by Lisa Olsen
Chapter One
Have you ever been in so much pain it ceases to have any meaning? So much pain you can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t even scream? So much pain your brain applies a filter to it, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to survive it with your mind intact? Cast adrift on an ocean of pain, my body tossed and turned helplessly, buffeted by forces beyond my control. It sounds almost poetic, doesn’t it? But at the time I prayed for death, anything to ease that white hot agony.
I wish I could say there was a bright white light waiting for me at the end of a glowing tunnel.
In reality, I was so focused on the misery, there could’ve been a three ring circus around me and I wouldn’t have noticed. How long I hovered there I never knew, time ceased to have all meaning.
But then something happened.
A soft golden light wrapped around my body, and a feeling of warmth and comfort descended over me. At first I thought that was finally it. I was gonna die, and I’m not gonna lie, there was a measure of relief in that realization. Relaxing, I basked in that warm glow, soaking it up like the summer sun after the chill of winter. Only instead of the pain fading away and being carried off into the great beyond it grew worse, something I hadn’t thought possible.
I was still reeling from that new torture when the pain faded and disappeared so suddenly, I could feel the echo of it for long heartbeats after it was gone. Drawing in my first unlabored breath, my eyelids fluttered open, vision blurry in the uncertain light as I tried to focus.
Dimly, my mind registered the fact that a man stood over me, his hands lightly pressed to my abdomen. Before I could open my mouth to ask who he was and why exactly he was touching me, he looked up and our eyes locked. Neither one of us spoke, though I did feel his hands pull away swiftly. The man stared down at me with an expression of surprise mingled with fascination, as though I was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen before. I have to say, he was pretty captivating as well.
His eyes were the most vivid shade of blue - the kind you only see in magazine ads for contact lenses or on movie stars. They practically glowed in the muted light, and a golden nimbus surrounded him, flickering and crackling like a bug zapper. My lips parted to speak, but a wave of dizziness washed over me, making the room dip and sway. I swear my eyes only closed for a second, and when I opened them again, he was gone. Puzzling over whether or not any of it was real, I sank back into sweet oblivion, my sleep restful and devoid of pain.
* * *
The next thing I became aware of was the horrible taste in my mouth, like I’d been giving my cat, Mimsy a tongue bath (not something I’m into by the way, blecch). Speaking of tongues, mine felt thick and clumsy, and it was difficult to swallow. Automatically, my hand shot out for the water bottle I keep on the bedside table, but it came up empty, instead smacking against something hard and metallic. I tentatively cracked an eye open, brows knitting together as it sank into my mental fog - I wasn’t in my bedroom.
In fact, I wasn’t at home at all.
“Wha…?” The trappings of a hospital room were unmistakable, even without the equipment. The automatic bed was a dead giveaway, let alone the IV sticking out of my arm. The nurse call button was nowhere in sight, nor was there any sign of activity in the darkened room. I was in the hospital, I just had no idea why or how I’d gotten there.
Automatically my mind started to go over what I did know. My name is Merceline Renault, though everybody calls me Mercy (except for my mother), and I worked at a nightclub named Eden in Seattle as a bartender. Not the most glamorous job, I know, but I liked having my days free. Plus, it’s fast paced, the club plays great music, and the tips are fantastic on the weekends. Satisfied that I seemed to remember my phone number, my ABC’s and more than I cared to admit of the lyrics to every musical ever made, I turned my attention back to my surroundings.
“Hello?” I called out, but it made little more than a croak from my parched throat. The monitor by my side beeped softly and I squinted at the display, noting the steady climb in my pulse. 110, 119, 127, 134… That couldn’t be good…
A harried nurse came in, eyes on the equipment and completely ignoring me, frowning as she caught sight of the display.
“Hey…” My voice was stronger, but I still sounded like the crypt keeper version of my normal speaking voice.
