by C. J. Lyons
Chapter Three
Andre Stone didn’t have much time. Not because the nurses would kick him out—once they got used to the sight of a bald, six-foot-two black man covered with burn scars hulking through their halls, they were fine with him coming to visit Morgan’s ward any time he wanted. The children, the ones conscious enough to see and hear him, didn’t mind either—his appearance hadn’t bothered them at all.
Their families had maybe looked twice at the battle-scarred former Marine sitting and reading out loud from a tattered book of fairytales, but once they saw how the children loved to listen to his rumbling voice, they soon welcomed his presence.
Even Dr. Lazarus didn’t mind Andre’s visits to Angels of Hope—he welcomed any intervention that might help his patients or at least soothe the passage of time. Because, as he often said, it was the interminable boredom of being trapped inside your own mind that led to decline. That was why he used unconventional therapies, such as housing similar patients in six-person wards and encouraging families to socialize—although Andre had noticed the doctor had failed there; it was simply too much strain having a child facing such overwhelming odds, and it didn’t leave families with spare energy for niceties.
It had taken Andre a surprising amount of courage to start reading out loud—the surgeons had rebuilt his mouth with muscle from his shoulder, and it didn’t work quite as well as his real one used to. Scar tissue was always threatening to twist and tighten his new mouth, leaving his speech a bit sibilant and with occasional spittle. But once he realized that the children didn’t mind, he quickly got over himself.
Morgan’s unit had four girls and two boys, all trapped in the same strange twilight that was “minimally responsive.” She and one of the other girls lay motionless, requiring special beds to prevent pressure sores—the same type of bed Andre had occupied during his burn rehab. He’d grown to despise the thing, with its mechanical noises rousing him from what little sleep he could find whenever the air pumps adjusted the mattress. But now he wished it were louder, more annoying—annoying enough for Morgan to sit up in frustration, reach for the nearest sharp object, and stab the mattress to death.
Of course that hadn’t happened. They’d hoped she would wake after her last surgery. Her vitals and brain waves had all improved dramatically, and the doctors said she was very close to waking…but…nothing. The doctors called it a plateau: said she might still improve gradually with time; or she might never improve, and this was the best she’d ever get; or she could deteriorate back into a full-fledged coma; or she could simply, one day, wake up.
Neurologists were difficult to pin down, Andre had learned once he accepted their inability to actually predict anything. Thankfully, Nick had translated for Andre and Jenna. That’s when Jenna had gone into her I’ll go crazy if I don’t have something to do other than sit and wait mode, researched all their options, and settled upon Angels for Morgan’s rehab. Jenna rarely visited—she didn’t do guilt well and had no patience for sitting helplessly—and when she did, it was usually late at night when she couldn’t sleep. Dr. Lazarus encouraged visitors at any hour, recognizing that his patients needed the human contact more than a regimented set of rules.
Andre glanced at the clock, gauging how much longer the story would take. He’d be cutting it close, but should be able to finish before it was too late. He was reading the children “Donkeyskin” from Perrault’s fairytales—one of the original Cinderella stories, much darker than the Disney version. Who knew the French could be so ghoulish?
Morgan, of course, lay perfectly still as he read. But the four children in the unit who hovered on the edge of awareness, the ones in almost constant frenzied motion, who required special padded beds resembling large cribs, complete with overhead zippered canopies to prevent their agitation spilling them out onto the floor, they also lay still, their faces all turned to the sound of Andre’s voice. As soon as he closed the book, they’d return to their nonstop purposeless flailing, but at least for now, they had a reprieve. It was what kept him coming back—the hope that if he could reach them, maybe he could someday reach Morgan.
He knew she might never wake up, might never understand anything he said to her. But all he needed was a moment, an instance of clarity. To thank her. To beg her forgiveness.
His reading must have slowed a bit at the end, because when he closed the book and looked up, it was to see Micah Chase glowering at him from the doorway, both fists raised.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Micah challenged him, storming into the room.
