die on me. You’ve already left me once. No, what am I saying? It was more than once. Not counting all those times you were on the road, away from home, you left me big-time when Ariel died.”

  Her voice trembled and she took a breath to steady it. It hardly helped.

  “I loved her, too, you know. I could have used you. We could have consoled each other. We could have all consoled each other.” She tried not to be resentful, but it was difficult. “But you and Mom went to your separate corners, corners that had no room for me. And then you left again when you and Mom got divorced. And again after she died. And then that awful scandal broke. You didn’t even trust me enough to tell me the real story, just pulled into yourself like you always do. Into yourself and away from me,” she cried, tears falling freely. “Like some damn turtle.” The fact that she’d done the same with Mike hit her with the force of a well-aimed blow. But it was too late to fix things, to undo what she’d done. But maybe she could still reach her father. She looked down at his face.

  “But I was there for you after the accident, wasn’t I? Even if you insisted on going somewhere far away inside you again, I was there. Even when you’re here, you’re not here, but I got used to that. I can put up with that. What I can’t put up with is losing you, really losing you. So you can’t die. Do you hear me?” she demanded tearfully. “I’m not giving you permission to die. For once, think
about me. Me, Dad, me, I need you. I need you, Daddy. I need you.”

  She was sobbing now, as she draped her body over the bed, embracing her father. It wasn’t easy. There were multiple lines going into his arms, feeding his body, taking away the pain and guarding against any possible infections. She was careful not to disturb any of them.

  She didn’t know how long she’d been like that, sobbing, holding on to him, when she felt a pair of strong arms lift her, taking her away from the man she refused to allow to leave his mortal shell.

  Not wanting to be separated from her father, she fought the strong arms, fought to be released from them. Fought to be able to be independent, to stand alone.

  But the arms wouldn’t let her loose, to isolate herself in her grief. The arms were strong and warm and loving. They formed her prison but they formed her haven, as well.

  When she finally looked up, she found herself looking into Mike’s sympathetic eyes.

  “I gave you five days,” Mike told her, firmly but kindly. “Five days to be an island.” Five days in which he tried picturing himself without her and couldn’t. “But five days is my limit. I want you back.”

  Miranda pulled back, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “It’s not up to you what I do or don’t do,” she retorted. But even as the words left her mouth, she felt awful for being this angry. And so hopelessly jumbled up inside. Up was down, black was white and nothing made sense to her anymore.

  “No, it’s not,” Mike agreed. He made no attempt to take her back into his arms. “But right now I can hope that I mean enough to you to have you listen to what I have to say. Your father’s doctor called me. Said the nurses told him that you hadn’t gone home since the surgery. That you weren’t eating. Just how long do you think you can keep that up before you wind up in a hospital bed yourself?”

  She shrugged. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Well, think about it,” he ordered. “What good are you going to do your father if he comes back around and you’re the one who falls into a coma?”

  “I’m not going to be in a coma,” she snapped angrily.

  “And you have a written guarantee from God to that effect? Your father thought the same thing and just look at him.” Mike gestured toward the bed.

  She pressed her lips together, looking at the still form. Was it her imagination or was her father getting smaller? “He’s not going to come back around.”

  Her pessimism took him by surprise. Usually, she was Pollyanna with pom-poms. This was a whole new side of her. One he didn’t care for.

  “Yes, he is.”

  But Miranda shook her head. She knew her father. “He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t think he has anything to come back for. My sister’s gone, my mother’s gone, his reputation is gone. The person he sacrificed it for is gone, too, so it was all for nothing and he’s forced to keep quiet about it, trapped into silence by his honorable word.” She laughed shortly. “Ironic, isn’t it? His honor cost him his honor.”

  “You’re wrong,” he told her. When she looked at him quizzically, he explained, “He does have something to come back for. He has you.”

  She waved a dismissive hand at his words. “He doesn’t care about me—not enough to force him to get better. Hell, just to stick around for a while.”

  “Yes, he does,” Mike insisted. She was pacing around the room again. He felt as if he was arguing with a moving target. “Your father told me so.”

  She wanted to believe that. With her whole heart she wanted to believe that. But she knew better. “You’re making that up.”

  “No, I’m not. A lot of men have trouble expressing themselves to the person they care about. My father was like that—until Kate taught him that he couldn’t just feel those emotions, he had to verbalize them.”

  A hint of a smile curved her lips. This time, the apple did fall far from the tree. “You don’t have that kind of trouble, do you?”

  Echoes of the past echoed in his brain, urging him to be flippant, to address her question as lightly as possible. Because if he told her the truth, he’d be vulnerable. He’d be leaving himself open to trouble. But he was tired of playing it safe, tired of waking up in the morning to find the other half of his bed empty. If he wanted that to change, he would have to change.

