White Lies Read Online Free PDF

reach the voice, and he
was very weak. He might not make it. Yet the voice reached out to him, pulling at him like a magnet, lifting him out of
the deep senselessness that had held him.
                  "I remember the doll I got for Christmas
when I was four years old," Jay said, talking automatically now. Her voice
was low and dreamy. "She was soft and floppy, like a real baby, and she
had curly brown hair and big brown eyes, with inch-long lashes that closed when
I laid her down. I named her Chrissy, for my very best friend in the world. I
lugged that doll around until she was so ragged she looked like a miniature bag
lady. I slept with her, I put her on the chair beside me when I ate, and I rode
miles around and around the house on my tricycle with her on the seat in front
of me. Then I began to grow up, and I lost interest in Chrissy. I put her on
the shelf with my other dolls and forgot about her. But the first time I saw
you, Steve, I thought, 'He's got Chrissy eyes.' That's what I used to call
brown eyes when I was little and didn't know my colors. You have Chrissy
eyes."
                  His breathing seemed to be slower, deeper. She
couldn't be certain, but she thought there was a different rhythm to the rise
and fall of his chest. The sound of his breathing whistled in and out through
the tube in his throat. Her fingers gently rubbed his arm, maintaining the
small contact even though something inside her actually hurt from touching his
skin.
                  "I almost told you a couple of times that
you have Chrissy eyes, but I didn't think you'd like it." She laughed, the
sound warm in the room filled with impersonal, humming machines. "You were
always so protective of your macho image. A devil-may-care adventurer shouldn't
have Chrissy eyes, should he?" Suddenly his arm twitched, and the movement
so startled her that she jerked her hand away, her face pale. Except for
breathing, it was the first time he'd moved, even though she knew it was
probably an involuntary muscle spasm. Her eyes flew to his face but there was
nothing to see there. Bandages covered the upper two-thirds of his head, and
his bruised lips were immobile. Slowly she reached out and touched his arm
again, but he lay still under her touch, and after a moment she resumed talking
to him, rambling on as she dragged up childhood memories.
                  Frank Payne silently opened the door and
stopped in his tracks, listening to her low murmurings. She still stood by the
bed; hell, she probably hadn't moved an inch from the man's side, and she had
been in here—he checked his watch—
                  almost three hours. If she had been the guy's
wife, he could have understood it, but she was his ex-wife, and she was the one
who had ended the marriage. Yet there she stood, her attention locked on him as
if she were willing him to get
better.
                  "How about some coffee?" he asked
softly, not wanting to startle her, but her head jerked around anyway, her eyes
wide.
                  Then she smiled. "That sounds good."
She walked away from the bed, then stopped and looked back, a frown knitting
her brows together. "I hate to leave him alone. If he understands anything
at all, it must be awful to just lie there, trapped and hurting and not knowing
why, thinking he's all alone."
                  "He doesn't know anything," Payne
assured her, wishing it was different.
                  "He's in a coma, and right now it's
better that he stays in it."
                  "Yes," Jay agreed, knowing he was
right. If Steve were conscious now, he would be in terrible pain.
                  That
first faint glimmer of awareness had faded; the warm voice had gone away and left him without direction. Without
that to guide him, he sank back into the
blackness, into nothingness.
                  Frank lingered over the bad cafeteria food