Andre sighed. Said nothing, simply slid the book into the nightstand drawer. Best to let the kid blow off steam. Not like Andre didn’t deserve it. After all, he was a battle-hardened Marine; it should have been him taking down a serial killer, not Morgan.
“I told you not to come back. I’ll take care of her. We don’t need you.” Micah’s entire body twitched as he stood over Andre. Daring Andre to do something to shut him up.
Andre stood. “I’ll go now.”
“Don’t come back.” Micah’s voice dropped, low and lethal.
If not for the intensely serious look in the kid’s eyes, Andre would have laughed at the implied threat. Andre could chop this kid into kindling with one hand tied behind his back. But the kid adored Morgan, had remained steadfast and faithful, never giving up on her.
And the kid hadn’t almost gotten her killed.
A fact Micah could not surrender. “You sonofabitch. She’s lying in that damn bed because of you. If you’d—”
Andre simply stared.
“If you’d, if he’d—You should have stopped her.” Micah finally found his words.
“I wish I could have. I wish I had.”
“Why didn’t you?” Micah sank into the chair Andre had vacated, as helpless to change what had happened on that snowy mountain three weeks ago as Andre was. “It should’ve been you.”
“I agree.” Andre’s words did nothing to assuage the kid’s pain. Just like they did nothing to ease his own. They both knew Andre had had no choice—just as they both knew what happened on that mountain had been Morgan’s choice.
Andre gripped the bedrail as they stared at the sleeping girl. She looked so peaceful now that her bruises had healed. Her dark curls spread out around her face like a halo—not that she would have welcomed that comparison. Morgan never saw herself as a hero; not even a good person. After being raised by a sadistic serial killer, taught to kill and enjoy it, she was struggling simply to rejoin the human race.
Micah reached for her hand, gripping it in both of his. “I just want her back,” he said. “I—I can’t let her go, can’t say goodbye. Not like this.”
Neither could Andre, but he didn’t waste words on stating the obvious. He turned to leave. He’d walked past the end of her bed when Micah called out, “Andre. Wait. I think—I think she said something!”
Chapter Four
Morgan was drowning, was choking, was smothering, the weight of the world upon her, pinning her helpless. She tried to move, she wanted to move, to fight back, to take control, but her body was an impossible distance, too far away. A desert of stars cast on black velvet separated her. The growl and rumble of the animal pursuing her through the dark made the earth tremble and shake. She was blind, paralyzed; how could she fight?
A dream, only a dream. Not one of her blood soaked memories—those were much more terrifying.
The thought helped. It felt as if it had been a long time since she’d been able to think so clearly, to recognize what was real and what was cotton candy spinning, tangling her mind into a sticky glob. Focus; she needed to focus.
Slowly, the beast’s growls faded into the mechanical rumble of machinery somewhere below her. Her body lay flat; she could feel its weight. A sheet was tucked tight around her, pinning her down. Move. Try to move.
Her eyelids felt glued shut; she could only manage to slit them open, the world a blurry haze of too bright light that hurt, blinded, and fo
rced them closed again. Accepting the defeat, she tried another tack, and listened. A man’s voice, low and deep, a comfort. And then another man’s voice, not so low, more rushed, but just as welcome.
Focus, focus. She followed the voices as if they would lead her home. Andre. The first belonged to Andre. And the second…her pulse throbbed so hard she could feel it in her neck…Micah.
But they were fighting. Why were they fighting? Who were they fighting? Surely not each other? Footsteps thudded—were they leaving? Flesh brushed against her hand. She tried to grab at it, hold them here. Please, don’t go, please don’t leave me, please… “Op-pp.”
She meant to shout Stop! But her mouth was dry and her lips cracked and her vocal cords frozen, so it emerged a weak, nonsense whisper. She held her breath—the only thing she could control—and listened.
Footsteps. A man, Micah, squeezed her hand. Then Andre took her other hand. Warm, they were both so warm. Solid. Real. “Morgan? Can you hear me? Squeeze my hand.”
