"Honey," Mildred said softly. "I came as soon as I could."
The familiar voice broke through Lauras reverie. "Mildred?" What was left of her composure shattered at the sight of the person closest to her next to Remington Steele. Her face seemed to crumple and Mildred quickly hugged her close.
"Oh, honey, its okay, its okay... hes going to be alright, youll see."
"You werent there, Mildred," Lauras voice quavered. "There was so much blood."
"What happened? You dont have to tell me if you feel like youre not up to it yet."
Laura shook her head, knowing it would help both of them to talk about it. Brokenly, she related the string of unfortunate events that led their present vigil at the hospital. She ended with, "I cant lose him now, Mildred. Not after everything weve been through. Weve waited so long "
Mildred looked her squarely in the eye. "Listen, I have never met anyone with a stronger bond than the two of you, even when you were still dancing around the fringes of a a formal relationship. You have always come through for each other, no matter what happened. Now, our Mr. Steele hes never disappointed us before. What makes you think its going to be any different this time?"
The pep talk elicited a wan smile. "Im so glad youre here, Mildred."
"So am I."
The two women sank into a comfortable silence and proceeded to keep a watchful eye on the clock. The police came to question Laura, who gave them a quick summary of their two-week surveillance and directions to retrieve the tapes from her car.
When they left, Mildreds maternal instinct reasserted itself. She managed to force the increasingly restless Laura to drink some coffee and even eat half a donut.
"Whats taking them so long?" lamented Laura for the nth time. "Theyre been in there for six hours!"
"Well, its a better sign than having them come out quickly and " Mildred faltered. "I mean, if theyre still in there, then there must be plenty to do "
"I see your point." God knows she didnt want the doctors to give up without a good long fight. Or give up, period. Did they ever fully appreciate that the lives waiting outside the operating room rested in their hands too?
At long last, the swinging doors opened and expelled a small figure in surgical scrubs.
"Mrs. Steele?"
Laura was beside the doctor in a flash. As the masks came off, she found herself looking down at an Oriental woman, barely five feet tall, with solemn brown eyes and black hair drawn into a ponytail.
"Im Anne Wong, the chief surgical resident," she declared and shook Lauras hand. Mildred and Laura couldnt help exchanging a surprised look.
Apparently oblivious to the reactions she elicited, the doctor continued, "Weve stabilized your husbands condition, but Im afraid hes not out of danger yet. The bullet hit his spleen. We removed it, controlled the bleeding, but he still lost a great deal of blood."
The knot in Lauras stomach didnt dissipate as shed hoped. She closed her eyes as the news sank in. With his life still hanging in the balance, so did her own. At least he was alive.
Dr. Wong watched her carefully. This one didnt look like the fainting type, but she was awfully pale and you can never be sure with distraught wives. "Weve done all that we can for now. I suggest you go home, clean yourself up, and get some rest.
"When will he be out of danger?"
"The next 48 hours are critical. Well know more when he gets through it."
"Can we see him?" Mildred interjected anxiously.
"Were moving him to the ICU now," the doctor said, with a glance at the wall clock. "Visiting hours will be over soon. Go ahead and look in on him, then go home. Well call you immediately if theres any change."
Change? What kind of "change" did she mean? Suddenly, Laura wasnt sure she wanted to hear the answers. Instead she asked, "What if he wakes up? Cant I stay with him?"
Vinnie Prescott glared viciously at the whisky in front of him, as if willing it to boil the way his blood seemed to be doing at the moment.
"What about the shipment?" the erstwhile Agent Thomson asked.
"Dont talk to me about the shipment," Vinnie snapped. "Im not even gonna think what it cost me to get the white stuff across the border, only to have the cops crawling all over it right now. Itll probably get flushed down a toilet somewhere!"
He followed up the tirade with a string of colorful expletives before drawing a deep breath to calm himself. "If were going to get incriminated for attempted murder thanks to that trigger-happy sonovabitch Dex, we might as well finish the job. Get some satisfaction out of it, you know?"
"You dont have to tell me twice, boss. I still got an old score to settle, and its going to be a pleasure," Thomson said, his lips curving into a macabre smile. "Leave it to me. I promise you: Remington Steele has crossed us for the last time."
"So I couldnt stay away. Shoot me," Laura mused listlessly as she watched over Steele.
"Okay, maybe not shoot," she amended. There was more than enough of that for one day.
