Lightning That Lingers by Sharon Curtis, Tom Curtis Page B

cheek. It might have been ice.
    He grabbed the receiver of his bedside phone and dialed rapidly, forcing the dial. When it began to ring he tucked it into his shoulder and started to pry at the ice-encrusted zipper of her coat. Her clothes, moisture saturated, had frozen to rigidity. An anonymous voice came on the phone and informed him, after he asked, that Dr. Campell wasn’t available. He’s with a woman, Philip thought. He snapped out that this was Philip Brooks and an emergency. The bland voice advised him glumly that he would be connected.
    In the extended delay, he unwrapped the frosty muffler from her face and realized that it was his. Staring at it, he had the utterly stupid feeling that he might begin to cry.
    Jack’s voice. “I don’t know who the hell this is but it better be important.”
    “Jack, this is Philip. Can you come over?”
    “Philip?” The voice sharpened. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”
    “Yes. Jenny’s with me. I found her outside. She looks like a snow cone.”
    Even more sharply, “Is she conscious?”
    “Semiconscious.”
    “Other symptoms?” Jack snapped out.
    “Ataxia, dysarthria, disorientation. And her damn zipper is frozen shut.”
    “Steady. All right? What’s her pulse?”
    He dragged off her mitten and found her wrist.
    “Dear God, I can’t find one.”
    “Be calm, Philip.” The voice became deliberatelyhealing, stern, sustaining. “If she’s semiconscious she’s alive and she’s got a pulse. Maybe it’s thready, but you’ll find it. I’ll be there in a minute. Pull her clothes off and put her under a blanket.
Don’t
put her in a hot tub.
Don’t
put her in a heating blanket, or you may throw her into shock. Did you catch all that?”
    “Yes. What about an ambulance?”
    “We’ll decide when I get there.” The line went dead.
    The thawing zipper broke free and as he brought it down past her waist, he saw her wide-set eyes focus on him with sudden lucidity.
    “What’s ataxia?” The words were quite clear, but very hoarse.
    “Jenny? Sweetheart, this is Philip. Do you know me?”
    “Ataxia,” prompted the blue lips softly.
    “It means loss of coordination,” he told her gently.
    “Thanks.” The barely audible word was sardonic. She seemed to be trying to smile. “Dysarthria?”
    “Slurred speech.”
    “Why do you know those words?”
    He raised her shoulders enough to drag her coat off. “I’m a biologist.”
    “Biologist. Biologist.” She gave the word various amazed inflections.
    He had a moment to be elated over that evidence of rationality before her eyes closed and she seemed to drift again. She shivered so pitifully it wrenched his heart. He would have given everything to be able to take her pain.
    All the way to his fingertips he could feel thepressure of his emotions as he began to open her blouse. Her dazed husky whisper startled him.
    “Philip … Are you going to make love to me?”
    “Yes, God help us both.” He touched a shaken kiss to her cold brow. “When you’re better.”
    Her heavy lashes dropped, her fist curled drowsily near her cheek as he undressed and dried her. She seemed to have fallen into a light sleep under his wool blanket when he carried her damp clothes to the bathroom. He returned to find her wandering around his bedroom with the blanket wrapped around her, trailing it behind her like a besotted monk.
    “I have to find a mechanic,” she rasped softly, gazing vaguely around the room. “I have to get my …” She thought about it for a long time—“my ’wagon fixed.”
    He smiled for the first time since he had walked away from her in the library, and scooped her up, a droll, weightless bundle, depositing her back on the bed, nuzzling his face in her damp hair. “I’ll fix your wagon but good if you don’t stay still.”
    For Jennifer, consciousness returned at broken intervals as though the world were a thing seen through erratically swinging shutters.
    Distantly she saw herself