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Beep.Beep.Beep.
The low, slow rhythm seeps into my subconscious, tickling a dark corner of my brain. It’s not the sound of my alarm. Maybe it’s my ringtone? I have no idea what that sounds like; not only because I usually have my cell on vibrate, but because no one has the number to my burner.
It’s annoying, whatever it is.
I grunt and roll over to bury my head in the gap between the pillows, but something tugging on my hand stops me.
Only a few seconds pass before the pain starts. It sears from one temple to the other and snaps across my forehead like an elastic band.
What the—?
I pop an eyelid open and sweep the room. White ceilings, white bed sheets. Clinical and sterile. Even with blurry eyes and a pounding head, I know I’m not in my apartment. In fact, I don’t remember getting home at all.
I was at the port.
The memory opens the floodgates in my foggy brain, and everything rushes back to me.
The orange sky.
The deafening explosion.
The heat.
The beeping gets faster, and I have just enough sense to realize it’s because the clip on the end of my finger is monitoring my heart rate.
Light, quick footsteps approach, and then a woman appears in the doorway.
“You’re all right, you’re all right.” She strides into the room with the gait of a leisurely Sunday stroll. She stops at the end of the bed and studies my chart, giving me a chance to study her. White hair swept into a tight bun, middle-aged, and plump in a way that makes the buttons down the front of her uniform sit in a zig-zag. She’s the type of woman parents tell their children to seek out in the park if a creepy man approaches them.
She must be a nurse, which means I’m in the hospital.
“What happened?” Well, that’s what I try to say. It comes out in a garbled groan and ignites a trail of fire up my throat.
Her gray eyes snap up to me, amused. “Save it, sweetie. I’ll get you some water in a second. I’m Minnie, the charge nurse here at Devil’s Hollow Hospital. And you are…” She glances back at the clipboard and her expression lights up. “Ooh! A Jane Doe! How exciting.”
I blink. Is it?
She breezes over to the side table and pours a glass of water from a jug. “Easy does it,” she says, watching me drink the liquid as fast as I can in an attempt to quell the fire. “All that screaming has made your throat dry,” she tuts. “They could hear you in Canada.”
My eyes feel like they’re going to pop out of my head. Screaming? Why the hell would I be screaming?
“There was a little accident at the port, my dear. Your notes say you were struck by a stack of falling boxes, and you’ve taken a particularly nasty blow to the head.”
She tugs a pen light from her breast pocket and does a quick sweep of my eyes with it. Pulls out the IV, and puts a fresh bandage on the back of my hand. “Doesn’t look like a concussion, but we’ll be monitoring you for a little while, all right?”
But I’m not listening. Can’t. Because all I can feel is my own plea on my lips and all I can see is a hazy orange heat distorting the cold black sky.
I asked for a sign that I’d lost my luck and I received a full fireworks display.
I drop my head against the pillow, feeling the ice-cold hand of realization pressing down on my windpipe.
If I don’t have luck, what do I have?
“Okay, sweetie. I need to do my rounds, but I’ll come and check on you in a few. Rest up, okay?” With a soft pat on my shoulder, she bustles out into the brightly lit corridor, a hearty whistle floating after her.
Only one beat passes before a wave of guilt breaks over me. It snatches the air from my lungs and I slump down, resting my thumping head on my pillow.
Logically, I know my asking for a sign didn’t cause the explosion, but I can’t shake the feeling it was somehow my fault anyway. My brain forms an image of the port worker. One minute he was walking toward me in a halo of headlights, and the next, he was just gone.
