Authors: Linda Howard
“Not that I can see.” She heard the neurologist heave a sigh. “The way she looks at people…it’s almost as if we’re another life form and she’d studying us. We don’t try to communicate with bacteria. It’s like that.”
“Right. She thinks we’re bacteria.”
“She wouldn’t be the first patient to feel that way. Look, my recommendation is you call in a psychologist. What happened to her was traumatic, even by our standards. She may need help getting over it.”
Traumatic? Had it been? What had come before had been traumatic as hell, but her actual death…no. She couldn’t remember being impaled. She knew it had happened, had that hazy memory of seeing herself, but all in all she was glad she’d died, because otherwise she wouldn’t have seen Alban, she wouldn’t have known that wonderful place existed, that there was something else waiting out there. This life wasn’t all there was; there was more, much more, and when people spoke of death as “passing” they were exactly right, because the spirit passed on to that other level of existence. Knowing that was the most comforting thing she could imagine.
So a psychologist, Dr. Beth Rhodes, came several times to talk to her. She said to call her Beth. She was a pretty woman, but there was trouble in her marriage and she was truly more concerned with that than she was about any of her patients. Drea/Andie—or was it Andie/Drea? Which one was first, now?—thought Dr. Beth should take some time off and concentrate on what was important, because she loved her husband and he loved her, and they had two kids to consider, so they should really get their shit together and work things out, and then Dr. Beth would be able to give her full attention to her patients.
If she’d been talking, that’s what she would have said. But she felt no compulsion to answer Dr. Beth’s questions, at least not now. She still had some thinking to do.
For instance: no one knew who she was. As far as the world was concerned, Drea Rousseau/Andie Butts was dead. She was safe from Rafael, safe from the assassin. She truly could start anew, as the person she chose to be. That could be a problem, because one of the people who came regularly to her cubicle was a cop, a detective, who wasn’t investigating her for any crime or anything except driving a car with a tag that didn’t belong to that car, and not having a license, nothing of a hugely felonious nature, but still things that had to be resolved. She was also officially a Jane Doe, and he was as interested as the hospital staff in finding out who she was.
The day came when she was transferred from ICU to a regular hospital room. As her nurses got her ready for transport, removing tubes, chattering to her, telling her how great she was doing and that they’d miss her, suddenly she focused on one nurse in particular. Her name was Dina, and she was the quietest of the nursing squad, but she was invariably gentle and unhurried, and her concern was evident in her touch.
Dina was going to fall. Andie/Drea saw it happen. Not clearly, the surroundings were fuzzy, but she saw it. Dina was going to fall down some stairs…drab, concrete stairs, like the stairs in a hotel or in a…hospital. Yes. Dina was going to fall down the stairs here in the hospital. She would break her ankle, and that would be a bitch because she had a ten-month-old baby who could crawl at the speed of light.
She reached out and caught Dina’s hand, the first time she had initiated any interaction with them at all. The nurses looked at her in surprise.
She wet her lips, because after all this time she had almost forgotten how to form the words, the connection tenuous between her mind and her mouth. But she had to warn Dina, so she pushed harder and finally the words actually happened.
“Don’t…take…the…stairs,” said Andie.
“I HEAR YOU’VE BEEN TALKING.”
The charge came from the foot of the bed. Andie opened her eyes, and hovered for a moment between asleep and awake, reality and…other reality. Her perception of time, space, and what was real had been radically altered, the defining lines gone. Maybe with time, and once she no longer needed any painkillers at all, she would regain the sharpness of now, though she didn’t want to lose her sense of connection to the other place.
In the now she had to deal with the surgeon, Dr. Meecham, who was sprawling in a chair a couple of feet from the foot of her bed. His arms, big and muscular and hairy, were revealed by the short sleeves of his scrubs—and they were crossed over his chest, telling her he was feeling stubborn and in the mood for answers.
She ignored him for the moment, her gaze drifting to the windows. Sunlight poured through the glazed reflective glass, which made the sky look as though a thunderstorm were forming but gave her both sunlight and privacy. It was nice to have an actual room, to see the progression of sunlight to darkness, nice to have a little more privacy even though the nurses had the extremely annoying habit of leaving the door open. Someday soon she’d tell them to close it.
But not now. Not today. Telling them would require talking, and she couldn’t bring the words up. Speaking to Dina had been driven by need, and the effort had exhausted her. Answering the surgeon’s questions didn’t meet that level of need.
Besides, he’d cut down on her drugs while she still needed help battling the Great Bitch. Let him stew.
“You might be interested in what happened to Dina,” he said.
Was she? She thought for a moment and decided that, yes, she was. She’d cared enough to speak, cared enough to make the words travel from her brain to her mouth, across an empty no-man’s-land. Slowly she brought her gaze back to him.
Despite his callousness with the drugs, she liked him. He had a calling, and he was ruthless about answering that call. He went into battle every day, plunging his hands into bloody body cavities and working to help people live, then doing what he had to do to get them back on their feet. So she would have liked a couple of more days of help in fighting the pain; weighed in the balance, she would rather have pain than develop a drug dependency. Maybe she’d forgive him.
On the other hand, he really needed to stop screwing around on his wife.
“Dina took the stairs anyway,” he said, his sharp gaze watching her closely. “But she said she felt uneasy about what you said, so she was extra careful. She kept an eye out for anyone who might be hiding in the stairwell, and she held on to the stair railing. She usually runs down the stairs, but this time she held on to the railing. She was on the third flight when she slipped. If you hadn’t warned her, if she hadn’t been holding on, she’d have gone to the bottom of the flight and could have been really hurt. As it is, all she has is a mild ankle sprain.”
