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“Come on back, Mitchum.” Mouth-to-mouth was no longer required, so she straddled her patient for better leverage. The change of position gave her tired arms a respite. Counting aloud, she rocked forward with each cycle of compressions. Keep breathing, you stupid son of…don’t die on me. Being only human, it occurred to her that his death would be no great loss to the world. In fact, his untimely end might have been ordained by a higher power.
The thought shocked and sickened her. What was she thinking? She was a doctor who’d sworn an oath to save lives, no matter how wasted that life might be. And what about little Chloe? The child needed a father. The poor kid had the rotten luck to be stuck with a lousy one, but Joe was only thirty years old. He still had time to turn his life around and make something of himself.
If he lived.
“Come back to me, dammit.” Grimly determined and focused on her task, Mallory lost track of time as the rain pelted down, soaking her cotton blouse and khaki slacks, and plastering her hair against her head. She’d never administered one-man CPR in a real life-or-death situation, and the extended effort tightened her muscles into hot knots. She sighed with relief when the shrieking ambulance siren wailed in the distance.
The unconscious man probably couldn’t hear, but she spoke to him anyway. “Hold on, Joe. The paramedics are coming. If you can make it to the hospital, you have a chance. Hang in there for Chloe. Don’t die.”
Please, God, don’t let him die. It was a plea and a prayer. She only hoped Someone was listening.
His eyes fluttered open. During his last life as a Texas Ranger, Will Pendleton had sure enough woke up in some pretty strange places. Border town bordellos. Fancy Fort Worth hotels. Gulf-front flophouses. He’d even come to at the bottom of a dry well once after a gang of drunken malfeasants had knocked him out and thrown him down the hole. Plenty of times, he’d awakened with nothing but the wide blue sky over his head and the cold ground beneath him. The best place for a man to wake up was in a sweet woman’s arms, but in his line of work, he’d learned to be alone.
His skin bristled like a nervous colt’s. It was one thing to wake up in a strange place. Waking up in a strange body was a whole new experience.
When his blurred vision cleared, the only thing familiar was the color of his surroundings. Everything was white. Besides his own, there were five other beds in the room. All held forms draped with white sheets and attached to contraptions that made noises like birds trying to chirp.
He lifted his head for a better look-see, but it flopped weakly onto the pillow. Two women, dressed in blue pajamas like the Chinese laundryman used to wear, tended the folks in the beds. He heard their murmuring voices, but couldn’t make out what they said. Their soft, white shoes made no sound on the floor.
He tried to move, but he was hog-tied by some kind of cord that ran from a needle taped to the inside of his elbow to a bag of clear liquid suspended from a metal pole. A fancy clothes-peg attached to another cord clamped painlessly on the end of his finger. He examined the hand. Long-fingered, callused and sun-brown, it had obviously belonged to a hardworking man.
Where was he? Had the transference been completed? It was possible he hadn’t returned at all, but was stuck in yet another corner of Reception, still awaiting a routing assignment. The thought that he might not have made it back to earth—back to his precious Molly—filled him with aching sadness.
He wouldn’t get another chance. Celestian had barely explained the possibility of walking-in when an appropriate mortal coil had been vacated. At the right time. In the right location. He wasn’t too clear on events after that. Everything had happened fast. So fast the time-out monitor had little opportunity to give instructions, issue cautions or provide historical updates. He only knew one thing for sure. Due to another stunning accident, the spirit inhabiting the mortal coil known as Joe Mitchum had alighted unexpectedly in Reception, his life over and his number up.
In her assigned role as healer, Molly, or Mallory as she was now called, had persevered until she revived the uninhabited coil. According to Celestian, the resident spirit had given up first reenter rights, electing to remain in the Reception queue in hopes of receiving a better assignment.
That’s when things had gotten really lively. Celestian started squawking about how they only had a small window of opportunity during which another spirit could take over, if Mallory succeeded in snatching the coil back from the brink of permanent death. He hadn’t been blowing smoke when he said he’d do anything, take any form, to go back. He had snatched the walk-in opening without considering the implications. Like a baseball player who had spent a hundred seasons on the bench—during which all the rules had changed—he was unexpectedly thrust back in the game.