“Sweet Jesus!” The nurse jumped, clearly not expecting me to be awake even though the monitors were going crazy. “When did you wake up?” she blinked. Her hair was the bright ginger of a natural redhead. spaedhead. A color I had tried and failed to duplicate over the years before deciding to accept my own deep, chestnut tresses. She looked even paler than me, which was hard to do. My devotion to sunscreen was legendary, even in the overcast Seattle weather, but at least I’d been spared the freckles covering her exposed skin.
I jumped because she jumped, and the monitor beeped its annoyance over the corresponding rise in my pulse. My hand rose instinctively to my chest, pulling at the IV sticking out of my wrist, and the air sucked through my teeth at the sting. “Have some water?” I gave her a pleading look, unable to phrase the request any more eloquently with the burning in my throat.
“Oh… yes, I’ll be right back.” Right back turned out to be a relative term as it was easily a few minutes before she returned, a small plastic cup of ice chips in hand. “I can give you one teaspoon of ice chips right now, but yobspew Romau’ll have to wait for the doctor before anything else.” A rueful smile was given along with the spoonful of ice.
I savored the cooling relief as the ice rapidly melted, swallowing easier. “Thank you,” I smiled, grateful to hear my voice start to sound a little stronger, more like myself.
“You’re welcome.” The nurse smiled back, picking up her touchpad, fingers flying over the surface to enter my vital statistics. “I’m sorry if I scared you before. We weren’t expecting you to wake up for quite some time.”
“S’okay,” I waved off her concern. “I wasn’t expecting to wake up here at all,” I admitted.
“I’ve put in a request to let Dr. Michaelson know you’re awake though, and she should be in fairly soon to check up on you. In the meantime, how are you feeling? Any dizziness or nausea?” she paused expectantly.
She said that like I was supposed to know who Dr. Michaelson was, but I decided to nod anomaw Romand smile, not wanting to admit that bit of ignorance. Instead I gave a longing look towards the plastic cup of ice chips. Somehow I had the feeling even though she seemed friendly enough, the nurse wouldn’t be likely to break her own rules right after she finished explaining them.
“Um no, not dizziness exactly, just a little out of it I guess.” A bit of an understatement; I felt like I’d been woken up after a double shift at the club with only a couple hours of sleep.
“Good, that’s good,” the nurse nodded absently, setting down the pad to take my blood pressure next. “Try to be still and breathe regularly.”
Did I look like I’d been about to jump up and do the Macarena? Lying there obediently, I began to notice a pale, dusky rose aura surrounding her, standing out in the dim lighting. At least, it’s what I always thought an aura would look like, I’d never seen one before. At first I chalked it up to tired eyes, but after a surreptitious rub I wasn’t so sure.
“Your blood pressure looks good, what about your pain level? How would you rate it on a scale of one to ten?” she asked.
It took me a minute to realize she’d asked a question. I was too distracted by the pretty color, trying to see if it looked any different if I closed one eye or the other, or if blinking had any effect. Even then it took some thought to process what she said. Should I be in pain? Shifting in the bed, I felt tired and sor
e, but nothing horrible. “It’s not too bad, maybe a one or two. Where am I?” It was time for some questions of my own.
The nurse nodded again and entered the data into her pad. “The ICU of Northwest Hospital,” she answered readily.
My brows climbed at the mention of the Intensive Care Unit. Just how bad off was I? “How long have I been here?”
“A few days. You were brought in on Saturday night and went into emergency surgery.” The nurse’s face grew sympathetic as if she pitied me for the gaps in my memory.
“A few days? What day is it now? Wait, what kind of surgery?” All at once a dozen questions leapt to mind, each clamoring to be answered.
The nurse’s expression grew shuttered, teeth worrying at her bottom lip. “You know… I should really let the doctor come and talk to you.” A step was taken towards the door.
