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and could begunned down at…at any moment? Dear heaven, sometimes I think I’ll go out of my mind, worryin’ ‘bout you! And missin’ you so!”
    She’d begun to cry now, and Travis felt like a twenty-four-carat heel. He should’ve withheld his anger, done his best to soothe her.
    And so it goes… Not exactly a banner day for Southern manhood, he thought, again echoing the famous phrase from Slaughterhouse Five. Shifting to the side of the bed, Travis put his good arm around his mother’s shoulders.
    “Shh, don’t cry. It’s really not as dangerous as all that. A desk job more often than not, honest.”
    Judith made an effort to pull herself together. Taking care not to jolt his injured side, she embraced him quickly, then groped for a handkerchief in her purse. She nodded gratefully when he handed her a tissue from the bedside box.
    “You won’t even consider…?” she said tentatively after drying her eyes.
    “What? Goin’ to see him? D’you recall how many times I tried to—unsuccessfully, I might add—five years ago?” Travis snorted. “I’m not in the habit of knockin’ my head against a stone wall, Mother.”
    Judith bowed her head and sighed. “I s’pose that’s what I expected you’d say, but—’ she met his eyes again “—I hope you’ll understand that…that I had to try?”
    He nodded grimly.
    “And on the outside chance you’ll change your mind, I’ve taken a room at the inn across the street—just for this evenin’, that is. I’ll need to leave by—”
    “Save your money, Mother. And your hopes. I won’t be callin’. I can’t.”
    She nodded, silently rose from the chair and bent to kiss his cheek. “I’ll be leavin’ now, son. Get yourself well real soon now, hear? And remember, I do love you, no matterwhat I might’ve foolishly led you to believe these past five years.”
    He wanted to ask her about that. About how she could have stayed away all that time, no matter what her husband threatened. But somehow he hadn’t the heart for it. What good would it do? Likely just hurt her more than he’d already managed with his less-than-genteel tongue. And so it goes…
    “I love you, too,” he murmured softly, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. But as he watched her turn to leave, he saw the tears in her eyes, and the remorse was back.
    A FEW MINUTES LATER Travis stood at his third-floor window looking down at the street facing the Johns Hopkins Inn. He’d managed, one-handed, to strip off the hospital gown, wrap a towel around his hips and secure it at the waist—all the nod to modesty he was willing to make at the moment; if any more unannounced visitors dropped by, he was more than ready to tell them to go to hell if they complained.
    His mood was sour again, and he didn’t need to wonder why. A sardonic smile twisted his lips. At one time he’d reckoned a visit from his estranged mother would have made his day. He supposed he’d always been given to optimism in his life, and that had applied even to the one corner of it that rankled. But instead of heartening him, seeing her had only served to make him realize how hopeless it all was.
    He caught a flash of red below, and he watched his mother walk toward the street. To a stranger she’d appear utterly poised, her head held gracefully erect, her carriage straight. But he could see things a stranger would miss. The suggestion of a defeated cast to her shoulders, a certain hesitance in her step as she approached the curb, the last lingering look she cast in the direction of his window before she entered the inn.
    Sighing heavily, he was about to return to the Vonnegut novel when something else caught his eye. A blonde with a knockout figure emerging from the hospital. She headed toward a dark red Saab that had just pulled up out front.
    Nurse Randi Terhune.
    “Well, well, well.” Travis’s first genuine smile of the day accompanied the softly drawled syllables.
    Her legs looked longer than ever in a pants