She had gone home as the doctor suggested, taken a shower and gone to bed. She hadnt been prepared for how empty the bed seemed without him. All those years of sleeping alone, she noted with a twinge of disgust, spoiled by just a few months of marriage. A part of her remembered the precarious possibility that she might have to get used to sleeping alone again. She squelched the thought.
Her hand had strayed to his side of the bed and rested on top of his pillow. Shed gently punched a dent into it, one that his head would normally make, then realized what she was doing. With a sigh, she forced her eyes shut.
Images, instead of blackness, began to drift uninvited into her mind of the first night they spent in this bedroom of two shadows merging into one on the wall behind of the countless times shed lie on his chest and let the sound of his breathing lull her to sleep.
It occurred to her that she never missed Wilson Jeffries this intensely after hed cleared out of their apartment. Then again, Wilson was the kind of guy who needed his space to get through the night and said so from the beginning. She thought back over the past few months and realized with some surprise that Harry never expressed a similar need.
In fact, now that she thought about it, they both seemed to make it a point to maintain some sort of physical contact throughout the night, even if they didnt make love a loose embrace, or an arm circled around the others waist. When she had the flu and wouldnt let him come near her, they had simply held hands while they slept.
No wonder she missed his touch. She reached for his pillow and pressed her cheeks to the cool fabric and breathed in his scent.
"Ooohh!" she sputtered. It was hopeless. She threw off the covers and was on her way to the hospital in fifteen minutes.
Sneaking into the ICU was trickier than shed anticipated. Even though the lights were dimmed, a full complement of the medical staff seemed to be on duty. She closed the lower blinds of the glass windows and hoped no one would notice from the nurses station.
Carefully, she picked up the hand that did not have any IV or blood transfusion tubes. "I suppose it was too much to hope for that you would lose some of these tubes from the last time I saw you." That was barely three hours ago, she realized with a start, but it felt so much longer than that.
She brushed the thick black hair from his forehead and planted a kiss there, unable to kiss his lips because of the tubes running into his mouth and nose. Laura hated the sight of them and could only imagine how revolted he would be. He abhorred just taking pills.
The steady beeping sound from the cardiac monitor offered her an odd comfort. She eventually fell into a fitful sleep at the edge of the bed, her head pillowed by a bent arm, a hand folded over the patients.
The nurse on duty found the unauthorized visitor during her next rounds but didnt have the heart to wake her. Laura didnt even stir while the nurse went about checking Steeles vital signs. She finally awoke later to an insistent, erratic beep that her disoriented mind insisted was not her alarm clock.
It took her a few moments to pinpoint the cardiac monitor. She cast horrified eyes at Steele, who didnt look any different from before. Suddenly the hand under hers moved.
"Harry? Harry!" she called urgently.
His chest heaved, and he seemed to gasp. To Lauras utter shock, the beeps from the cardiac monitor become one solid monotone. Her eyes told her the rest.
Flatline.
Her blood turned into a river of ice. A second ticked by, maybe two and reality transformed into a movie in slow motion. Laura stood up, interlaced her hands, and began pushing on the now immobile chest.
The ICU staff streamed into the room. Laura was firmly relegated to the sidelines as the medical personnel took over. She heard someone order epinephrine while a nurse wheeled in the defibrillator. Two more people surrounded the patient, blocking Lauras view.
"Harry dont you dare leave me like this," she whispered. She knew he couldnt hear her, but she needed to say it. "I refuse to lose you now."
"260 joules," ordered the doctor in charge as he rubbed the paddles together. "Clear!"
The only thing that kept Laura from breaking down was the surprise she felt at how hard she could pray.
Remington Steele floated endlessly in an all-encompassing darkness. He couldnt figure out if he was flying, swimming or sinking. Pinpricks of light crossed his vision every now and again, beckoning to him, but they never stayed long enough in one place for him to reach it.
Finally, one light steadied and grew larger in the distance. He inched his way towards it. When he finally reached his goal, reality seemed to rearrange itself all around and he found himself basking in the most glorious sunlight he had ever seen.
"Harry, my boy! Its so good to see you again."
He turned towards the familiar voice, unable to mask his delight.
"Daniel!"
His mentor and father wore an equally delighted smile. They embraced.
Daniel Chalmers looked different from the last time theyd met. Younger. And much healthier.
"You look wonderful, Daniel."
"You dont look too shabby yourself."
For the first time, Harry noticed that they were both dressed in shorts and cotton shirts, standing barefoot on the cool sands of a beach. He had to be dreaming. Daniel was dead. Then again, this was much better than the interminable blackness. He might as well savor his companion and surroundings.
