A January Chill. Rachel Lee

But deserving this kind of torture didn’t mean he had to like it.

      He passed his hand over his face, trying to wipe away the images that seemed to be dancing at the edges of his vision, horrific images that were burned forever into his mind. Feeling desperate, he glanced at his watch and realized it was only two minutes until they would let him in to see Barbara one last time before they shut down visiting hours for the night.

      Stupid, he thought. Family members ought to be able to visit patients in the ICU round the clock. What difference did it make if it was midnight, 2:00 a.m. or 8:00 a.m?

      But they were strict about it, and he didn’t want to squawk too loudly right now, especially since he’d been pushing the limits all day and the nurses had been letting him.

      He was standing right outside the ICU door when Delia opened it.

      “Last call,” she said, pursing her lips. “Ten minutes and you’re outta here, Hardy. Then you’re going to go home and get some sleep. With this pneumonia going around, we ain’t got no room for exhaustion cases.”

      He gave her a wan smile and made his way to the cubicle where his mother lay. No change. At once relief and disappointment filled him, but he reminded himself that he’d been told not to expect a miracle. Morning. He’d been told again and again that she might be better in the morning. It was so hard to believe right now, though, as he stood at her bedside, holding her hand gently and murmuring nonsense to her.

      Ten minutes later, when he was evicted, nothing had changed. He had the panicky feeling that his mother was slipping slowly away from him, so slowly that it was almost undetectable. And he couldn’t really blame her.

      Life had been hard on her for a long time. First there had been his drunken bum of a father. Then, when Lester had left, there had been the two jobs she worked to keep Hardy and herself clothed and sheltered. She’d even continued working two jobs so he could go to college. Then she’d helped him start his construction firm, working the endless hours right beside him as they built the business. Now that things were finally going good, it seemed somehow so unreasonably unfair that she should be at death’s door.

      But maybe she’d had enough. He could hardly blame her. He knew he hadn’t lived up to her dreams for him. There was the accident with Karen’s death, which had certainly hurt her, too, and then his refusal to date anyone, though she kept encouraging him to. She wanted grandbabies, she said, but he couldn’t bear the thought of caring like that again.

      So maybe she was just fed up. Her life had been one major disappointment after another.

      And the thoughts running through his brain were doing nothing at all to ease his panic.

      When he stepped blindly out of the ICU, he bumped into someone. It took him a moment to recognize Joni. “What are you doing here?” he demanded roughly. It was a question he had no right to ask, and he realized it almost as soon as the words came out of his mouth.

      But she didn’t take it amiss. “I was worrying about you and your mother. How is she?”

      “Pretty bad,” he admitted reluctantly. “We probably won’t know anything till morning.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      He gave her a short nod.

      She reached out tentatively and touched his forearm briefly. “Let me buy you a cocoa?”

      He looked down at her and shook his head. “Joni, you’re courting disaster. You know what Witt thinks of me.”

      “Yeah. But I happen to disagree, and I’m over twenty-one. Cocoa?”

      “The cafeteria’s closed.”

      She gave him a wink that made him feel strangely light-headed. Lack of sleep, he told himself.

      “Hey,” she said, grabbing his hand, “I work here, remember? I know where the good stuff is hidden.”

      She took him away from the ICU toward the reception area, then steered him through a door that said Employees Only.

      Inside was a staff lounge. A nurse was sitting on an easy chair with her shoes kicked off, eating a snack. A man in scrubs was stretched out on a couch with a cushion over his face.

      Joni waved at the nurse, then put her finger over her lips as she looked at Hardy and pointed to the sleeping man. He nodded.

      She made two mugs of instant cocoa, passed him one, then indicated he should follow her. They left the lounge and went to sit in the reception area.

      “See?” she said. “Insider knowledge.”

      “Thanks.” He hoped it didn’t sound as grudging as it felt, because the cocoa was hot and delicious and contained the first calories he’d put in his system since a sandwich at noon.

      “You look awful,” she told him.

      She hadn’t changed a bit, he realized. She was still the mouthy fourteen-year-old who’d pestered the living bejesus out of him and Karen sometimes. Even back then, he’d tried to be understanding. A kid who’d lost her daddy and moved to a town that didn’t easily make room for new arrivals—yeah, she’d had a reason to be a pest. Everybody else in the world had kind of ignored her.

      “Have you slept within recent memory?” she asked.

      “I’ve dozed here and there. Don’t give me hell, Joni. I’m not up for it.”

      “Okay.” She sipped her cocoa and looked at him from those amazing blue eyes.

      “Don’t you need to get home and get some sleep yourself?”

      She shrugged. “I’m not on duty tomorrow. Day off.”

      “Even with the epidemic?”

      “I might be called in,” she admitted.

      “Then go get some sleep.”

      “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

      They stared at each other, letting her words hang in the air between them. Neither of them wanted to mention Karen, he realized, but she lay between them as surely as if she were there.

      “I’m trying to keep you out of trouble with your uncle,” he said finally.

      “My problem, not yours.”

      He cocked an eye at her. “What put you in such a feisty mood?”

      “I don’t know. Maybe it’s realizing that age doesn’t necessarily make a person wise.”

      He sipped his cocoa, wondering what she was getting at, and almost afraid to ask. He didn’t know Joni at all anymore, he reminded himself. Since Karen’s death, until today, they hadn’t passed more than a dozen words.

      “Can you keep a secret?” she asked finally.

      “Sure. But you shouldn’t be telling them to me.”

      “I’ve got a reason.”

      She always had a reason. He remembered that from way back when. According to Joni, she never did a thing without good reason. He had his own thoughts about that.

      “Witt won the lottery,” she told him. “But don’t tell anyone else.”

      “Yeah?” He felt a mild interest. “That’s neat. You all going to take a vacation in Hawaii?” His mother had always wanted to do that. It pained him that he hadn’t yet been able to make that dream come true for her. This year, he promised himself. Somehow, if she made it through this pneumonia, he was going to get her to Hawaii, if he had to move heaven and earth.

      “I suggested Tahiti.” She gave him a smile that struck him as uneasy and sad. Despite all his overwhelming emotional exhaustion because of the last twenty-four desperate hours, he still managed to feel a pang for Joni.

      “What’s wrong?”

      “Not a thing,” she said. “It’s