She did, with all her might. At least she thought she did. But Micah asked her again. “Squeeze my hand, Morgan.” His voice was spun glass, ready to shatter. “Please. I know you’re in there. Squeeze my hand.”
She was, she was. Focus, finger, pull, tight, grip. Damn, which muscles? She visualized a hand closing, straining so hard tears slipped from her eyes, clearing away some of the ointment coating them. “Mi…cah.”
The noise she made didn’t sound at all like his name, didn’t even sound human, but he squeezed her hand again. “I’m here, Morgan. So’s Andre. We’re here.”
Why did he sound like he was crying? But also as if he were happy? The disconnect spun her back into confusion, and her hand went limp. Darkness took her down once more into the depths, but it was a soothing darkness, her mind cradled by the warm comfort of their voices.
Chapter Five
Days, seconds, years, minutes, centuries, weeks passed, a whirling kaleidoscope of shattered time. She strained, forcing the bits and pieces clear, the pattern almost emerging, until it shifted once again and left her stranded.
Morgan finally realized it wasn’t time that was broken, it was her memories, jumbled and random as she sifted through them trying to process her new state of being. No matter how hard she dug, the important fact, the detail, the one thing she must not forget, remained elusive, buried in the avalanche of pain and frustration and the effort of relearning how to live.
Someone was always with her, it seemed. She’d wake in the morning to either Nick’s smiling face—a true smile, a proud smile as he watched her clumsily perform what the therapists called activities of daily living. All those trivial, automatic movements unbroken people did without thinking, Morgan had to relearn. Then Nick would leave and Andre would take his place, coaching her, trying to hold back from leaping forward to help her when she stumbled.
So many things she stumbled and fumbled. Simple things, little things. Like how to suck on a straw, swallow without choking—she learned that one fast because it hurt so much when she did it wrong and it went down the wrong pipe and she ended up coughing. Each cough was a dagger to her heart—three broken ribs still healing, a nurse had told her, pointing to a scar on Morgan’s left side, and a chest tube to re-inflate a collapsed lung.
It took all her energy and concentration to keep hold of the new knowledge flooding into her. But it was important. Not as important as the thing she knew but could not remember, but still vital to learn and master. Learn to swallow the chalky protein drinks, and they could stop feeding her through the tube they’d pinched into her stomach. An PEG, they called it. She hated the damn thing, could feel it scrape her innards with every breath.
Learn to balance herself on the commode and how to call the nurse when she needed to use it, so they could stop making her wear a diaper. Learn how to stand and lean against a walker, see the horizon, feel the floor beneath her feet, anchor the two together and swing first one foot and then the other despite her muscles being weak and wobbly and the lights so bright she kept her eyes shut most of the time.
Until Micah noticed and asked her why, she hadn’t thought to tell anyone, hadn’t realized she could, had simply accepted the pain, so that was another thing learned: to find her words, to speak up.
He was usually there in the afternoon—which meant not twelve-oh-one on the clock she’d just relearned how to read, but hours later. That first time she’d been so proud at deciphering that “after noon” meant after twelve that when he hadn’t been there she’d grown agitated by the contradictory facts. They’d strapped her to her bed with Velcro ties. She did not like that. Lying helpless, at their mercy. The entire time she’d lain with her eyes squeezed tight, blood and screams of old memories filling her mind.
Never again, she’d vowed. And when Micah had returned, he’d brought her a pair of sunglasses tinted blue—perfect. Not so dark that they clouded her vision, but dark enough that the blazing lights didn’t pierce her eyes. She’d hugged him and been surprised by his blush.
And so it went. They all said she was a miracle, was making amazing progress—in only a week! But Morgan didn’t care. She was angry and frustrated and other words she wanted to stab with pins like butterflies. All because of the thing she knew but could not remember. It was important. But no matter how much she searched her ragtag collection of shredded memories, she could not find it.