"Where are we?"
"You cant have forgotten already?" Daniel asked and waited for the recognition to set in. "Yes, were in the south of France."
"So you did retire to your villa after all."
"Indeed." They began to walk. "And how is life treating you, my boy? Are you a happily married man?"
"I " The question seemed to startle him, then he admitted with a grin. "Yes!"
Daniel didnt miss the glow that lit up his sons eyes as the latter began talking about Laura.
"You know, she calls me Harry now. Says Remington is too long, and that it still reminds her of the typewriter she named me after." They both laughed at that.
"Well, I like it. It reminds me of you," Harry said. "Wait a minute!" He stopped walking and stared at his father with narrowed eyes. "I just remembered. You never did finish telling me what my real name is."
Daniel looked at him thoughtfully. "Is it still that important to you?"
"I suppose not," Remington Steele answered after a beat. "The last time it mattered to me was when I wanted to give it to Laura as proof of my commitment, and I daresay were well past that point by now."
"Good! Wonderful!" Daniel said, then admitted a little sheepishly, "The truth is, I was never sure myself what my own name was. I figured, if I got to choose my name, why deprive my son of the same privilege?"
The dubiously privileged son laughed in exasperation. "I should have guessed as much."
"Laura has given you a good name, Harry, and youve grown into it the way youve grown into every single name youve ever had. But maybe this one, youll keep."
Harry smiled his agreement.
"She is an extraordinary woman. Youre very lucky to have her, and this is not just the proud father talking shes lucky to have you too. Having said that, I think you should know that I expect you to name at least one grandchild after me."
"So that he can carry on the family name?"
"But of course. If we dont know the last name, we might as well keep the first."
They chuckled once more. Daniel embraced his son. "Its truly wonderful to see you again, my boy. I regret that we have to part ways now. You have to get back to your wife, and I have to get back to your mother."
He turned and started towards his villa, leaving a dumbfounded Steele to digest his words.
"My mother?" he stammered.
Daniel looked back, but did not stop walking. "Youll meet her someday. Its not your time yet, Harry. Now go! Someones waiting for you."
Its not your time ? Suddenly, Harry understood how he could possibly be on the same beach as Daniel.
"Laura." He had to get back to Laura.
He broke into a run, without an inkling of where he was supposed to go. His surroundings blurred, crumpled, and darkness swallowed him once again.
Laura watched Steeles body jerk up off the hospital bed and held her breath. An eternity seemed to pass before she heard the ominous tone emanating from the cardiac monitor replaced by beeps once again. Only the wall behind kept her from sliding to the floor as her knees suddenly turned weak.
They told her that the loss of blood had caused his heart to overwork and led to a cardiac arrest. He was stable for the moment and would be observed closely. Then their offers to administer a sedative and prescribe rest to the patients wife were politely, unequivocably rejected.
Hours later, Mildred was only slightly more successful than the hospital staff in prying Laura away for some food and the shortest of naps, then she was back alternating bleary eyes between the patient and the cardiac monitor.
The police arrived late in the afternoon with an unimpressive update on the case. "We're checking out other coffee importers like you suggested, Mrs. Steele," the narcotics sergeant related, "And also companies with shipments from similar countries. Maybe one of them will turn out to be a victim of the same scam and cooperate with us, but so far no one has admitted to anything."
The police werent able to tie anything back to Vinnie Prescott or Judge Terence Rothschild either. "They werent physically present during the fake drug bust or the shooting, and unless we get a copy of those search warrants, we have no solid evidence to prove that they were involved."
Lauras frustration over the authorities inability to resolve the case lasted well after the policemen left. She wanted to do plenty of legwork of her own, but she remembered the cardiac arrest from the night before and shuddered at the possibility of not being by his side if, God forbid, something like it happened again.
She went through the charade of letting herself be shooed home to get some rest, but no one was surprised to find her back in the ICU barely two hours later.
"Dr. Wong said I should keep talking, let you hear my voice," she said softly. "My lilting voice." She chuckled. "Remember the first time you told me that? We were in the lab of that sleep disorder clinic, waiting for whatsisname, your roommate, the one who wouldnt shut up waiting for him to steal the morphine. I found out that you could cook and you, you actually nodded off when we were about to kiss.
"Well, here we are again. You asleep, me scheming to wake you up with a kiss. God, I miss you," she pressed her cheek to the back of his hand. "Now will you please wake up already, so you can gloat about how pathetic I sound."
