Big Rock. But over the breathtaking view she had superimposed the headline from the Denver Post reporting her recovery from her coma: Comatose Conifer Woman Gets Back Life But Not Her Past. Was it possible her coma had taken something else from her?
The article had told about her memory loss, starting the day Clay had slammed her over the head with the butt of the same gun he’d used to kill Alex. It had also revealed that her husband, well-known locally through his wealthy, influential family, had left her and moved to the West Coast during her long coma. That had surely made Laird look cold and selfish, Tara thought, and the Lohans hated bad PR. They always wanted to be seen as altruistic and generous. Laird must have wanted to get away from her badly. Veronica, his mother, was the only Lohan who had seemed to sympathize with Tara in the dissolution of the marriage, but of course, Lohan blue blood didn’t flow through Veronica’s veins. She’d married into the clan, just like Tara.
Tara kept the headline on her screen because, in facing its brutal truth, she tried harder to live each day better and stronger. That which does not kill us makes us stronger, the Nietzsche quote went. Now those words might even carry a new meaning.
She quickly located an item on comatose woman + childbirth on the CBS News site. There was also an article from the Cincinnati Enquirer about the same case:
Doctors in Cincinnati say it’s an extremely rare case—a twenty-four-year-old woman who was in a coma for nearly her entire pregnancy has given birth to a healthy, full-term baby…Chastity Cooper of Warsaw, Kentucky, has been comatose since she suffered severe head injuries in an auto accident in November, two weeks after she conceived. The pregnancy was discovered after the accident. Obstetricians said it was extremely rare that a woman could deliver a baby full-term when she was in a coma and bedridden through the pregnancy…Doctors said they used labor-inducing medications, but no strong pain relievers in the vaginal delivery…
Tara just stared at the screen. Doctors said…Obstetricians said… Her mind bounced back to what her own doctor had claimed today. He was theorizing, of course, that she’d had a child before her coma, possibly years ago. A comatose delivery might have been “extremely rare” but, obviously, it was not impossible. And vaginal delivery. Why did those words especially disturb her?
Her hands clasped so hard in her lap that her fingers went numb, she reread the article, word for word. “But this girl obviously wasn’t on birth control pills,” she whispered aloud as she tried to convince herself that one rare case proved nothing.
She searched further and came across a Fox TV Web site with a brief mention of a similar case. At first, because it took place in Kentucky, Tara thought it referred to the same rare instance, but it was much more current, from exactly three months ago.
We have an update tonight on a story Fox 7 first told you about in January. A comatose Webster County, Kentucky, woman has given birth to a healthy baby girl. Ashley Chaney was allegedly beaten by her ex-boyfriend and remains unresponsive in a nursing home. Chaney delivered the five-pound baby girl in late May. Thomas Matthew Yancy is charged with beating Chaney and putting her in a coma…
Tara shuddered. Despite the fact she had no memory of her own assault, she pictured herself being hit on the head by Alex’s ex-husband. After she had come out of her coma, when she’d interviewed the Central City law officer who had found her, he’d described how she was sprawled lifeless on the wet ground. Could she have been harboring a new life within her?
After shooting Alex and attacking Tara, Clay had fled again, taking Claire with him. But he’d made the mistake of speeding and had been pulled over near Grand Junction. Ballistics later proved his rifle, found in the cab of his truck, killed Alex; it still had Tara’s hair and blood on its butt.
The law officer’s exact words echoed in Tara’s mind: “You were sprawled lifeless on the ground.” She lay lifeless there—and for long months after that, first in a rescue helicopter, then a Denver E.R., then intensive care, and finally, at the Lohan Clinic. How could she have produced another life?
No, she still didn’t believe that possibility. It was rare—extremely rare, doctors said. So what was wrong with Dr. Holbrook? Was he just looking for his moment of fame, a newspaper article or TV segment, like these quoted doctors? An article in a medical journal? No way a comatose pregnancy and delivery could have happened to her. But then, she’d been in hell all those months, helpless, lost to herself and others, except for some sounds she thought she heard, and a relentless parade of nightmares she sometimes thought she could almost recall.
All that time she’d been in the coma, could something as momentous as childbirth have occurred?
Tara jolted alert and looked at her big office clock. Too late to make the phone call to Jen now. That would be like getting a second opinion, since she’d been her ob-gyn for years and hadn’t left the area until Tara was comatose. Though her former physician and friend had drifted away from her, she was calling Dr. Jennifer DeMar first thing in the morning.
Tara had finally fallen asleep when a scream shredded the silence of the night. She awoke instantly. Claire! One of Claire’s nightmares. She used to have them every night, but now they only happened when something set her off. Perhaps Nick’s homecoming had.
Tara ran for Claire’s bedroom before she realized she hadn’t put a robe on over her T-shirt and panties, in case Nick came running, too. But the child was shrieking, “No, no, don’t hurt her!”
Tara didn’t turn back even when she heard Nick thudding up the steps from his room in the basement. It was nicely finished down there with a Franklin stove for warmth, a bathroom and sofa with its Hide-A-Bed. Right now she wished it was farther away or he was a sounder sleeper.
“It’s all right, sweetie,” she crooned to Claire, and clicked on the bedside lamp to add to the wan night-light that was always on. “Just another bad dream. I’m here.”
Tara scooted her bare legs under the covers next to the quaking child as Nick’s big form filled the doorway. He was in Jockey shorts and a cutoff gray T-shirt that showed his flat stomach. Tara cradled Claire, who wound her arms tight around her.
“They were shouting,” Claire choked out through such thick sobs her words were barely discernible. “He said he’d kill her. He locked me in my room. Mommy was screaming my name…then a big bang.”
“It’s over. You’re here and safe now,” Tara whispered, rocking her like a baby. “It’s all right.”
“It isn’t! He’s going to kill her all over again.”
When Nick stepped into the room, Claire jolted. She went stiff in Tara’s arms, then limp as a doll. “Oh, Uncle Nick. I thought—I thought you might be him, that you were going to hurt me, too.”
“No,” Nick said, his voice raspy either from being suddenly awakened or from a rush of emotion. “No, I’d never hurt you. And your dad’s gone, so he can’t hurt anyone now.”
“I think he’s hiding up in the trees outside, like when he hurt Aunt Tara. Out the window—I saw him hit her on the head by the trees. He could come back. He’s in the trees above our house.”
“No, no, he isn’t, and he won’t be back,” Tara said, her lips moving against the top of Claire’s head. “He’s all locked up and can’t get out. And I’m all right now. Both you and I are safe, especially with Beamer and your uncle Nick here.”
Tara’s eyes met Nick’s over the girl’s head. It was a new nightmarish twist that Clay could be lurking up in the trees above the house.