She’d tried to explain to Andre and Micah and Nick, but they were too busy hovering over her as she shuffled between parallel bars or tried to drink—by God, she wanted that damn PEG out—or they tried to fill in the blanks as she searched for vanished words not on her communication board. So she’d given up. Days and evenings, there was simply too much going on: therapy and meals and baths and visitors and the other kids with their other families, who all looked at Morgan with a strange mix of envy and hope.
But nights? Nights were quiet.
And not in a good way.
They always began the same. Nurses making final checks, closing the special canopies designed to keep the more agitated kids from wandering, bedtime meds, quiet music that wasn’t so much music as it was noise: rain, wind, the gentle wash of waves against sand. Then lights out.
Most nights, there weren’t any parents around—these children had been in one hospital or another for so long that it simply wasn’t possible for family to stay with them every night. Another reason Morgan had attracted their attention. Whenever she had a visitor, she could feel their eyes and envy like a laser striking its target. Jenna came by most nights, but never before midnight, often not until the darkest hours, when the ward pretended to sleep with hushed breaths and slitted eyes.
The children here didn’t do much sleeping. At least, not at night.
Trapped inside their beds, their dreams woven by sedatives and other drugs, the children waited.
At first, Morgan had thought she was dreaming or imagining, or maybe a mix of both, wrapped up in ribbons of blood knotted by memories of her childhood with her father. But when she realized the others also saw what she saw and heard what she heard—even if no one ever spoke of it—she knew it was real.
He was real. The midnight stalker whose slow, certain footsteps triggered the copper taste of fear, whose shadow passing the window in the ward’s door made her bladder clench, whose silhouette, warped and twisted by the glass and nighttime lighting, conjured primal terrors of men who weren’t human and traveled by night to snatch children from their beds.
Worse of all was the noise he made. There was a word for it, one that eluded Morgan, but the noise seeped past the door that guarded the ward, danced along molecules of air to the children trapped inside, and whispered warnings: You might be next.
Each night, when his shadow hit their door, she felt the entire ward buzz with silent panic. They did not make a noise; in fact, if anything, the children smothered every sound, holding their breaths, clenching fists over their mouths, stilling their bodies, fearful that the slightest rustle of a waywa
rd sheet could betray them.
Then he’d be gone. Pass them by. After a midnight pause filled with shadow beasts conjured by imagination, a collective sigh would fill the room, and eventually, one by one, they would allow sleep to capture them once again.
Tonight, after first passing them by, after the others had fallen back into blissful slumber, the man returned. Morgan was drifting in a twilight of half-asleep and sensed his silent presence more than saw it. She felt the rush of air as the door opened and closed again. Felt his footsteps, soft, so soft, hesitating at her bedside before crossing to the other side of the ward. Heard the click of a bedrail being lowered. Smelled a whiff of hospital chemicals and alcohol. Heard a whispered buzz, the thump of flesh against metal.
Then…nothing. He stood, motionless; where, she wasn’t exactly sure. At first her survival instincts—usually dagger-sharp—fought to wake her, tried to alert her, but they’d been blunted by the weeks of drugs and exhaustion. Before she could find the energy to wake, as all sense of him faded—was that why he stood so still? a faint voice whispered, trying to rally her defenses—sleep pulled her back down into a black cauldron of dreams and memories.
When she woke again, the night was dark and silent.
Morgan blinked and stared, a memory slipping from her grasp so fast she physically opened and closed her fist, trying in vain to recapture it. There was something… something important…
Then she noticed Jenna sitting in the vinyl visitor’s chair beside her bed, her features glowing in the light of the laptop she worked on, keys clicking quietly, barely heard over the gentle ocean noises coming from the speakers encircling the room.
This Jenna wasn’t the Jenna Galloway who shadowed Morgan’s memories—that Jenna, the old Jenna, was crisp to the point of being sharp, always wore a mask, never allowing a glimpse of her true self. Not this Jenna. She was strangely naked, vulnerable, her face easy to read.