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He fought to open his eyes. Fought harder. Opened them.
There was pressure on his hand. The voice sounded again. ‘Keep still and we’ll have you out of here soon. You’re going to be fine. Just don’t move.’
He tried to focus on the face that the voice and hand belonged to but his vision was blurred. A growing awareness was stealing over him. Not alcohol. An accident.
He couldn’t feel his legs.
Fear almost throttled him.
He licked his dry lips and fought for speech. The only word that came was a croaked, ‘Elsbeth.’
The world went black.
Amadeo opened his eyes to dazzling bright light.
He must be dead.
He closed his eyes and gave a mental sigh. Strangely, the knowledge he was dead came peacefully to him. Probably because he’d been trained on earth to accept things for the way they were rather than the way he wanted them to be. He hoped the brightness meant that he’d gone up rather than down.
A door opened. He must be in a waiting room.
Soft voices spoke. One of them sounded like Elsbeth.
A fresh wave of peace flooded him. Definitely in a waiting room for heaven. He hoped the angel who sounded like Elsbeth looked like her too. It would be wonderful to see her face one more time. Wonderful to think the angel might move onto the next stage with him as his guide.
There was more peace to know his family would look after her and their baby, but with it sadness to know he would have to wait a long time to meet his child. But maybe up here time moved in a different way than on earth.
The Elsbeth voice spoke again. He slowly turned his face in the direction it came from and opened his eyes again. Joy filled him from his toes to his scalp. The angel sitting beside him looked just like her. Funny though, he’d never thought angels would have blotchy faces from crying.
He cleared his throat. ‘How...?’
Angel Elsbeth leaned forwards and placed a gentle finger to his lips. ‘Three days. Shh. Try not to speak. The tube hasn’t long been taken out of your throat. You’ll be sore.’
Now that she mentioned it, his throatdidhurt.
It was remarkable how alike angel Elsbeth was to real Elsbeth. Identical. Even the shade of blue and expression in her eyes. A tear rolled down the identical cheek and snaked over the identical plump lips. Those same plump lips formed a tremulous smile. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’ Her hand was laid on his and squeezed. ‘But you’re going to be okay. You’ve a broken leg and a shattered hip, three broken ribs, internal injuries and a bruised brain but the doctors are now confident you’re going to make a full recovery.’
Forbidden from speaking, incapable of moving, Amadeo could only gaze intently at the woman he was no longer certain was an angel. Well, not an angel from heaven. If this was the real Elsbeth then she was his angel on earth, and if she was an earth angel then did that mean he wasn’t dead after all?
‘Dominic’s dead.’
He blinked. In his joy of Elsbeth’s presence and the pressure of her hand on his, he’d forgotten all about his nemesis.
‘They say he died instantly. They put screens around you while they worked to save you.’ More tears spilled. ‘We didn’t know if you were dead or alive for a long time.’ She bent over in her chair to lean closer to his face and whisper, ‘If you ever do that to me again, I’ll kill you myself.’
He turned his hand over in hers and returned the loving pressure.
‘I’m not going to let you push me away any more. If you’re fearless enough to hurl yourself around a racetrack at over two hundred miles an hour then I can find the courage to fight for us.’ The soft, dreamy smile he loved so much curved her cheeks. ‘They said that in a moment of consciousness you called my name. You do love me, Amadeo. You love me and I love you, and when we get you out of this place we’re going to live together and raise our family together, and every time you try to push me away I will push back, because we belong together and to live without you is to live with a gaping hole in my heart.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he rasped through his burning throat, using all his strength to squeeze her hand, willing her to believe him.
Her eyes, as soft as her smile, told him she did believe him. Believed him and understood him.
He closed his eyes as the bride who’d walked the aisle towards him all that time ago came into his vision. His heart swelled. Closer she inched, radiating a glow of bliss like the earthly angel she was.
He took his bride’s hand and gazed deep into her shining baby blue eyes...
When he next opened his eyes, Elsbeth was curled in her chair asleep, as close to his bed as she could be.