That had worked out, then. Good.
He was silent a minute, she guessed to give her a chance to talk if she were so inclined. She wasn’t.
Giving up on that tactic, he uncrossed his arms and leaned forward, watching her intently. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, and rubbed his hand over his jaw. Andie watched him with faint puzzlement. He acted as if he was perturbed by something; surely he wasn’t that upset because she hadn’t made this huge breakthrough in speech.
“What was it like?” he finally asked, his tone suddenly hushed, a little unsure.
Her own mouth almost fell open. She blinked at him in astonishment and a tide of red washed into his face. “Never mind,” he muttered, getting to his feet.
Was he asking about the other place? Surely he wasn’t crass enough to ask what it was like to have a tree puncture her heart. Besides, he was a surgeon; traumatic injuries would be nothing new to him.
He knew she’d been dead, that the medics hadn’t made a mistake. Yet here she was, a living, breathing, walking—well, sometimes, when they made her—miracle, and what she’d said to Dina had somehow tipped him off that she’d been to that other place. Maybe he’d seen it before. Maybe another patient had told him about it, and he was curious. Maybe he wanted her to say that she didn’t remember anything, so he could put his trust completely in science, where he felt most comfortable.
She lifted her hand to keep him from walking out the door, and a beatific smile lit her face. “Beautiful,” she managed to say, the single word taking so much effort that she felt winded.
He stopped in his tracks. Swallowing, he came to stand beside her bed.
“What do you remember? Can you tell me?”
He looked torn, as if he wanted to hear something that would allow him to disregard what she said as an oxygen-deprived brain producing hallucinations, but at the same time he wanted to believe in something more.
She needed to talk. She needed to get through this barrier, once more make the connection between the world inside her head and the world on the outside. The breach had been helpful, giving her the time she needed to adjust, but now it was time for her to fully rejoin this world, because it was the only world she had.
With that thought, her surroundings suddenly popped into sharper focus, as if everything had been blurred while she lingered between both places. She had made the final decision to stay, she realized. Until now, she had been in a limbo of sorts, lingering there while she thought things over, but now she had decided: she would stay here, and try to earn herself a place in that other world.
Talking suddenly became easier, a Mission Possible, even though it was still an effort.
“I remember everything.”
Relief washed over his face. “Was there a tunnel? With light at the end of it?”
Describing the other place wasn’t going to be easy, because words literally couldn’t impart the utter tranquillity and joy, the quiet beauty. But right now he wasn’t asking where she’d gone, just the process of getting there.
“Light. No tunnel.” Had she missed out on something, or had she gone too fast?
“Just light? Hmm.”
There it was, the doubt, the instinctive fallback on the science he knew. Bright light could be explained by a misfiring, dying brain. She wondered how he could square that with her lack of brain damage. Because she didn’t want to steer him wrong, and because she held a grudge against him, she voiced the random thought that had earlier popped into her head. “Stop screwing around on your wife.”
He paled, then turned red again. “What?”
“She’s going to find out, if you don’t stop.” Suddenly irritated, she pulled the sheet higher, as if she wanted to shut him out. “If you don’t love her, then get a divorce, but keep your pants zipped until then. Act like a grown-up.”
“Wha—? What?” He said the same word for the third time, his mouth opening and closing like a guppy’s.
“Believe me now?” She scowled at him. She would have flounced on her side and turned her back on him, but flouncing was out of the question. Instead she just narrowed her eyes at him and silently dared him to deny her accusation, though he was more likely to tell her to mind her own business.
She could see him struggling not to do exactly that. He was in his early fifties, a man who had spent his entire adult life perfecting the science and the skill with which he saved lives. Like most surgeons, he had a healthy ego, which was a polite way of saying it was monstrously huge. Doing what he did required a huge helping of self-confidence, and he was accustomed to being the boss. Finding himself abruptly called on the carpet by a woman whose life he had saved, and who undoubtedly owed him a large amount of money for his services, wouldn’t go down easy.
He started to snap back at her. She saw it, and scowled harder at him. “Don’t start doubting just because I didn’t see a tunnel. I guess some people do. I didn’t. I had a tree stuck through me—a small one, but still a tree—and I went fast. So sue me.”
He crossed his arms again and rocked back on his heels, a man who wasn’t inclined to surrender without a fight. “If you had a real near-death experience, you’re supposed to be mellow and happy.”
“I didn’t have a ‘near death’ experience, I had a death experience. I died,” she said flatly. “I was given a second chance. So far as I know, having that second chance doesn’t mean I have to fake being in a good mood. If you want to know what I remember, how about this: I remember looking down and seeing a guy go through my purse, then steal my laptop. Did he get all my money?”
He was so easy to read, even now, when he was trying to school his expression. His shock was evident, at least to her.
“No, I believe there was a considerable amount of cash still in your purse, but no ID, and no credit cards.”
She hadn’t had any credit cards, but she didn’t tell him that. So only her ID was missing? Strange. Why take her driver’s license and not her cash?
“You didn’t have any vehicle registration in your car, either. I believe Detective Arrons wants to discuss that with you.”
She imagined he did, plus the bogus license plate. She’d worry about that later. For now, she waved it away. “If the money was still there, it can go to my hospital bill. I’m not a charity case.”