At least he hoped that’s what had happened.
Thankfully, he’d observed Molly/Mallory often enough on the spirit monitor to know some of the details of her Molly life. In 1973, at age ninety-seven, she’d passed over quietly in her sleep. She had returned as Mallory, born later the same year to a hard-working local couple. Because memories of past jaunts were mercifully deleted before reentry, Mallory recalled nothing of Molly’s existence or any of the other lives she’d lived.
That was the way it had to be.
Oh, yeah. He knew something else. Celestian had emphasized this was the last chance for his warrior spirit and her healer spirit to unite. They would not share the rest of these lives, nor would they be allowed to spend eternity as mates, unless she fell in love with him this time around.
That, too, was the way it had to be.
Another half-formed memory floated into his thoughts. Celestian had yelled something just before he’d been sucked into the new coil. What was it? Thinking only made his head hurt worse, but he had to remember. Celestian had been so danged insistent, it must have been important. He closed his eyes, concentrating until the monitor’s words came back to him.
Yeah. He could never tell Molly/Mallory who he really was, or reveal any details of their past lives together. It was against the rules.
That was the way it had to be.
The fact that Molly was Mallory, and he was now Joe complicated things. What if she didn’t recognize him? She might not even like him. Uncertainty gnawed at him, and he calmed his fears by telling himself it shouldn’t be too difficult to win Mallory’s heart. Not after all they’d been through together. Not after all the lifetimes they’d shared.
When he moved, pain ricocheted through his body and settled in his sore, bandaged feet. Being cooped up in the cooler with that ornery hombre Celestian for a hundred years had been a trial. Getting a ticket home had been nothing short of a miracle. Lying still when he wanted to crawl off the bed and search for the woman who would help him fulfill his destiny by fulfilling her own? That required every shattered bit of his willpower.
He tried to relax. The hard part of this trip was behind him. Charming Dr. Mallory Peterson into falling in love with him again, even after a lifetime apart, would be simple.
As easy as eating pie.
He must have nodded off for a while, because when he awoke again one of the pajama-clad women was fussing around the machinery by his bed.
“There you are, Mr. Mitchum. You’re back.”
“Am I?” Dry and raw at the same time, his throat was so sore he couldn’t make spit or speak above a whisper. “Am I still in Reception?”
“Oh, no, sir. You’re in the ICU.”
He groaned in frustrated agony. Why couldn’t people call things by their proper names? “What is this place?”
“The hospital. You had an accident. Don’t you remember?”
“Not much. Who are you?”
“I’m Kathy. I’ll be your nurse tonight.” She smiled and wrapped a heavy cloth tightly around his upper arm, squeezing a small bulb until it tightened uncomfortably. After a few seconds, she released the bulb. “Your blood pressure is almost normal. How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been lightning-struck.”
She patted his arm. “I’m not surprised. Take it easy now, the doctor will be in to see you soon.”
“Is that Mol—er, Mallory?” The name didn’t feel as strange coming out of his mouth as he thought it would. “Is she here?”
“You mean Dr. Peterson? I don’t know. Would you like to see her?”
“Yes.” A rush of emotion tightened his damaged throat and threatened to cut off his breathing again. “Please.” He’d waited a hundred years for this moment. Mallory Peterson looked nothing like his former fiancée, midwife Molly Earnshaw. Nor did her appearance match any of the other mortal coils she’d inhabited over time. Still, he couldn’t wait to see her. From tribal bonesetter to medieval herbalist to village wise woman, she’d always been a healer. Now she was a doctor. She’d finally reached the goal she’d yearned after so long.
The nurse picked up his wrist, felt his hammering pulse, frowned and wrote something on a paper clamped to a board. “I don’t know if Dr. Peterson is still in the building, she may have gone home by now.”
“No!” Not seeing her would hurt more than the injuries he’d suffered.
“Okay, calm down. I’ll have her paged. Maybe she’s still around.”
“Thank you. Please, just find her.”
The woman tucked the sheet around him. “You rest, and I’ll see what I can do.”
“I have to see her,” he whispered tightly. He had to. He couldn’t wait another moment.
