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They do not get to ruin my future, too.
“Lindsay had a nightmare and said your name.”
Five thousand electrodes charge my body and I sit up, a cold sweat suddenly exposed to air as my sheets roll off me. “She said my name?”
“I heard her, through the door. Then confirmed it with the CNA who was with her when she spoke. Lindsay spoke the word ‘Drew’ quietly, but he swears he heard it.”
I’m breathing heavily, still half in dreamland, processing Silas’ words. “I’ll be there soon.”
“No rush. She fell back asleep. But Harry and Monica have an eight a.m. meeting with the doctors and Harry wants you there.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. I was as surprised as you sound.”
“Gentian?” I go back to calling him by his last name. “You sound jaded. You’re too young and green to be jaded.”
“Jade is green, sir.”
If only he could see my eye roll. I grab clean underwear and head to my bathroom, my shoulder groaning in protest, my broken finger taped and throbbing. I stay on the phone as I strip down and turn on the shower.
“It’s four a.m., sir. No need to shower and come to the hospital this early.”
“Can’t sleep. I was planning to get ready and do some work.”
Hitting someone produces paperwork.
Killing people produces mountains of it.
“Need help?”
“No. Thanks, but...stay on duty. Watch her. Make sure she’s safe. I know we’re pretty sure we got everyone involved. Corning’s in custody, we have access to John, Blaine and Stellan’s electronic records, and Anya and Jane are being investigated. Still...”
“I know. It’s always the adversary you didn’t think about who gets you in the end.”
I chuckle at hearing my own words parroted back to me.
We end the call and I step into the steamy shower, avoiding the mirror and careful with my broken finger. All I’ll see is a bruised torso, cuts everywhere, and a fading black eye. The medical staff at the hospital considered me “lucky” after I described my sequence of injuries. I’ve been through worse.
This is like running a 5K vs. a full marathon on the spectrum of injuries.
Hot needles of shower spray wake me up, washing the dream off me. What did it mean? Was it a premonition, given Gentian’s call? I don’t believe in metaphysical bullshit. Give me facts.
Evidence.
Conclusive proof.
But the dream, the call, this feeling I can’t shake all add up to something.
I have no idea what.
In a few hours, I’ll find out.
I hate conference tables.
I hate conference tables in hospitals even more.
After my parents died in a car accident while I was in Afghanistan, my sister took care of all of the basics. I flew home for the funeral, but we spent one horrible afternoon in a hospital – not this one, thank God – discussing body transport to the crematorium, final billing issues for the medical care my parents did receive, and a host of bureaucratic details that turned the shock into something halfway comforting, a strange morphing that only rigid systems can achieve.