“Wait…” Desperately my eyes scanned the nurse’s scrubs for a nametag and spied the badge hanging around her neck. “Rachel…” I tried a friendly smile. “I can appreciate you’re not supposed to discuss my medical condition, but you gotta cut me a bce=a cut mreak here, okay? The last thing I remember, I was at work Saturday night and the next thing I know I’m in the ICU with tubes hanging out of my arm and up my nose.”
Indecision warred on Rachel’s features, and she hovered indecisively at the bedside. “That’s really all you remember?”
Now I felt bad for making it sound like I was an amnesia case. “I remember who I am and all that good stuff,” I admitted readily. “I remember stepping out into the alley behind the club. It was my turn to take out the garbage and there was…” My focus shifted as it started to come back to me, eyes staring off into space as I pictured it. I remembered the scuffle between the two men, one of them had a knife… He’d been waling on the man in the long, brown coat who hadn’t defended himself at all. He just stood there, a dazed expression on his face, even when the knife plunged into his side.
“He stabbed him…” I murmured, my face twisting with emotion as I saw it again in my mind. “And I screamed… I threw the garbage can at him to make him stop, but he batted it aside… He…” I swallowed as I remembered him stalking towards me, the bloodied knife glinting in the poor light. He must have attacked me then, though I didn’t remember it specifically or any of the pain. “I’m a little fuzzy on the details after that. Who brought me in, do you know?”
Rachel picked up the datapad, paging through the records. “Um, you came in via ambulance, transported from… Second Avenue and South Washington Street, is that where you work?”
I nodded, trying to cast my mind back again but the fog was still firmly in place, making it difficult to wade though. The image came unbidden of the man in the long coat, the same man I’d seen in my hospital room with crystalline blue eyes. Staring down at me, his expression a mixture of sadness and awe, and something I couldn’t quite define. “Have I had any visitors?” I asked suddenly, wondering if she had a record of who he was.
e="+0" "Times New Roman">“No, we don’t allow visitors in the ICU. Though I think you had a couple of people waiting around when you were first brought in. I didn’t talk to them.”
“There wasn’t a guy in here earlier?” A frown tugged at my lips. Had it all been a dream? With the way my day was shaping up, I wouldn’t have been too surprised.
“Nooo, I don’t think so. Unless you mean during the dayshift? I think Bryan was working.”
A nurse. He hadn’t looked like a nurse. I decided it wasn’t important in the end, my mind already switching tacks. “Can I call my brother? Let him know I’m alright?”
A shake of the head was given. “Sorry, there aren’t any phones in here, but I can call him for you if you like,” Rachel offered. “You’ll probably be moved to a regular room soon though if that’s any consolation.”
“Yeah, could you? I’d really appreciate it.” I gave Matty’s phone number to the helpful nurse, hoping he remembered to pay his cell phone bill that month or I’d have to call my mom. And I really didn’t want to call my mom.
Hating hospitals on general principle, I couldn’t wait to be moved. The sooner they gave me the green light to get out of intensive care, the closer I’d be to getting out of the hospital altogether. As it was, I’d probably end up seriously in debt if I’d already been there for a few days and had emergency surgery. The health insurance offered by the club wasn’t exactly comprehensive, but it was better than nothing. Besides, they couldn’t squeeze blood from a stone. I had few assets they could try to seize as collateral. Hell, they were welcome to try and take my sometimes running car, it was probably cheaper to take the bus than foot the repair bills anyway.
“You should try and get some rest now. We’ll send the doctores New "> in as soon as she gets here, alright?” Rachel smiled, picking up the datapad. Tucking it under her arm, she paused by the foot of the bed, her expression inscrutable.
I stared back, waiting for her to say something, but she just stood there. “What is it? Is something wrong?” I couldn’t help but ask as she lingered.
“No, I’m just… surprised to see you awake and doing so well. I’m glad you came out of it,” she said simply. Turning on her heel, she left without another word.
“Yeah… doing so well.” A long drawn out breath left my body as my head fell to one side, eyes growing heavy again.