“It was the darnest thing I ever saw.” After changing into clean green surgical scrubs, Mallory sat in the doctor’s lounge with a cup of coffee. She related the evening’s events to Andrew “Mac” McKinley, the on-call physician who’d taken charge of Joe in the emergency room. “I’m telling you, that fork of lightning hit the pole like a heat-seeking missile. It was almost as though it had made a special trip down from heaven, specifically to strike him.”
Mac shook his head. “I’m surprised at you, Mal. That’s not a very scientific explanation for someone with an undergrad major in physics.”
“I know, but it was still pretty amazing.”
“What’s amazing is the fact he’s still alive. You saved his life, you know.”
“I did, didn’t I?” She grinned. “That’s what we’re here for, right? Mallory Peterson’s my name, saving lives is my game.”
“Are you planning to hang around until our patient wakes up?”
“I’m thinking about it.” Mac was an excellent physician. She had no reservations about handing off Joe’s care. Yet, she felt responsible for the man whose heart had resumed beating under her hands. She’d insisted on riding to Midland in the ambulance with him and had assisted in the initial assessment. She didn’t understand, and couldn’t explain to her colleague, the indefinable connection she felt for the man she’d brought back from death.
“Inconsiderate of him to get toasted on a Friday night,” Mac teased. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“No. I’ll just see how he’s doing before I go.”
“Suit yourself.”
Mallory was relieved when he didn’t chide her about her absentee social life. That would have to wait, until she’d proved to the town that their faith in her had not been misplaced. Too bad time was finite. A limited resource, it ran out. Got used up. Squandered. Every life was allotted a certain number of minutes, and they were too precious to waste. She’d already spent an inordinate amount of her allotted time pursuing her dream.
She hoped she’d made the right decision. Although becoming a physician had never felt like her decision to make. For reasons neither she nor her family understood, she had wanted to be a doctor even before she knew what a doctor was. When she was two and a half, her mother claimed she had grabbed the pediatrician’s stethoscope, cried, “Mine!” and refused to let go.
Her fate had been sealed when her parents had given her a toy doctor kit for her third birthday. She’d spent all her playtime clumsily bandaging imaginary injuries sustained by her dolls and dispensing invisible pills to her patients. At five, when her father bragged that she might grow up to be a nurse, she’d stamped her foot. “No,” she’d declared. “I’m gonna be a doctor.”
The story made an amusing family anecdote, but achieving her dream had not been easy. She came from a working-class home where money was tight and ambitions realistic. Her father drove a big rig back and forth across the country, and her mother waited tables. They knew their daughter was as smart as she was dedicated, but financing the education necessary to complete medical training seemed beyond their reach.
In typical driven fashion, Mallory had seized control of the situation. Even in junior high, she had willingly sacrificed her personal life on the altar of ambition, studying hard to make grades that would attract the attention of scholarship committees. She saved most of the money she made working at the Bag and Wag after school, weekends and summers, and still found time to volunteer and participate in extracurricular activities.
When she’d earned a scholarship to Thorndyke College, the people of Slapdown had banded together to raise money for additional expenses. Throughout her undergraduate years, and later at Baylor, they’d sent her a small monthly stipend. They said it was because they believed in her. Knowing folks who had never realized their own dreams wanted to be part of hers made all the work worthwhile.
She was lucky to have that kind of support, and she had made them a promise. When she received her medical license, she would return to her hometown and dedicate herself to caring for the people who had helped her. In its one hundred-and-twenty-year history, Slapdown had never had a full-time doctor. Now little Mallory Peterson was responsible for the health and well-being of its citizens.
She still couldn’t believe it.
As a further gesture of good faith, Brindon Tucker, another local boy who’d made good, had built Western Plains Medical Clinic with money won in the state lottery. She’d come home to run the state-of-the-art facility, hanging out her shingle as soon as the ink on her license had dried.
Under her management, the number of people served by the clinic had grown since the doors opened last fall. Once word got out, residents of neighboring towns and rural areas sought care at Western Plains. The staff included a nurse practitioner, an RN, a medical assistant and an office manager. Not bad for a town that had never had its own doctor before.
