Radclyffe - Passion's Bright Fury Read online

  Jude leaned back and closed her eyes, wondering at the rapidity with which she had distanced herself from the horrors of human frailty. If it happened to her in barely two days, how could anyone seeing it day after day possibly feel anything and still remain sane?

  "His name is Stephen Jones, and he's twenty years old. He has a lovely girlfriend and a very devoted family. At the moment, he is still alive-against all odds-and he's going to need them if he's going to make it in the long run."

  "You met with the family?" Jude asked. How did you find the time? How did you find the strength?

  "Briefly," Sax replied. "Deb is with them now explaining what they can expect over the next few days. A big part of her training is learning to coordinate the various specialties that are involved in a trauma patient's care. Just as important as orchestrating the medical care is keeping the family informed and putting them in touch with support staff who can help them with finances, insurance, and things like that."

  Jude sighed. "Damn. I should have gotten that." She smiled wanly. "To tell you the truth, I needed a break."

  "Understandable," Sax said in a tone that said she meant it. She studied the other woman, concerned by the faint tremor she noted in Jude's hands. She leaned forward, and asked again, "Are you sure you're all right?"

  "I'm not as fragile as you might think, Dr. Sinclair," Jude said more harshly than she intended. It bothered her for the seemingly undauntable surgeon to think that she couldn't handle the intensity of the trauma unit.

  "Would you like to tell me now what's causing the flashbacks?" Sax asked mildly. "Or would you rather out I find out when you finally faint and end up with a laceration on your forehead that I have to close?"

  Jude stood up suddenly, not the least bit dizzy any longer. She was too angry at the other woman's presumption to have even a faint memory of how ill she had felt just moments before. "You needn't worry that I'll be requiring your services in any fashion, Dr. Sinclair. I assure you, I'll have no problem doing my job."

  No, I'm sure you won't , Sax thought to herself as she watched Jude angrily leave the room. But is there any reason that you have to suffer so much while you're doing it ?

  It disturbed her to think of Jude struggling in silence, and it disturbed her even more to realize that she was breaking one of her own rules by caring.

  Chapter nine

  The quietly elegant woman in the expensively tailored slacks and plain cotton blouse stood on the porch in the bright summer sunlight and listened to the sound of the motorcycle approaching. The unpaved lane that wended its way through the quiet countryside in front of her 19th century farmhouse was lined on either side by wildflowers, and the stone path leading from it to her front door was edged with a collection of vividly colored petunias and marigolds. As she watched, a figure clad from head to toe in black-T-shirt, jeans, and boots-pulled up on a huge Harley-Davidson and dismounted by her front gate.

  Sax removed her helmet and propped it on the seat of her Harley. She ran both hands through her dark hair and started up the walk, grinning faintly at the woman waiting for her. "Hey, Maddy," she said by way of greeting, taking the stairs up to the wide wooden porch two at a time. She slipped her arms around the other woman's waist and hugged her, bestowing a light kiss on her cheek. "You look splendid as always."

  It was said lightly, but it was true. The older woman was possessed of a timeless beauty born of good bones and fine skin and a figure that artists had attempted to render on canvas and carve from stone for centuries. She would have been beautiful at any age, in any time.

  "You might have called to tell me you were coming," the other woman admonished fondly, ignoring a compliment that had long since lost all meaning to her. "I would have gotten a list of chores together. Are you staying?"

  "Until tomorrow," Sax said, one arm still loosely around Maddy's waist. "I don't suppose there's breakfast?"

  "It's noon, Saxon."

  Sax grinned charmingly. "I came straight from the hospital, but you always tell me not to speed so it took me a while."