She felt a stab of disappointment when he didn't even stir.
"Mildred has been wonderful," she continued. "We really should get her that P.I. license soon... especially if we're going on a long vacation after this. We can't very well shut down the agency while were away.
"Come to think of it, maybe we ought to retain a couple of those interns next summer. We could delegate most of the legwork to them and Remington Steele can go back to functioning best in an advisory capacity." She smiled at the memory of using the phrase to distraction during his first year in the role and before that.
Laura fell into an exhausted slumber soon after, only to wake up when she felt his hand move again. Her breath caught as she shot an alarmed look at the cardiac monitor.
"Harry?" Did she imagine it, or did the hand crushed under her nervous grip actually try to squeeze back? "Harry, wake up! Cmon !"
Steele moaned softly and, to her delight, those beloved blue eyes fluttered open. He blinked at the blurry ceiling, wondering how all that aimless free-floating could be transformed so suddenly into leaden immobility.
"Harry!?"
Lauras blessed, lovely face drifted into his line of vision. "Laura!" he wanted to shout, only to find that he was not even capable of making a sound.
Laura saw his eyes light up and his mouth try to move, but he was hindered by the tubes running into his nose and mouth. Confusion wrinkled his brows, and Laura felt a stab of regret mingle with the excitement she felt at his regaining consciousness.
A nurse walked into the room then, bearing a tray of medication.
"He's awake!" Laura told her. "Can you call the doctor and ask her if we can remove these tubes? He's trying to talk..."
The nurse hesitated, looking down at the tray in her hands and back at the patient.
Laura came forward and took the tray. "Go ahead! This can wait."
If anything, the bewildered nurse looked even more confused. She watched Laura set the tray down on the table beside the bed and, probably convinced that she had no choice, left the room.
Laura picked up Harry's hand and smiled. "Welcome back. You scared the hell out of me."
He swallowed painfully, moving his mouth again. He saw the dark circles under her eyes and wished he could tell her how sorry he was for causing them.
"Its alright; dont try to talk," she said, "Im just glad youre awake."
He stared at her with intense blue eyes and prayed that she would read him correctly.
"Dont worry, youre going to be fine. The doctor " she smiled at the image of Anne Wong. "is quite a character. But Im sure youll like her."
He squeezed her hand. The corners of his mouth moved up as high as they could go, and Laura leaned over him, desperately wanting to kiss him. She needed to reinforce the bond between them and couldnt seem to get close enough. She held his face between her hands, finally resting her forehead on top of his.
"I almost lost you last night," she whispered, unable to trust herself to say anything more with the kind of lump she had in her throat.
With more effort than he cared to note, Steele reached up to touch Laura's cheek, wishing he could tell her that it would take more than a bullet to yank him out of her life... then realized that he couldnt even promise that much. The truth was, a bullet almost did claim his life, and neither he nor Laura could have forseen nor done much to prevent it.
His gesture was not lost on Laura. It reassured her more than anything the doctor could have said. She pressed a kiss on the back of his hand.
Steele closed his eyes, wondering what on earth hed just done that could make him as tired as he felt. He tugged at Lauras hand until it rested, like the softest and warmest of pillows, beside his cheek. He cast her a groggy look before falling into a contented sleep.
For her part, Laura felt a flash of panic when he didnt respond to her calling his name anymore. She urgently rang the call button. When the nurse appeared, it was a different woman from the one who had brought his medication.
"What took you so long?" Laura demanded.
"I came as soon as you rang," the nurse answered calmly. "What seems to be the problem?"
"He woke up! I asked the other nurse to get the doctor, but now hes lost consciousness again..."
The nurse bent over Steele and checked him. "Hes sleeping peacefully, Mrs. Steele. His vital signs are stable and stronger than before. I dont see any cause for alarm."
Laura heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank God for that. But what happened to the other nurse?"
"What other nurse?"
"The one who brought in his medication a while ago. The one I asked to alert the doctor."
"But I just administered his dose about 20 minutes ago," said the nurse with a puzzled frown. "Let me check with the staff outside."
She came back shortly, holding a medical chart. "Thats strange. None of the other nurses were in here and his chart has no new instructions." She was about to examine the hypodermic needle and bottle on the small tray when Lauras professional instincts kicked in.
"Wait," she stopped the nurses hand in midair. "Dont touch them. I think we should call the police."
Her suspicions were confirmed late the next morning. The tray bore, to quote the lab technician, enough morphine to knock out an elephant.