Mac was refilling their coffee cups when Mallory’s beeper chirped. She answered the page on the lounge phone. When she hung up, she turned to the other doctor. “Mitchum’s awake.”
Mac gulped down the lukewarm brew, and they hurried out into the corridor. “Did the nurse say anything?”
“Just that he asked to see me.”
“I’ll need to assess his cognitive function to determine whether he suffered brain damage,” Mac said as the elevator doors closed.
“Well, the guy was on a utility pole stealing electricity during a storm,” she reminded. “All things considered, I’m not sure you’ll be able to tell.”
The Ranger opened his eyes when the man with Mallory introduced himself. “I’m Dr. McKinley. I guess you know Dr. Peterson.”
“Yes, sir.” He’d known her so long, she seemed like an extension of his own being. She looked different, yet he knew her immediately. He would have recognized the spark in her warm sherry-colored eyes anywhere. For a hundred years, he’d longed to kiss her heart-shaped lips. “I owe you my thanks, Doc.”
“It’s a miracle I was there when it happened,” she said.
“They don’t call it a miracle,” he muttered.
“What?” she asked.
“Never mind.” He had to be careful. He was somebody else now. He could not reveal himself and had to start thinking like this Joe fella before anyone got suspicious. Will Pendleton, Texas Ranger, was gone, dead over a hundred years. He no longer existed, not even as a memory. Molly, the last person who might have held him in her thoughts, was long gone, too.
There was no turning back now. He’d bet it all when he did a walk-in to Joe Mitchum’s life. But who was the man whose coil he now inhabited? What was he like? What kind of relationship did he have with Mallory? Blessing or curse, he didn’t know much about Joe. He was on his own.
Dr. McKinley explained his medical condition, reassuring him he’d sustained no long-term physical damage. His feet were injured because the steel spikes on his boots had conducted an electrical charge through them as it exited his body. The second-degree burns were limited and would respond well to treatment. Joe was a very lucky man, given the fact that he’d just been struck by lightning.
“When can I get out of here?”
“Don’t be in a hurry,” McKinley said. “When you’re feeling stronger, we’ll run some tests. If everything checks out, you should be able to go home in a couple of days.” The doctor’s belt chirped, and he excused himself, explaining he had rounds to make.
“What’s wrong with those folks?” He gestured to the forms in the other beds. “Did they come back, too?”
Mallory frowned. She’d watched him with a confused expression since arriving in the ICU. “What do you mean, come back?”
“Nothing. I didn’t mean anything.” He didn’t want Mallory to leave. He’d waited so long to be with her; now that she was here, a few minutes were not enough. He wanted more. “The nurse said you saved my life.”
She shrugged. “All in a day’s work. Do you remember what happened?”
“Not much.” He closed his eyes because they were tired and heavy. What could he tell her? That the first thing he’d become aware of as Joe Mitchum was the weight of her body as she straddled him to pound on his chest? That her warmth had comforted him? That he’d recognized her familiar scent? He’d settled uneasily into his new body, like a weary man cramming his feet into boots a size too small. Knowing she was there had made the transition easier.
He was still grappling with the knowledge that a stopped heart could be made to beat again. It was truly a wonder. One of the last things Celestian had said was how there had been all kinds of changes in the world since he’d left it last. The time-out monitor hadn’t gotten a chance to explain those changes. He’d promised that although Joe’s mental and emotional memories were gone, departed with his alighted spirit, Joe’s physical memories would kick in once Will’s spirit acclimated to the unfamiliar coil.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” He’d say anything to keep her near a little longer.
“Not tonight. You’ve been through an ordeal. Don’t try to talk. You need to rest.” She stood uneasily by the bed, shifting from foot to foot as though torn between the desire to go, and an inexplicable urge to stay. “I’ll try to stop by tomorrow to see how you’re doing.”
When she turned to leave, he grabbed her hand, and held it. “Don’t go!” Sadly, he couldn’t remember how her skin felt against his own. Yet there was something infinitely right about their touch.
She must have felt it, too. Surprise and shock washed over her face as she pulled her hand from Joe’s. She stepped back and folded her arms across her chest. “Dr. McKinley is a fine physician. He’ll take good care of you.”
“I want you.”