  Madeleine Lane regarded her granddaughter with a critical eye. She knew very well that Saxon's unpredictable visits were usually prompted by her need to escape from something-too much work, too much horror, too much of life's disappointments. There were faint shadows under her eyes now, and she looked thinner and more drawn than the last time Maddy had seen her. It had been nearly two months, and then it had been in the middle of the night and her granddaughter had arrived in a driving rain, drenched and shaking from far more than the cold. As had so often been the case, they had talked until dawn about nothing of consequence, and when Saxon had pulled away on her motorcycle, Maddy still had had no idea what had made her come. Saxon's silences didn't matter to her. They never had. All that mattered was that she always returned.

  "Have you been to bed?" Maddy asked as they walked arm-in-arm through the dimly lit living room. Lace curtains were pulled across the windows to filter the sunshine and keep the room cool. The house was not air-conditioned, because Maddy had never liked the way it felt.

  "I'm not tired," Sax said, avoiding a direct answer. She was seething with too much restless energy to sleep, and she hadn't been able to face the thought of returning to her expensively appointed but undeniably cold apartment. It wasn't for lack of a good decorator that her apartment lacked warmth; it was just because there was nothing of herself in the place. She hadn't even thought about her destination when she'd climbed onto her bike and headed north out of the city. The humid air had blown cool around her face at sixty miles an hour, and she had soon shed the lingering pall of sadness and death that had seeped past her defenses. In less than an hour and a half, she had reached home. She hadn't grown up on the out of the way farm, but it was home nevertheless-because it was where Maddy lived.

  "Did you work all night?" Maddy tried again.

  "Hmm?" Sax asked. God, what a night. I can't remember the last time we had one so bad. She caught herself just as she began thinking about Stephen Jones and his missing leg and his ruined life. She couldn't afford to remember the look on his parents' face when she told them of his injuries or to imagine what the future would be like for him. Treat them. Don't live with them. Keep your sanity.

  But sometimes the utter madness of it all crept up on you, and you went a little mad yourself.

  "Oh, yes, I did," she answered off-handedly. "We were a little busy."

  They had reached the large kitchen that ran almost the entire length of the rear of the farmhouse. Two years before, Sax had replaced the small rear porch and adjoining mudroom with a large glass-enclosed solarium that connected to the kitchen through double French doors. She had built it after Maddy had admitted that the nagging arthritis in her right hip bothered her less when she could sit in the sun. There , Sax had declared, you can sit in the sun all winter long and still be warm.

  "Sit down while I make you some breakfast. Waffles okay?"

  "Waffles are always okay," Sax said as she stretched her legs out under the broad oak tabletop.

  Maddy set a cup of coffee by her granddaughter's right hand. As she removed items from the refrigerator and cupboards, she asked casually, "How are things at the hospital?"

  Sax cradled the coffee mug in her hands and shrugged. "As crazy as they always are in July. New residents to keep an eye on, more people on the streets to get shot or mugged, more cars on the road to run into each other. It's the busy season."

  "Uh huh," Maddy responded noncommittally as she dropped a bit of batter on the griddle to test the temperature.

  "There's a film crew doing a documentary in the trauma unit."

  Maddy glanced over, trying to read Saxon's feelings from her expression because her voice rarely revealed anything, but she hadn't really expected to be able to. Her granddaughter, she knew, had learned as a child to hide her feelings. That distance probably served her well in the highly volatile environment of the trauma unit, but it was very frustrating for anyone who wanted to know her.
"That's rather unusual, isn't it? It seems like it would be a terribly difficult place to film. How on earth could you have any kind of order on the set?"

  "It's not like what you were used to," Sax said with a laugh. "No elaborate scenes, no retakes, and no spoiled starlets to cater to."

  "I'll have you know that I was never spoiled," Maddy said haughtily. "I was always the picture of refinement."

  "That's not what it says about you in the stories I've read."

  Placing a plate full of steaming waffles in front of Sax, Maddy said curtly, but with a laugh in her voice, "Those reports were greatly exaggerated."

  "At any rate," Sax said, turning her attention with anticipation to the home-cooked meal, "this is more what you would call cinema verité."

  Maddy carried a cup of coffee with her and sat down opposite Sax. "Must make things pretty hectic if they're filming while you're working," she observed.