  “As a matter of fact, no, I don’t. But I did have trouble allowing myself to feel something. And probably for the very same reasons you did. But you miss out a lot by not feeling,” he told her. “And I’m tired of missing out on things.”

  She pressed her lips together, trying to regulate her tone. Could he hear the tremor in it? “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  “Not trying. Succeeding,” he informed her. “Whether you want to hear me or not is another story.”

  But suddenly, she wasn’t listening to him. Her eyes opened as wide as silver dollars. “Mike—”

  He stopped in the middle of what was going to be a long, solemn speech. Anything to get her to come around, to see what she was missing.

  “What?”

  Miranda pointed to her father’s bed. “He just moved. My father just moved.” Mike turned around to look at the still figure in the bed. “He moved his toe,” she cried, overwhelmed. “I just saw him!”

  Mike was already calling for the nurse on duty.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Holding her father’s hand in both of hers, Miranda dropped to her knees beside his bed. Fragments of prayers raced in and out of her brain.

  “Dad, Dad, can you hear me? Do you know I’m here? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me. Just a little squeeze. C’mon, Dad, you can do it. Do it for me. Let me know you’re still with me.”

  And then her heart skipped a beat.

  She felt it. It wasn’t just her imagination.

  She turned her head toward Mike for a split second. “He did it, Mike. He did it.” Tears slid down her cheeks. “He squeezed my hand.” She leaned her head in closer to her father. “Dad, Mike’s here, too. And you moved your big toe just now. I saw you do it. Your left big toe. You’re going to walk, Dad. You’re going to walk again. Right out of here and into the rest of your life. I told you that you would. I told you,” she repeated, trying very hard to regain control over herself.

  She released his hand and rose to her feet again. Turning to Mike, she gave up trying to stem the flow of her tears. “He’s going to be all right, Mike.”

  Mike embraced her, holding her close to him. For a moment, too overcome with emotion, he didn’t say anything at all. And then he kissed the top of her head. “Yeah, I know.”

  Drawing back, she wiped her eyes and looked up at him. Struggling for composure. “Now, what was it you were saying?”

  “That I want back into your life.”

  In her heart, she knew it was putting off the inevitable, but she was too happy to dwell on the downside. Her father had come around. “I’d like that, too,” she told him just before sinking into his kiss.

  Maybe I’ll be lucky just a little bit longer, she prayed.

  No matter how fast he mended, Miranda noted with a smile, it just wasn’t fast enough for her father. His surgeons were astonished at his progress, but she wasn’t. She knew how stubborn her father could be. He wasn’t the type to give up, not when he set his mind to it.

  Since her father had come out of his coma, her days had consisted of working and then going to the hospital to remain by his bedside in the evening for as long as she was allowed. Mike would stop by the third-floor room around eight or nine o’clock to pay his respects to her father.

  They were getting along very well now, Mike and her father, she noted with pride.

  After visiting hours, she and Mike went home. Most of the time, that home was his. Some of the time, it was hers. They were together every night. She found refuge in his arms, even if it was just to be held and nothing more. She felt safe with Mike. And although she tried to warn herself that she was getting far too comfortable with this routine again, far too accustomed to
having Mike in her nights and early mornings, she couldn’t seem to help herself. Couldn’t make herself stop caring. She was in far too deep.

  Even when she occupied herself with her father’s physical therapy and everything else that went into helping him grow stronger, right in the middle, she’d find herself thinking about Mike. Missing him. Wanting him to be right there.

  Loving him—and there was no denying it any longer—had made her strong, not weak. Strong enough to face whatever happened with her father’s health because, at least for now, she wasn’t alone.

  Mercifully, it was all good.

  So good that when the Little League season approached its end and the team Mike had been coaching for her father had made it into their own version of the World Series, her father was able to come to the field to witness the last game.

  Rather than a wheelchair, which would have been less tiring, her father insisted on using his crutches and walking from the parking lot to the batting cage. It was a short distance if measured in feet. Long if measured in accomplishment. It was slow, painful going and there was hardly a dry eye left amid the adults who silently watched his progress.

  Steven Orin Shaw was their very own hometown hero. Even the children on the two teams stopped roughhousing and sensed that they were in the presence of something important. They all watched a man who wouldn’t give up approach them.

  Led by Mike, applause broke out and swelled until there was no other sound but the thunderous noise of hand against hand in awed homage.

  “Hear that, Dad?” Miranda asked, choking back tears as she directed him to a seat.

  “I’d have to be deaf not to,” he responded gruffly. Attention of any sort usually embarrassed him, but she could tell that beneath it all, he was touched.

  She was proud of him. Proud of being his daughter. “It’s all for you.”

  He tried to look indifferent, but failed. Exhausted from the journey that had progressed by inches, he still stood for a moment and scanned the faces in the crowd. As he had at the last winning game of his third World Series victory, he removed his cap and held it above his head, as if both in tribute to the crowd and in acknowledgment of their tribute to him.