Return From Darkness

By Steph

Sara settled the tray on the bedstand and moved quietly to open the bed curtains.

"Leave it," Luis croaked, recoiling against the brightness of the morning.

"Now, the doctor said for you to have light, you have light," Sara said in her lilting authority, and he knew better than to argue with her.

He had refused food, yet somehow, she managed to feed him. He refused company, yet daily, his partner, Alan Jordan, found his way to the bedroom to report on the business, which still belonged equally to both of them. Luis owed a good deal of money back, money Alan had noted in the books as a draw, but fifty percent of Vargas Jordan Coffee Export House still belonged to Luis Vargas. Nothing Luis said had changed Alan's mind.

Nothing Luis said made any difference. No one would listen to him, not Sara, not Alan and certainly not that nurse who refused to leave him alone for a moment. Luis knew that the moment Sara walked out, Inez would walk in, a system the two created so that he might not have a moment of privacy. What gave them the right? He certainly never asked to be imprisoned in his own home.

"Let me help you up," Sara said.

He waved at her to stay back and pushed himself into a sitting position, resigning himself to eating breakfast. They had actually force fed him in the beginning. He still remembered that haze. He was drugged on opium and the doctor's voice seemed to drone on as the tasteless pabulum ran down his raw throat and over his lips onto his jaw and neck. Whatever it was had worked, soothing his ravaged body so that now he stared into a small cup of warm broth with bits of congealed fat and floating crumbs of bread. Such was breakfast.

He lifted the spoon, his arm quivering until he forced it to steady. Bent over the tray that Sara set on his lap table, he thought he must look like an old man, emaciated, weak. Why did he care? He didn't.

Sara watched him, her arms crossed over her ample breasts, smiling like a mother watching her child.

He braced himself for the first spoonful and discovered that his throat felt only slightly irritated. The doctor had told him the burning would ease, but this morning was the first time he noticed the lack of pain. His relief surprised him. His hunger surprised him more. He deserved the pain. He should be dead.

Like her.

"Good morning!" came the now familiar voice, bright, perky, like an early morning crow's call when it found some bright and shiny treasure.

Luis closed his eyes and tried to ignore her, then opened them again and continued to dip and lift his spoon. He hated it when he made a mess and she wiped him up like a mother and her toddler.

"Marvelous," she said in that patronizing tone. "I see we've finished our breakfast."

"It is… my… breakfast, not… ours," he said, his voice still harsh. The pain had subsided, though, good. Maybe he could tell her a thing or two now. He looked up at the woman who now stood at Sara's side. Two hens he thought as they beamed at him, one dark, the other light.

Inez wore a white nurse's uniform, which hid any hint of a womanly figure, and a bonnet that hid all but a few strands of soft brown hair. She had hazel eyes and sharp cheekbones, a small nose and a delicate chin that somehow all came together in a rather exotic looking face. In another time, he might have thought her beautiful. But no woman seemed beautiful to him right now, especially one who had lifted him, washed him, dressed him and fed him like a babe. Beneath those loose white cotton sleeves, she had arms made of iron, he was certain of it.

Sara removed his tray, clicked something to Inez that made the nurse's smile widen, and ambled out of the room, her hips rolling with each step. Luis looked at Inez, wondering what she had planned for today.

"Today," she began, as if she had read his mind, "After your shave, we are going outside."

"I do not think so," Luis said cautiously. Still no pain, just scratchiness.

"Oh yes," she said, happily. "Sara is getting your chair, and," she turned away, "she has selected a very nice suit of clothes for your first day out."

"No," he said. He still had only tentative control of his bowels. He was not about to go outside and embarrass himself.

When Inez turned back, she held the bedpan. "Don't worry, we won't go until you're ready."

He sighed and closed his eyes, leaned his head back and wondered, not for the first time and not for the last, why he had not died when he should have.

***

His bedroom had been transformed into a hospital room. This act of sterilization had given him the one place in which he could forget for a while, but only while he was awake. When he slept, he dreamed of her. But awake, he had begun to think of other things, though not altogether pleasant things.

