The Comatose Heir Won’t Let Me Divorce

Chapter 10: Voss House

Adrian

Going home required six people and a mechanical lift.

Adrian had once crossed three countries in a day, conducted a board meeting from an airport lounge, and arrived at Voss House in time to change for dinner. Now Leah explained each strap before two nurses rolled him onto his side and fitted a sling beneath his body.

"Tell us if anything pinches," she said.

He could not feel half the places that might.

The machine lifted him from the bed. His gown pulled tight across his legs, exposing one thin knee before a nurse covered it. Everyone in the room behaved as if hanging helplessly in canvas were an ordinary way for a man to leave the hospital. Adrian stared at the wall and wished they would stop being kind about it.

Vivienne stood near the door with his discharge folder. She looked once at his face, then turned to Samuel.

"Can we clear everyone who isn't needed for the transfer?"

The hospital administrator and two Voss assistants left. Vivienne followed them into the corridor and closed the door behind her.

For one sharp moment, Adrian thought she could not bear to watch.

Then he understood. She had seen him notice the exposed knee. She was giving him fewer witnesses.

The realization did not make the lift less humiliating, but it gave him somewhere else to put his anger. It also made him listen for her footsteps in the corridor until the nurses lowered him into the chair.

Dr. Shah had approved transfer to the private recovery wing at Voss House on strict conditions: independent nursing, remote monitoring reviewed by her team, and immediate return if his respiratory status worsened.

"I am not your family physician," she told him before he left. "I will disagree with you in your own house just as happily as I do here."

He believed her.

The medical transport entered the Voss estate shortly after noon. Adrian watched familiar trees pass through tinted glass. He had planted the row of copper beeches with his father at fourteen. They were taller now, their branches reaching over the drive while he returned unable to stand beneath them.

At the front entrance, the house staff had formed a line.

He wanted to order the vehicle around to the private ramp. The words took too long. By the time he managed "side entrance," Vivienne had already stepped outside.

"Please go back to work," she told the waiting staff. "Mr. Voss has had enough people staring at him today."

Several faces showed surprise. One maid looked openly suspicious.

Mrs. Agnes Cole, the house manager, recovered first. "Of course, Mrs. Voss. Welcome home, sir."

The line dispersed. Adrian was wheeled through the side entrance in relative privacy.

He should have thanked Vivienne. Instead he said, "They waited."

"Yes. Very decorative."

"For me."

"I know. Next time you can enjoy it when you're wearing trousers."

He looked down at the blanket over his hospital clothing and decided she had a point he would never acknowledge aloud. She was smiling at him, not kindly enough to be pity, and he found he preferred that.

The recovery wing smelled faintly of fresh paint. Someone had replaced the rugs, moved the furniture, and installed rails along the walls. The library doors were locked. His study key was no longer on the hook inside the connecting hall.

Malcolm's care had reached every room.

Adrian's chest tightened as the wheelchair crossed the threshold of what had once been his bedroom. A medical bed occupied the place where his own bed had stood. Cabinets of supplies lined one wall. His desk was gone.

"Who approved this?" he asked.

Mrs. Cole answered carefully. "Mr. Malcolm supervised the renovations after your discharge plan changed in March."

His discharge plan had never existed in March.

He looked at Samuel, who wrote it down.

Vivienne walked to the connecting door. "Where does this lead?"

"The primary suite," Mrs. Cole said. "Your belongings are there, ma'am."

"I'm not staying in it."

The house manager's eyes moved from her to Adrian and back. Old household knowledge passed silently across her face.

"The blue room is beside the recovery wing," Vivienne continued. "Does it lock from the inside?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll use that."

Adrian heard himself say, "Too far."

Vivienne turned. "It's one door farther than the room you approved in the agreement."

He wanted her close enough to call if he remembered something, close enough that security could reach her, close enough that she could not disappear with the second phone. Only one of those reasons was honest enough to say aloud.

"Threat," he said.

"Security can cover a hallway without putting me in your bedroom."

Mrs. Cole became intensely interested in a flower arrangement.

Adrian let the argument go because fighting in front of the staff would turn a boundary into household gossip. Vivienne noticed the restraint and still did not look pleased.

The blue room contained six taped boxes.

Mrs. Cole frowned when she saw them. "Those were meant for storage after the contract ended. Mrs. Voss asked us to pack personal items last month."

Vivienne went to the nearest box. The label read PRIVATE—DO NOT MOVE TO MAIN HOUSE.

She looked as surprised as Adrian felt.

The old Vivienne had been preparing to leave too. "Where were they going?" she asked.

"The Hale apartment in the city, I believe."

Vivienne touched the tape but did not open it. "Leave them here."

Adrian was taken to therapy before he could ask more. Sitting unsupported lasted forty-three seconds. On the second attempt, his right arm collapsed and the therapist caught him beneath the ribs.

Pain burned through his shoulder.

"Again," he said.

"Tomorrow," the therapist replied.

"Again."

"You can be angry at me or recover. Today you don't have enough energy for both."

Adrian hated everyone Dr. Shah hired.

He suspected that was why she hired them.

By late afternoon, exhaustion had stripped patience from him. Owen Pike, head of estate security, stood beside the bed reviewing access changes.

"Mrs. Voss keeps her existing credentials," Adrian said. Speaking more than a few words still roughened his throat. "Track exits. Full feed to me. Don't notify."

Owen hesitated.

"No," Vivienne said from the doorway.

Adrian closed his eyes once. Of course she had arrived for the worst sentence.

She entered carrying a tray with soup she probably had not eaten. "You lasted four days."

"Security."

"Secretly tracking every time I leave is surveillance. We wrote this down because apparently spoken promises were too optimistic."

Owen looked ready to crawl into a camera blind spot.

"Threat increased," Adrian said.

"Then tell me. Give me choices. Don't make me discover that my husband has been watching the gate and call it protection afterward."

"You hid a phone."

"Vivienne hid it before I woke up. I gave it to my lawyer. You heard the recording."

"Not all files."

There it was again: the part of him that believed missing information belonged to whoever could seize it first.

Vivienne set the tray down too hard. Soup touched the rim.

"If you want a prisoner, Adrian, say so now. Naomi can file before dinner."

He looked at Owen. "Cancel." Vivienne waited.

The word tasted worse than any medication. "Sorry."

She let the apology sit between them. "Have Owen send me the proposed coverage. I'll choose whether I want notification at the gate, a driver, or a visible detail."

Adrian nodded.

Only after she left did he realize the soup remained behind. It was tomato, the kind he used to eat when he worked late, still warm beneath its silver cover. He could not tell whether she had brought it for him or forgotten it during the argument.

Both possibilities occupied him longer than they should have. When Leah offered to replace it with the bland broth on his diet sheet, he said no and ate as much of the tomato soup as his throat allowed.

That evening, a therapist wheeled him past the blue room. The door stood partly open. Vivienne sat cross-legged on the floor among the boxes, wearing loose trousers and one of his old university sweatshirts. It was too large for her. He had no idea how it had reached her belongings.

A paper calendar lay beside her.

The final date of their agreement had been circled in red. Beneath it, in Vivienne's elegant handwriting, were two words:

DAY 0. LEAVE.

Adrian looked away before she saw him reading.

Mrs. Cole approached from the main hall. "Sir, forgive the interruption. There's an attorney at the front gate asking for Mrs. Voss."

"Name?"

"Elena Marlow."

Adrian knew that name.

She was the compliance lawyer he had tried to contact the week before someone forced his car through a bridge barrier.