White Lies by Linda Howard

my
job. Remind me to tell you about that someday. Anyway, I'm going to be staying
here with you until you're better."
                  The
voice was back. Slowly it penetrated the black layers that shrouded his mind, forming a tiny link with his
consciousness. He still didn't understand the words, but he wasn't aware that he didn't understand. The voice simply
was, like light where before there
had been nothing. Sometimes the voice was calm and sometimes it rippled with amusement. He wasn't aware of the amusement,
only of the change in tone.
                  He
wanted more. He needed to get closer to the sound, and he began trying to fight his way out of the dark fog in his
mind. But every time he tried, a vicious, burning pain that permeated his entire body began gnawing at him, and
he would withdraw, back into the
protecting blackness. Then the voice would lure him out again, until the beast attacked once more
and he had to retreat.
                  * * *
                  His arm twitched the way it had once before,
and again the movement startled Jay into jerking her hand away. She stopped
talking and stared at him. Then, with only a slight pause, she replaced her
hand on his arm and resumed what she had been saying. Her heart was pounding.
It had to be an involuntary twitching of muscles forced into one position for too
long. He couldn't be trying to respond, because the barbiturates they were
feeding him literally shut down most of his brain functions. Most, but not all,
Major Lunning had said. If Steve was aware of her, could he be trying to
communicate?
                  "Are you awake?" she asked softly.
"Can you twitch your arm again?" His arm was motionless under her
fingers, and with a sigh she again took up her rambling discourse. For a moment
the feeling had been so strong that she had been convinced he was awake,
despite everything they had told her. She was back at the hospital the next
morning before the sun was little more than a graying of the eastern sky. She
hadn't slept well, partly because of the unfamiliar surroundings, but she
couldn't place all the blame on being in a strange apartment. She had lain
awake in the darkness, her mind churning as she tried to analyze and diminish
her absurd conviction that, for a moment, Steve had actually been trying to
reach out to her in the only way he could. But, for all her analyzing, logic
meant nothing whenever she remembered the feeling that had burned through her.
                  Stop it!   she scoffed at herself as she rode
the elevator up to the ICU. Her imagination was running away with her, fueled
by her own characteristic tendency to totally immerse herself in her interests.
She had never been one of those cool, aloof people who could dole out their
emotions in careful measure, though she had nearly wrecked her health by trying
to be that way. Because she so badly wanted Steve to recover, she was imagining
responses where there were none.
                  His room was bright with lights, despite the
hour, since light or darkness hardly mattered to him in his condition. She
supposed the nurses left the lights on for convenience. She closed the door,
enclosing them in a private cocoon, then walked to his bed. She touched his
arm. "I'm here," she said softly. He drew a deep breath, his chest
shuddering slightly.
                  It hit her hard, jerking at her like a rope
that had suddenly been pulled taut. That deep sense of mutual awareness
stretching between them, a communication that went beyond logic, beyond speech,
was there again, stronger this time. He knew she was there. Somehow he
recognized her. And he was fighting to reach her.
                  "Can you hear me?" she whispered
shakily, her eyes locked on him. "Or do you somehow sense my touch? Is
that what it is? Can you feel it when I touch your arm? You must be scared and
confused, because you don't know