Red Heart Tattoo by Lurlene McDaniel

Author:Lurlene McDaniel [McDaniel, Lurlene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-97411-2
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2012-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

“You want to come up?” Roth asked once he and Liza were in the hospital lobby.

“Don’t want to crash your reunion.”

“Your call.”

“Some other time,” she said, backing away. She grabbed a seat and started thumbing through a three-year-old magazine from a nearby table as if it were just off the rack.

“I won’t take long.”

“I’ll wait here.” She blinked back stinging tears but never looked up.

Roth ducked into the hospital’s gift shop and looked around for some small gift so that he wouldn’t show up in Morgan’s room empty-handed. The store was full of chintzy junk that made him gag, but he finally settled on a small stuffed dog. It was meant for young children, but so what? He knew girls liked stuffed animals. He paid for it, crossed to the information desk and asked for Morgan’s room number. During his elevator ride to the fifth floor, he wasn’t remembering Morgan covered with cement dust and debris from the explosion. He was remembering her at the homecoming dance, twirling on the stadium grass in the moonlight. He was seeing her face turned up to his, her lips moist and soft, her hair spilling around her shoulders and his fingers tugging through the long strands.

When he arrived at her room, he paused, peered in. Morgan was sitting upright in the bed, a tray table in front of her with an assortment of objects on it. She was fingering each object, carefully defining it in her hands, then putting it down and moving on to the next item. It was then that he saw that her eyes were bandaged. Shock hit him like a wall. For a moment, he teetered, undecided about entering the room. Without warning, her head lifted and her face turned toward the door. “Who’s there? I know someone’s there. Who is it?”

Making up his mind in an instant, he went inside. “It’s Stuart Rothman.”

“Roth?”

“One and the same.”

Morgan held out her hands. This was the person who’d made her emotions go haywire for months, and now here he was. She had no way of knowing what she looked like at the moment, but she was sure that she in no way resembled the girl he’d been with on the night of the dance. “Oh, Roth … I—I didn’t know … I can’t see….”

“Your eyes—”

“Temporary,” she said quickly. “That’s what my doctor believes. I was looking right at the bomb when it went off. I didn’t even have time to blink.”

“But you’re going to be all right?”

“That’s what I’m being told. What about you?”

“Stitches. A few cuts and bruises. Banged up a leg crawling over chunks of concrete. I’m fine.”

She asked, “Do you mind if I hold your hand? It helps ground me, so I’m not floating in a void with voices coming out of nowhere.”

Of course he didn’t mind. “Suits me.”

She took hold of his hand, which was covered with a large gauze bandage. “Mom told me that you were the one who pulled me out. She said that the rest of the staircase fell just after you did.

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