He owed thousands of dollars to the business, and personally to Alan for keeping his hacienda from foreclosure. He owed thousands more, he assumed, for the doctors and Inez and he had no idea when he paid his employees last. Beyond the money, his reputation was ruined. He could not imagine showing his face in society again. He could imagine that his own employees, at the very least, laughed at him for the fool he was, and it continued to surprise him that the police had yet to show up at his door to question him. He had shot a man, an evil man no doubt, but a man just the same.

But she killed Billy. And she, with Billy, killed Julia Russell. And she tried to kill him.

But she didn't, he told himself. She tried to save him from killing himself. She tried to save him from Billy. She said that she loved him.

"She loved me," he whispered.

"Pardon me?" asked Inez, looking up from the bundle of crocheted yarn on her lap.

In his own room he thought of other things. Here, on the veranda, he saw her, only her, his wife, leaning over the balustrade, walking seductively down the long corridor towards her bedroom, riding sidesaddle while he stole glances at an exposed ankle, knowing what lay above that ankle, wanting to turn back and carry her to her room, wanting….

He groaned and Inez put aside her needlework, stood and approached him, even after he waved her away.

She adjusted his pillow and loosened his shirt. "Shall I remove your blanket?" she asked and removed it to expose a weightless body in oversized slacks.

"I want to return to my room," he said, his words faster, crisper than they had been since he first woke in his own bed, thrashing from the pain of the poison's affects, how long ago?

She smiled, patronizing him again. "We will, soon."

"I am the master of this place," he said without conviction.

"'Tis true, Don Luis, but the doctor is your master at the moment, and he has prescribed fresh air." She sat down and lifted her needlework. "And I work for the doctor."

"And has he prescribed that I be hounded by you women every moment?" he demanded.

"Yes, Don Luis, he has. You are not to be left alone for a moment, he said, and your precious Sara and I have taken those words to heart." She continued working on her needlework as if she was discussing the weather.

"Why? Is he afraid I will hurt myself?" Luis insisted.

"Yes, I am afraid that is the reason, Don Luis." She sighed and set her needlework aside once more, then turned in her seat to face him. "Don Luis, if I may be frank. You should be thanking Doctor Xavier. If he did not intervene in Havana, you would have been placed in an asylum. I have worked in such places and I have witnessed the most abominable circumstances. Indeed, you would have found yourself bound to your bed, lying in your own filth, and…"

"Enough," snapped Luis, thinking for a moment that he had been seen in such a state. Had he? "I thought I was in a hospital in Havana?"

"Yes, but you screamed so often about wanting to die, heedless of the physical damage your screaming caused, that you convinced the doctor's that you poisoned yourself. Therefore, they considered you insane."

He stared at her, wondering if he had caught amusement in her odd colored eyes. "I did poison myself," he admitted.

"That was very foolish," she said, and turned back to her needlework.

"I presume you have never been in love," Luis said.

She turned her head slowly, her eyes flashing. "You have no right to presume anything about me, Don Luis."

Luis looked away. This is my punishment, he thought, to be forced to live without her, to be forced to live with only the memory of her, to dream of her in sleeping and waking hours, to hunger for her. Her absence ached more than the pain of the poison. And he had been such a fool that his only choice was now taken from him. They would not let him die.

**

It occurred to Luis one night, when the only sound he heard was Sara's snore in the chair by the window, that if he behaved the way they wanted him to behave, he would more quickly gain his freedom. So, that meant eating and strolls in the garden and confiding his emotions to the doctor.

Hah, and then they'll leave me be, he thought.

If only for a moment.

He lay awake for a long while thinking how he might accomplish his goal, get his strength back, take back his life so he might end it.

Sleep would be required, he thought, and then he lay awake for a long while thinking how he might accomplish that.

**

She ran her hand along his ribcage, then her moist tongue, tickling his skin lightly, cooling him, tasting him. He lifted his head, wanting to taste her, touch her, but she pushed him firmly back onto his pillow.

"Julia," he whispered.

"Inez, Don Luis. My name is Inez."