She blinked, as though he’d spoken in a language so foreign she could not comprehend his meaning. “What?”
He struggled to sit, but she pressed him back onto the bed. “Don’t try to get up. Rest. Please.”
He stared into her golden brown eyes, and for a fleeting moment, he glimpsed the healer he had loved so much. Overcome with emotion, he flung his arms around her, pulling her close in a fierce bear hug that nearly upset the pole with the hanging bag. “I want you…to be my doctor.”
Tensing, she pulled from his desperate embrace to right the pole and stepped behind a shield of professionalism. Did she think it would protect her from personal involvement? She cleared her throat. “Maybe I can see you on an outpatient basis after your discharge. If you require additional care.”
She watched him closely, but he couldn’t tell if she was attracted or repelled by what she saw. Before she could be swayed by either emotion, she spun on her heels and pushed her way through the swinging door. He couldn’t do or say anything to stop her.
He slumped back on the bed, longing burning in him like a fever. He could almost taste the acrid tang of disappointment on his tongue. He couldn’t reveal himself, and there had been no spark of recognition in her eyes. She had no idea who he really was. When she looked at him, she saw nothing of the men he’d been, or the lives they’d shared. She saw only Joe Mitchum, a fellow unlucky enough to get himself struck by lightning.
Mallory believed he was Joe. Judging from her reaction, that fact would clearly work against him.
Chapter Two
Mallory spent Sunday afternoon cleaning house. She lived alone and was compulsively neat, so housework didn’t eat up a lot of her time. She saved her least favorite chore—ritual refrigerator cleansing—for last. Trying to focus on the stimulating task of clearing out tiny dishes of petrified lasagna and mummified peas, she was distracted by Friday night’s events. Leave it to Joe Mitchum to require lifesaving measures in such a bizarre and dramatic fashion.
Instead of enjoying much needed time off she had spent the weekend thinking about him and the desperate way he’d grabbed her in the hospital. The look in his eyes haunted her. He’d been glad to see her, but she’d seen more in the dark brown depths than relief. Like elation. Too bad she couldn’t toss out unwanted thoughts of Joe as easily as Wednesday night’s chicken.
Strangely enough, she’d felt something too. His touch had made her shiver in a wow-what’s-going-on-here way. She’d had a déjà vu moment, like being hugged by Joe was nothing new. Which was absurd. She’d known Joe for years, but they’d never shared anything but animosity. Since he’d moved in next door to the clinic, he’d gone out of his way to aggravate and provoke her. So why had he been so happy to see her?
She finished spraying the inside of the fridge with antibacterial cleanser, and carefully replaced the contents on the shelves. Pickles on the left. Jelly on the right. She was imagining things. He’d been relieved to see her because…well, he’d nearly died and was probably glad to see anyone, especially the doctor who’d saved his life.
Her preoccupation with Joe was no more than professional interest. That would account for the thoughts spinning through her mind like blind lab rats in an endless maze. She closed the refrigerator. Still, it was unsettling to find Joe Mitchum occupying her thoughts so fully. What had changed?
Nothing. He was gifted at getting in trouble, and this time his foolish behavior had nearly gotten him killed. She’d performed her job by resuscitating him. That was it. Her noisome neighbor was intriguing only from a medical standpoint. That’s why she’d spent hours on the computer last night searching medical databases for information on lightning strike survivors.
The facts had amazed her. In the United States alone, twelve hundred people a year were hit by lightning. Less than ten percent of the victims died, so from a statistical standpoint, it wasn’t miraculous that Joe had survived. That a trained doctor happened to be near enough to begin CPR immediately? Probably a coincidence. Or Joe’s dumb luck.
He would have suffered respiratory failure, followed quickly by cardiac arrest if the chain of events had been different. She couldn’t shake the idea that she’d been thrust on the scene for a reason.
With nothing to occupy her time once the housework was done, Mallory gave in to a strange compulsion to drive to the hospital and check on Joe’s progress. When she arrived, she discovered he’d been moved from ICU into a regular bed on third floor medical. She stopped by the nurses’ station to skim his chart and read the latest lab reports. Everything was normal. As were his vital signs. No indication of infection in the burns on his feet.