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Goddamn it, she didn’t remember ever seeing the males before. “What about a picture from last night?”
“I don’t have one yet.”
John Matthew put his palm on her back and rubbed her shoulders. She didn’t want to look at him, except when she finally did, his face was grave, but not hiding disgust or anything. He was as he always had been, blue-eyed, dark-haired, strong-jawed—steady. At her six. No matter what.
“So I’ve got a question for you,” the Brother said over at the desk. “What the fuck’s going on?”
All she could do was shake her head. Back in the spring, she’d been so sure that when her nightmares had stopped—all that waking up on the attack, John having to hold her back, hold her down—she’d turned a corner in a good way, taken a positive step toward the kind of mental health that hadalways been out of reach for her, no matter how good things were going. Hell, even her aggression had improved at the club. She’d been proud of how much better she’d been tolerating the stupid—
Your grid is collapsing.
“I need a favor,” she heard herself say to Vishous. “I need… your help at sundown.”
SIXTEEN
THE HOSPITAL SMELLwas what brought him around.
Later, Gus would amend things into something romantic, but the truth of it was… that signature antiseptic-behind-the-fake-Florida scent was the trailhead he followed out of his darkness. At first, he hadn’t been able to track what had kindled his consciousness. One moment he was lights-out; the next, he had some awareness, his brain’s neuropathways starting to cough up a couple of signals.
And then he recognized the telltale hospital fragrance.Citrus II Germicidal Deodorizing Cleaner.
Which, according to the label—that he was somehow able to visualize—met the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s blood-borne pathogen standards for HIV, HBC, HCV, and HAV…—
Wait… what was he thinking about? Lemons…?
As his body floated along in a buffered state ofnumbness, his mind was like a kitten with a ball of string, batting back and forth with the smell thing, the label thing, and the intersections both had with his past. Except where was he in his own timeline? Was he in med school? First year during gross human anatomy? Or no… third and fourth year during core rotations when he was actually in a hospital, making rounds of the different departments even though he’d decided when he was ten years old he was going to be an oncologist…
How about residency at MGH? Or no, fellowship there? Or when he was a working doctor and a researcher in a lab, teasing out the molecular successes and failures of weaponizing the human immune system against rogue cells, the official names of which all ended in-oma.
Or was it more recently, when he—
As if the cognitive sifting was the choke to Gus’s internal engine, his eyes flipped open. Not that he got much from the lid lift. Everything was bright and blurry, like he was in a cloud. Was this Heaven in the Hallmark sense?
Beeping. Behind him.
Oh, he knew that sound. A heartbeat, nice and steady, if a little slow.
So this had to be Earth, and he was the patient, wasn’t he? Had he been in a car accident or a—
A blurry face appeared in the indistinct visualsoup, and he recognized who it was because of the crop of blond hair. And then came a voice. The voice.
Hervoice.
Catherine Phillips Phalen said roughly, “Oh, my God… you’re alive.”
“Gus is the name,” he croaked. “Not God. God’s more of… a job description.”
There was a pause. Then a chuckle. Then something soft and warm, a drop, hit his cheek. A tear? Was it hers… was it his…
“You really are back,” she whispered.
“Where… ’d… I go?”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“Feel… shit.”
“Yes, I would imagine you do.”
