Page 15 of Two Kinds of Stranger

She tried to speak, but her throat and her mouth were so dry. Elly tried to move her left hand, to gesture to her mouth, but found once again that it would not obey her. She was too weak to sit up. Too frightened to look. There was a strange sensation in that arm. Her left forearm and wrist felt so cold. Like it was stuck in a freezer.

Had she been in an accident?

Had she lost her left arm?

She motioned with her right hand, feeling the pull of the needle again, dragging the drip line. Her fingers touched her cracked lips. They felt like grade-five sandpaper.

The doctor nodded. He dabbed something cold on her lips. Ice maybe, or cool water captured in a linen cloth. It felt good. So soothing. Like drinking from a cold mountain stream after days in a hot desert.

‘Hos. . .hospit-al. . .’ Elly said, her throat aching.

‘That’s right. You’re in hospital. You’re in Mount Sinai and you’re going to be okay now. My name is Dr. Jones...’

‘How. .. Wh-whe-whe-when?’

‘It’s okay. You’ve been here for four days. You’re going to be just fine.’

Elly blinked. Licked her sore lips. And, like a sudden flood, her recent memories came rushing back, her consciousness filled.

James, her new husband. The love of her life. Seeing him in bed with her best friend, not six months since her wedding day.

The explosion of attention.

The hurt.

The betrayal.

Even though he disgusted her, Elly still loved her husband. That’s why it hurt so much. She was not enough for him. He wanted the lifestyle she could offer, but he didn’t want her. It wasn’t like that when they were first dating. She met James through a dating app. They got talking and he seemed wonderfully, exceptionally, beautifully normal. He liked nice clothes, working out, books, movies, and he had wit. No baggage. No debt. He wasn’t an asshole–something increasingly rare in online dating. He wasn’t controlling. He was supportive. Clean. A junior trader on Wall Street with a career path, good teeth and a health plan.

They had been dating a month when Elly introduced James to her friends. At first, Harriet couldn’t understand why Elly was so into him. Harriet wasn’t into normal guys–she wanted someone special. It was James’s normality that made him special, at least to Elly. She didn’t know exactly when James and Harriet began seeing each other on the side, but she guessed it had happened not long after James proposed.

Harriet always wanted what she couldn’t have.

She’d met Elly during a shoot for fashion week. Elly, being a social-media influencer, and Harriet a catwalk model, they had hit it off right away. They had gone out for cocktails after the shoot and neither of them could remember much about the evening except that they were clearly destined to be best friends. Harriet never felt human to Elly–she was some kind of goddess who didn’t play by the rules of society, work, culture or anything else. And being around someone like that often felt like carrying a burning torch. It lit up the world around you, but you realized that sooner or later the torch was either going to burn out, or it would burn you.

And now the shame.

The drunken phone calls to James that he didn’t answer.

All of it hit Elly again, afresh, in milliseconds, and with it came a tsunami of emotions.

And then the man on the subway stairs. Logan. The man with the scar on his chin.

The broken yellow suitcase. His apartment. The identical broken suitcases in his trash bags. The water. The tiny pinprick hole in the carton.

Vomiting. Passing out on the street.

Elly felt as if she might throw up again.

‘There are men here from NYPD,’ said Dr. Jones. ‘They have to speak to you. . .’

Good, thought Elly. She’ll tell them what happened. She must’ve been poisoned. That man with the suitcase and the broken ankle, he tried to poison her. God knows what would’ve happened if she hadn’t made it out of that apartment.

She shifted her weight, tried to put her hands on the bed to sit up, but her left arm wouldn’t move. Her head throbbed violently at the effort.

‘My a-arm,’ said Elly, still unable to move it.

‘I’ve told them they should wait, but I can’t stop them talking to you,’ said Dr. Jones.