Once Is Not Enough by Jacqueline Susann Read Free Book Online

back is broken. Two vertebrae, but they’ll mend. You also have what they call multiple breaks in your leg. You’ve got casts all over you . . . that’s why you can’t move. You can’t move your right arm because of the brain concussion. But they say that will all come back.” He tried to smile. “Outside of that, baby, you’re in great shape.” Then he leaned over and kissed her. “You don’t know how great it is to see you look at me. It’s the first time you’ve really looked at me in ten days . . .”
    TEN DAYS! Ten days since she had fallen off the motorcycle!
    Was Franco hurt? How long would she have to be here? Once again she tried to talk, but no words came out. He held her hand and said, “That’s part of the concussion, baby. The side of your head that was hit affects the speech area. Don’t panic. It will all come back. I swear to you. . . .”
    She wanted to tell him she wouldn’t panic. As long as he was there, everything was okay. She wanted to tell him to go back to the studio . . . he had a picture to do . . . she wanted to let him know these things . . . that as long as they were a team . . . as long as she knew she’d see him the end of each day and that he loved her and was thinking about her—nothing would stand in her way. She scratched furiously with her left hand. She wanted a pencil. She had to tell him these things. Tears of frustration streamed down her face. She wanted a pencil. But he didn’t understand.
    “Nurse!” he called out. “Come here quick . . . maybe she’s in pain!”
    (Daddy, I’m not in pain . . . I just want a pencil.)
    The nurse was all starched efficiency. January felt the needle go into her arm . . the numbness began to seep through her and in the distance she heard her father’s voice . . . “Just relax, babe . . . everything’s gonna be all right. . . .”

One
September, 1970
    W HEN M IKE W AYNE WALKED into the V.I.P. Lounge at Kennedy Airport, the hostess was positive he was a movie star. He had that look of someone you’ve seen many times but know you’ve never met.
    “Is Flight Seven, Swissair, still scheduled for a five o’clock arrival?” he asked as he signed the guest book.
    “I’ll check,” she said, flooding him with one of her warmest smiles. He smiled back, but experience told her it was the smile of a man who already had a girl. A girl arriving on Flight Seven. Probably one of those Swiss-German beauties that were crowding the market lately. It was getting so a domestic stewardess didn’t have a chance.
    “Half an hour late. Due at five-thirty.” Her smile was apologetic.
    He nodded and walked to one of the leather chairs by the window. She studied his scrawl on the book. Michael Wayne. She had heard the name, and she knew his face, but she couldn’t place him. Maybe he was on one of those television series . . . like that dreamy fellow on Mannix whom she watched whenever she was dateless on Saturday nights. He was older than the men she usually dated, maybe in his forties. But for Mr. Michael Wayne with the Paul Newman blue eyes she could easily forget the generation gap. In a final bid for attention, she came over with some magazines, but he shook his head and continued to stare at the planes being servicedon the ground. She sighed as she returned to her desk. No way! This one really had something on his mind.
    Mike Wayne had plenty on his mind. She was coming back! After three years and three months of hospitals and therapy . . . she was coming back.
    When she crashed on that motorcycle, his own crash dive had begun. It started with the flop of Melba’s picture. He took the blame for that himself. When your kid is busted into pieces, you can’t worry about a spaghetti western. And January’s prognosis had been dismal. In the beginning none of the surgeons held any hope that she would ever walk again.
    The paralysis was due to the concussion and called for immediate physical therapy. For weeks he studied X rays he didn’t