Page 6 of Hard to Kill

Before I know it, she’s come around the desk and the two of us are standing in the middle of her office, arms around each other, her tears finally beginning to subside. She’s the doctor. She’s the one giving me what passes for good news these days. Only now I feel like I’m the one consoling her.

When we both step back and out of the hug, Sam Wylie’s face is a mess for what I think is the first time in all of recorded history. She does manage to smile now, embarrassed.

“Sorry about that.”

“Don’t take this as a criticism,” I tell her. “But you may think about doing some work on your bedside manner.”

I get to the door, but then turn around.

“I don’t want you to die,” Dr. Sam Wylie says.

“Imagine how I feel.”

FIVE

Jimmy

JIMMY IS SURPRISED WHEN he looks up to see Jane walking toward his car so soon. But it doesn’t matter.

He knows that even if she’s inside with Sam Wylie until tomorrow morning, he’ll still be out here waiting for her. Jimmy has promised her he won’t let her go through this alone. He keeps his promises.

Especially to her.

“So how did it go?”

“Great,” she says.

“You don’t look great.”

“Thanks for sharing.”

“You know,” Jimmy says, “people say that sarcasm is the weapon of the weak.”

“I am weak,” she says in a quiet voice.

“No,” he says, “you’re not. You’re tougher than me, and nobody is tougher than me.”

“Does that even make sense?”

“To me it does.”

They’re stopped at the light where Main Street merges into 27. He feels her eyes on him, turns so he can see her.

“What?”

“I love you,” she says.

Then his girl smiles at him and it’s as if all the seriously bad shit she’s got going in her life suddenly has washed away.

Jimmy actually feels a catch in his throat as he remembers, all over again, how much he loves her right back.

Notthatway, of course.

It was never that way for either one of them, even when they first started working together and he was coming off a divorce and Jane was coming off her second. He loves her like a sister. Or the best friend that she is.

Both, probably.

He’d always known he’d take a bullet for her if he had to, something that finally happened, twice, while he was working the Carson case. Knows in his heart that he’d take cancer of the neck and head for her if he could, without hesitation.

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