  "I thought it would be, but the director has been good about keeping her crew out from underfoot."

  "A woman director?" Maddy remarked in surprise. "I've always wished I had been able to do that rather than act. Or maybe along with it."

  "Really?" Sax said, finally feeling the pressure in her chest begin to ease with the familiar rhythm of their banter. "I never knew that."

  "It just wasn't possible then-or maybe it was, and we just didn't know to try."

  Sax reached across the table and touched her grandmother's hand. "I'm sorry."

  Maddy laughed. "No need to be. I haven't been pining about it all these years, but I'll look forward to seeing what she does with you."

  "It's not about me," Sax hurried to clarify. "She's focusing on my new trauma fellow, Deb Stein."

  "Hmm, and I imagine you just fade into the background."

  Sax caught the end of a fleeting smile and chuckled, her heart suddenly lighter than it had been in weeks. No one had ever been able to make her laugh at herself the way Maddy had. Maybe because no one had ever made her feel so…loved. "I don't think Jude Castle would agree with that. I've given her a hard time, I guess."

  "Why?" Maddy asked seriously, wondering if this was the reason Saxon had come. It had been her experience that eventually her solitary granddaughter would work her way around to what was bothering her, even if she didn't realize it herself.

  Sax turned in her chair to look out the window, noting that one of the double doors on the garage was hanging askew. "I'll have to replace that hinge," she remarked absently.

  Maddy waited silently.

  "Photography is a treacherous thing," Sax said softly, almost to herself. "It's merciless and unkind in the way it captures the moment, exposing-no- revealing the truth without the benefit of pretense or masks. You can't hide from it, not forever."

  "Yet there is no judgment in simply recording events," Maddy pointed out. "It's a neutral process."

  "No," Sax responded vehemently, shaking her head. "It would be neutral if it weren't selective - but it is. Jude Castle directs the camera- she determines what the film will reveal, what moments will be emphasized, what story will be told. She has all the power."

  "Ah," the older woman said, thinking of how many years it had taken Saxon to feel she was in control of her own life, and safe. "She frightens you."

  It wasn't a question.

  Sax looked at her in astonishment, ready to protest once again. She met those blue eyes so like her own and felt the words die on her tongue. It was true, and it wasn't just her fear of what Jude Castle might see when she looked at her through the eyes of Melissa Cooper's camera. It was realizing how badly she wanted to be seen.

  *****

  "Saxon," Maddy called, pulling the shawl tighter around her shoulders as she peered up into the night at the shadow moving on her rooftop. "You have to stop. That lantern is not enough light-you're going to fall off and break your neck. Besides that, it's the middle of the night."

  Sax pounded another nail into the flashing around the chimney and called down, "I'll be done in a minute."

  She hadn't been able to sleep. Or rather, she'd fallen asleep soon after dinner and had awakened in a sweat around midnight. She'd been dreaming. It had been a very vivid dream. Her body was still tingling with a combination of arousal and fear as she sat up in bed, breathing hard, trembling. She'd dreamed of a woman leaning over her, holding her down with the barest of touches while she turned her blood to fire with a kiss. She's awakened still aching with the memory of that kiss. When she couldn't get the image of the red-haired woman with the emerald eyes from her mind, she'd vaulted from the bed, pulled on her jeans, and sought some chore to distract her from the insistent throbbing in her belly.

  It hadn't worked, but at least she didn't feel like she was going to explode. Resolutely, she climbed down the ladder and headed back upstairs. She hated to admit it, but part of her hoped that Jude Castle would visit her dreams again.

  *****

  Chapter ten

  "Are you sure you can't stay longer?"

  "I need to get back," Sax said as she straddled her motorcycle, cradling her helmet under one arm. "I'm on call again tomorrow."