He opened his eyes and stared at the white covered arm as it took away the damp cloth that washed him. Sometimes sleep came at the most inopportune moments.

**

"You are looking fine today!" effused Alan, "Just splendid."

Luis smiled at his heavyset partner as he sat across the table from him. Sara poured coffee for Alan and a weak tea for Luis. The smell of the coffee enticed him, but not yet. His first cup of coffee had left him with a burning stomach for two days.

"I'm feeling much better," Luis said, "really." He laughed. "Of course, Sara and Inez give me little choice in the matter."

Sara laughed and Luis held out his hand to take hers. Once released, she left the two men alone.

Alan pulled a cigar from his pocket, then offered one to Luis, who gladly took it.

"We've had a fine season, Luis, so I don't want you to worry about anything. Gabriel is doing well in the office, not that we don't all miss you, but you make sure you're up to it before you come back."

Luis lost his smile as he bit the end off the cigar, not the gentleman's way, surely.

"Do you think I could come back, Alan?" He accepted Alan's light, puffed and looked his partner in the eyes. "What are they saying about me, hm? No one tells me anything here. What life do I have here now?"

"This is your home, Luis," Alan said. "I'll tell you the truth. There are some who have gained pleasure from your tragedy, but you have too many friends, Luis, to allow your adversaries to take center stage. Trust your friends. LET us be your friends."

"What are they saying, Alan?" Luis looked away, flicked his ashes into the ashtray then forced himself to meet Alan's eyes again. He would hear it. He must hear it.

Alan sighed. "What can they say after what's been printed about those two characters? Most are saying how lucky you are to have survived. Only one of the others is still living. So see…"

"What are you talking about?" asked Luis, confused.

Alan stared at him a long moment. "Ah, that's right. We didn't want to upset you further."

"Well, I'm fine now. Tell me what this is about." He must hear it, he told himself.

"Your "wife" was a polygamist. You were her fifth husband. The other four lived in the United States. One still lives, but her third husband died recently in a New York asylum called Bellevue."

No, his mind screamed. A rush of wind filled his ears, as if the poison again attacked his body. No! "You're lying," Luis said. She said she didn't marry anyone else. Only him. He heard her voice, "just you", her voice amidst the wind.

"Its true. The U.S. tried to have her extradited, but it appears they were too late."

Luis' lips stretched down with the pain of that last sentence. Too late, it was too late. He'd never save her now.

He had to get away, get back to his room where it was safe, quiet. "They are mistaken," Luis said, dropping the cigar on the tile floor and pushing at the wheels of his chair. They wouldn't budge. He pulled at them, pushed, pulled, until he was sweating and swearing. Alan had stood, looking as if he didn't know what to do. "Inez!" Luis shouted. "This damned chair!"

Inez bustled toward them. "Is everything all right?" she asked.

"No! This chair is broken. I want to get out of here. I want to get away from this lying bastard." Alan looked from Luis to Inez, his face drawn, his hurt as visible as a fresh bruise.

"Don Luis, sometimes you are the rudest person I have ever met. This man has done nothing but give you a touch of truth and you go flying off the handle all over again. Well, I guess you certainly had us fooled for a while. I guess after hearing about this, the doctor won't be sending me back to Havana for some time."

"You can all go to hell!" shouted Luis. She said she loved him. She said she married only him.

Inez must have decided this was the time to ignore him completely because she turned her attention to Alan and walked him to the end of the corridor before turning back towards Luis.

Luis watched Alan descend the first few steps, remembered the look on his face. No, not Alan. Alan wouldn't lie to him, not purposely. He just had the wrong information. The wind in Luis' ears seemed to die away.

"Alan!"

The man bounded back up the stairs in a moment. Inez stopped and turned to face him, then looked at Luis, suspiciously.

"I'm sorry. I'm not ready to hear these things that people are saying. I don't want to know. Come and finish your cigar."

Inez smiled at him and her eyes shone. For a moment, Luis thought she pitied him, but then he looked again and saw the warmth in those hazel eyes. He had no idea what she was thinking and didn't trust himself to guess. He knew so little of women, after all.