Chapter Two
Dr. Michaelson proved to be somewhat of a disappointment. The brusque woman virtually ignored my questions in favor of asking her own. I was able to gather that I’d been brought in after a knife wound to my>I only barely survived the surgery. The doctor seemed almost peeved that I woke when I did. She was unable to account for my sudden improvement, and I wasn’t sure if I should be amused or irritated by her annoyance. After all, I was the one lying in the hospital bed, shouldn’t she be happy I was getting better? Either way she still got her paycheck, right?
From the sound of things, I took a turn for the worse after the surgery and infection set in, only the doctor used a lot of incomprehensible words to describe it. The gist was, she really hadn’t expected me to pull through it at all. A sobering thought.
The faint glow around people was still there, and I noted with interest that there were different colors associated with different people. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the color schemes meant though. The doctor noted the anomaly with a scowl, ordering a battery of vision tests to be conducted the next morning, which would probably cost me another month’s wages.
Maybe it was because most of her patients were unconscious the majority of the time, but the surgeon’s bedside manner definitely left something to be desired. Her color was a deep orange with flecks of green in it, and I couldn’t help but think the green bits weren’t very nice.
The only bright spot on the horizon was Dr. Michaelson agreed I could move to a regular room if I didn’t take a turn for the worse during the course of the night. After that I settled into a boring routine as everyone lost their interest in my miraculous recovery and went back to business as usual.
Rachel came back to check up on me at regular intervals until the dayshift came on, and I was disappointed to find out Bryan the nurse was not the man I remembered with the piercing blue eyes (though his aura was a nice peaceful blue). By the time morning came along, IIt> felt decidedly restless and eager for a change, even if change only meant a new room.
Finally, I found myself in a semi-private room, happy to find I had no roommate as of yet. And there was actually a phone and a television in the room, thank God for small pleasures! Idly I wondered where my cell phone was. Still in my purse in the back room at the club? Or in storage somewhere in the hospital? Nobody seemed to have the answer to that one, and after a while I stopped asking.
The food police still wouldn’t allow me any solid foods and only a little water, no matter how much I begged or cajoled. Even my most winsome smile hadn’t gotten through to Bryan on that account and I started to wonder if his ‘peaceful’ b
lue aura didn’t mask a slightly masochistic strttlochistieak.
I was about to ring for a refill on my ice chips when the door swung open. “Ah, my hero,” I grinned, expecting to see Bryan with his plastic cup. Instead, a guy in a dark blue suit entered, shutting the door firmly behind him. He was of average height, average build, average looks, his dark hair slightly disheveled despite the early hour. In fact, there was nothing remarkable about him. Until he smiled, and a light of amusement came into his deep brown eyes and I figured he’d heard my remark. The smile made him much more appealing, cute even, and I smiled back in response.
“I haven’t been called anybody’s hero in at least… a week,” he grinned, moving to stand by my bedside where I could see him better. His aura was a deep indigo, and <="+oman"> /font>I found myself distracted by it for a moment, wondering what it meant.
“Sorry, I thought you were someone else,” I admitted with a sheepish grin.
“Give me a chance, I just got here.” His grin widened before sharp eyes gave me the once over. “You don't look that bad at all,” he considered aloud, as though he found the thought surprising.
“Do you always begin conversations that way?” I raised a brow, the corner of my mouth quirking into an almost smile at the way he’d said it. As though he’d gotten something for Christmas he hadn’t asked for.
A tinge of color washed up the side of his neck and I could see he hadn’t realized how it sounded. “Sorry, I meant they told me yesterday you were at death's door, but you look... good, better than good even.”
“At death’s door… not exactly something a girl likes to hear.” No wonder the nurse had been surprised when I’d woken up. Though ‘better than good’ sounded promising. “Actually I feel kind of great, all things considered.” It was true, once the grogginess wore off and I’d gotten a few hours of sleep, I felt more restless than anything else, tired of lying in bed. I was still too chicken to lift the bandages and take a peek at the surgery scars though. There went my summer bikini season…