  "I know very well that you don't have to take call so often, not since you're the boss," Maddy pointed out, leaning against the picket fence and shading her eyes from the morning sun with one hand. She'd heard her granddaughter prowling the house half the night and wondered if she'd slept at all. It had been years since she'd seen her this restless and agitated-not since those first few months right after Saxon had come to live with her, back when she'd still had her Manhattan apartment. There had been a time then that she wasn't sure either of them would ever sleep again. "You could let some of the others fill in for you."

  Sax shrugged, but didn't argue. "Sometimes there's more work if I'm not there, just piling up and waiting for me."

  And you wouldn't know what to do with yourself if you weren't working, Maddy thought as she stepped forward and stroked Sax's arm. "Come back sooner next time."

  "I will," Sax replied, pulling on her helmet. "Call me if you need anything. And make that list of things that need repairing." She leaned to kiss the other woman's cheek. "I love you," she murmured.

  "And I you," Maddy replied. "I'll work on that list." She would, too, although she could easily afford to hire a handyman to keep the place in working order. But she knew that her granddaughter needed the excuse to pull herself away from the demands, and the repercussions, of her work.

  "Why don't you bring that film director with you sometime? I'd like to hear what things are like in the industry these days," Maddy added conversationally. She couldn't see the surprise in her granddaughter's eyes, because Sax had already lowered the smoke gray visor over her face.

  "Sure," Sax responded automatically, almost laughing at the absurdity of that thought. She couldn't imagine that a busy, cosmopolitan woman like Jude Castle would have any interest in spending an afternoon with her and a reclusive aging movie queen out in the middle of nowhere, sitting on the porch watching the corn grow.

  *****

  "It's good, Jude," Melissa said, leaning back in her chair with a sigh. The two of them had been sitting shoulder to shoulder in front of the desk that Sax had arranged for them in their on call room for a good part of the afternoon and evening. They'd set up a computer to screen the videotapes from Mel's cameras and had been reviewing the first footage from the trauma alert two nights before. "I was there , and I was still holding my breath in places today."

  "Yeah," Jude murmured absently, consulting her log and keying in the digital markers to find a scene she wanted to see again. She muted the sound on the computer and watched Deborah Stein and Sinclair leaning over the small blond child, comforting her while simultaneously examining her, quickly and proficiently. "Do you see that?" she asked intently. "Watch the difference from here…to here…"

  Melissa moved closer, following Jude's instructions. "Yeah?"

  "Everything changes when they start examining her-even their expressions. Som
ething clicks in-or clicks off."

  "They're working, Jude. What do you expect," Melissa responded, not sure she understood what the director was getting at. "They're just focused."

  "I know that," Jude said with a hint of frustration, "but that's the whole point. In order to do the work, they have to turn something off-shut something down inside. They have to sever the emotional connection, the…the empathy that most people would feel-are compelled to feel-just because that's what makes us human. What did you feel while you were watching?"

  "I was working, too," Melissa pointed out adamantly. She didn't want to admit how relieved she'd been when Jude had told her to take off as soon as the trauma team had transported the motorcycle victim up to the OR the previous day. She'd needed some air, and that had shaken her.

  Jude fixed her with an unyielding stare. "So was I, and it was still hard to take. Stop avoiding the question."

  "We've seen horror before, Jude," Melissa insisted, shifting uncomfortably in her chair. "Come on-tanks on fire, buildings crumbling on top of us-not to mention twenty-five year old guys who looked eighty taping their final moments. What's the difference?"

  "The difference is that in Eastern Europe there was physical distance between us and the events, and from the victims, too. When we did the AIDS feature, we knew going in what we would be filming. We had time to prepare."

  "Right. So?"

  "There's an immediacy, an uncertainty, to what happens in the trauma unit. You don't know what to expect, so you can't ever be ready."

  "And I got that on tape," Melissa said emphatically. "Just look at the way we've got the wide angle arrival-boom, through the doors, a whole crowd of people and somewhere in there is the patient. Then we zoom in, cutting back and forth from patient to patient and from doc to patient. It's all there-the motion, the energy, the frantic pace. For crying out loud, the camera movement alone tells the story."