The operation had taken nine hours.
Eve was moved out of intensive care forty-eight hours later. George went to the hospital. He had to see Eve, to talk to her, to make sure she was not plotting some terrible vengeance against him.
“I’m Miss Blackwell’s attorney,” George told the duty nurse. “She asked to see me. I’ll only stay a moment.”
The nurse took one look at this handsome man and said, “She’s not supposed to have visitors, but I’m sure it’s all right if you go in.”
Eve was in a private room, lying in bed, flat on her back, swathed in bandages, tubes connected to her body like obscene appendages. The only parts of her face visible were her eyes and her lips.
“Hello, Eve…”
“George…” Her voice was a scratchy whisper. He had to lean close to hear what she said.
“You didn’t…tell Alex?”
“No, of course not.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “I came because—”
“I know why you came… We’re…going ahead with it…”
He had a feeling of indescribable relief. “I’m sorry about this, Eve. I really am. I—”
“Have someone call Alex…and tell her I’ve gone away…on a trip…back in a few…weeks…”
“All right.”
Two bloodshot eyes looked up at him. “George…do me a favor.”
“Yes?”
“Die painfully…”
She slept. When she awakened, Dr. Keith Webster was at her bedside.
“How are you feeling?” His voice was gentle and soothing.
“Very tired…What was the…matter with me?”
Dr. Webster hesitated. The X rays had shown a fractured zygoma and a blowout fracture. There was a depressed zygomatic arch impinging on the temporal muscle, so that she was unable to open or close her mouth without pain. Her nose was broken. There were two broken ribs and deep cigarette burns on her posterior and on the soles of her feet.
“What?” Eve repeated.
Dr. Webster said, as gently as possible, “You had a fractured cheekbone. Your nose was broken. The bony floor where your eye sits had been shifted. There was pressure on the muscle that opens and closes your mouth. There were cigarette burns. Everything has been taken care of.”
“I want to see a mirror,” Eve whispered.
That was the last thing he would allow. “I’m sorry,” he smiled. “We’re fresh out.”
She was afraid to ask the next question. “How am I—how am I going to look when these bandages come off?”
“You’re going to look terrific. Exactly the way you did before your accident.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You’ll see. Now, do you want to tell me what happened? I have to write up a police report.”
There was a long silence. “I was hit by a truck.”
Dr. Keith Webster wondered again how anyone could have tried to destroy this fragile beauty, but he had long since given up pondering the vagaries of the human race and its capacity for cruelty. “I’ll need a name,” he said gently. “Who did it?”
“Mack.”
“And the last name?”
“Truck.”
Dr. Webster was puzzled by the conspiracy of silence. First John Harley, now Eve Blackwell.
“In cases of criminal assault,” Keith Webster told Eve, “I’m required by law to file a police report.”
Eve reached out for his hand and grasped it and held it tightly. “Please, if my grandmother or sister knew, it would kill them. If you tell the police…the newspapers will know. You mustn’t…please…”
“I can’t report it as a hit-and-run accident. Ladies don’t usually run out in the street without any clothes on.”
“Please!”
He looked down at her, and was filled with pity. “I suppose you could have tripped and fallen down the stairs of your home.”
She squeezed his hand tighter. “That’s exactly what happened…”
Dr. Webster sighed. “That’s what I thought.”
Dr. Keith Webster visited Eve every day after that, sometimes stopping by two or three times a day. He brought her flowers and small presents from the hospital gift shop. Each day Eve would ask him anxiously, “I just lie here all day. Why isn’t anyone doing anything?”
“My partner’s working on you,” Dr. Webster told her.
“Your partner?”
“Mother Nature. Under all those frightening-looking bandages, you’re healing beautifully.”