Enemy of Mine
Page 38
Chapter 30
All the wind had been wrestled from her when Erva woke with what she thought would have been a scream. Without any breath, it sounded more like a bark, a mournful silent gasp. She clutched her comforter—realizing it was her sad, colorless comforter—clinging to anything to get some air into her lungs in a dark room—her dark room, the only light a pale gray from an early morning sun not yet awakening and the chartreuse numbers from her digital alarm clock. At the same time, she was too scared to breathe. If she did, then that meant she was back in her time. Without Will.
Like the sun that would surely rise, she didn’t ask for it, but it came: the air she needed to stay alive. It shook her body, convulsing her into one giant sob. Then she bawled into her pillow. Maybe she cried for an eternity. Maybe only minutes. But in the midst of dryly weeping, Erva was distracted by her pillow. She’d bought it at her mother’s insistence. It was thin and had some kind of made-from-petroleum fake stuffing in it. Fitting, Erva thought, comparing her pillow with her mother. And that was when she had enough.
For years silent resentment had resided in her body, screaming long after she’d had a visit with her mother. Her internal anger had shadowed her everywhere, except with Will when she’d let it go. The way Will accepted her had been magical. It had broken her Sleeping Beauty spell, the curse of repressed anger.
She knew she would cry more for Will, but it felt sacrilegious to do so in a bed not of her own choosing. On a fake pillow. She lifted herself, tears pouring down her face, but the moisture turned into self-righteous fury in a flash. Ripping her not quite gray, not quite beige sheets, pillows, and comforter from her bed, she screamed. Not too loud. Heaven forbid she alert her neighbors. Then Erva thought of the term, heaven forbid—something Will would say, and she yelled again. But she wouldn’t mourn in her apartment. Not the way it was. It wasn’t her, and Will would only want her to be herself.
She didn’t care that she had constant tears rushing down her cheeks. She didn’t care what she looked like. Grabbing a close-by pair of jeans, she flung them on, then a t-shirt too. Except when raising her right arm, she winced and yelped. There it was. Proof she wasn’t crazy. It was still bleeding too, her gunshot wound, which looked more like a wide and deep scratch, reminding her of what she’d had, where she’d been, what she’d lost.
Okay, she thought to herself, she had to get some stitches, then she would change everything. Her apartment, all the furnishing, everything had to go. Crap, what day was it? Her iPhone was on her nightstand, where it always was—no longer in a Greek box in New York two hundred years in the past. Grabbing it, she read that it was Thursday. Wednesday, yesterday, had been her day from hell before she’d met Will. She hadn’t missed a thing from her time. She sobbed again, thinking she’d call in sick at the university. Hell, she was going to the hospital anyway. She’d just call in sick today and tomorrow too. Because she needed time to change her apartment to match what had happened to her internally. It had to be her place now. Or maybe a place Will would have liked. A place he would have smiled in and curled up with her on the couch.
She nodded as she watched blood seep through her t-shirt, knowing she’d have to go to the emergency room. God, she hated doctors.