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Eden smelled a lie. “Why an action plan when you keep saying I’m healed?”
“We...” The senior attending cleared his throat. “want you to have an MRI so we can see if the outside reflects the inside.”
And waste resources? Public hospitals didn’t do that. “You want to see my insides? See if I’m normal. See if I’m...” She couldn’t say. Something had happened to her, and she didn’t know how. Didn’t know what. However, something was different. Monumentally different. And the doctors wanted to know what.
Eden didn’t have an answer.
“We’d also like permission to take samples,” the senior physician continued.
“Samples? I’m sure you took blood samples.”
The doctors glanced at each other. “We want permission to extract tissue samples.”
Tissue. Samples. The image of a power drill to her liver exploded in Eden’s mind. She grasped the rails. Shook them as if she could bend the bar and break free. When that didn’t work, she scooted to the bottom of the bed and jumped off.
“Ms. Brooks!”
“Eden, please!”
“Let us explain.”
Explain how they wanted to turn her into an experiment. No. Thanks. Her clothes were gone, in tatters in the garbage. She had her shoes and her backpack. That’s all she needed to get the hell out of there and go home.
She grabbed both and ran. A security guard got in her way, along with a nurse. They grabbed her arms. She didn’t fight. Fighting could get her Baker Acted. That meant involuntary detention in a mental institution for forty-eight hours, minimum. She’d be at their mercy.
Loudly, she proclaimed. “I’m leaving on my own free will against medical orders. I do not consent to any procedures. I am not ill physically or mentally. Detaining me further, against my will, is illegal and I will sue. Now, take your hands off me.”
Dr. Navel motioned for her to be released. Hands dropped from her body. Eden didn’t wait for another word. She rushed out of the hospital and didn’t stop until the sidewalk warmed the soles of her feet. Shoes, then her cell phone. An Uber was only five minutes away and still not close enough. But it would do to get her the hell away from there.
Chapter 4
The driver had no questions when he picked her up outside the ER. Guess it wasn’t the first time he’d picked up a person dressed in nothing more than a hospital gown.
Five bucks to drive her to her car two minutes away. She could’ve walked it, but nope. She had the driver wait until she’d climbed behind the wheel and cranked the engine. The damn thing started like it hadn’t died on her hours ago.
Thirty minutes later she parked in front of her apartment, next to Harry’s Toyota. Pre-dawn and the sprawling apartment complex was silent. The well-lit streets empty. She jogged up to the third floor, feeling invigorated when she should be exhausted. As soon as her head hit the pillow, she’d be dead. Yet, right now, she could run a marathon.
She needed to vent, get everything that happened off her chest. Harry was the best person to bend an ear. She didn’t judge; she listened. And nothing surprised her. As a tattoo artist, she’d seen it all and took it in stride. People were weird, nasty, psychopathic, hypocrites. But she loved her profession, and she needed a paycheck. So, she wielded her tattoo gun and kept her opinions to herself. Being a free spirit made it easy.
Eden knocked and eased Harry’s bedroom door open. The ambient light from her computer screensaver showed her bestie sprawled on her bed, covers bunched to the side, a string of drool connecting her mouth to her pillow.
Eden didn’t have the heart to wake Harry to listen to her insane story when she’d worked twelve-hour shifts for the last seven days. The girl was exhausted. Eden could wait until the sun was up. She closed the door and retreated to the bathroom for a long shower. Blood caked her skin, her hair. Every inch of her needed to be scrubbed.
She stripped and left it all in a pile in the corner, then she climbed under the cold spray. She hated cold showers but couldn’t wait to get clean. The water heated soon enough. Then she took her time soaping every inch of her body. Her hands trailed over her skin — abdomen, arms, anywhere those sharp claws touched. She absorbed the sensory input, telling her she was whole.
How could that be when claws had pierced her flesh? Drew blood until she was woozy from the loss.
A demon had attacked her. Maybe an angel had saved her? Though she remembered many details, the important ones were foggy. His face. Yes. Every second that passed, she was more certain the thing that attacked her was a man. Or at least male.
It was the dominance he exuded. His overwhelming presence as he tried to end her life. The seething rage seeping from his pores, wrapping around her throat and stealing her breath.
He had wanted her dead. Yet, she lived to take a shower in her home. She hadn’t a defense against him. By all rights, she should be in the morgue, not standing under the scalding water.
My tat! She’d completely forgotten about it. She reached around, jerked this way and that way, trying to feel her back. The plastic shielding was gone. Had the doctors removed it?
Eden turned the water off. It had to be one hundred degrees in the tiny bathroom. Still, she shivered as if it were the Arctic Circle and not Florida in August. She stepped out of the tub, wiped away the condensation on the mirror and twisted around for a view of her back. The intricate details were stunning. The design made it look like a doorway to another world.
Healed. Her back was healed, just like the rest of her. None of the normal scarring, peeling, not even a bit of tenderness. Just a brand-new tattoo on smooth, pale skin. None of it made any sense. Jesus! What the hell was happening to her?
