Lisa was looking at her like she’d done something brave. “I think you’ll like it.”
She wouldn’t know if she didn’t try. “Maybe.”
She picked up her fork. Did she eat it with a fork or a spoon? What was proper?
Maybe when one was eating bayou food in a restaurant that sported a big old playpen in the middle of the dining room floor where the patrons let their kids play, it didn’t matter.
She took a bite as her sister started talking about plans for the town picnic.
Jambalaya, it turned out, was delicious.* * *• • •
The room was incredibly white. White sheets. White walls. A white light fixture on the ceiling that shone brilliant white light. Oddly, she found it soothing, the same way she found the smell of bleach calming. The hospital was her place, the place where she was in control. She glanced down at her clipboard and ensured that the patient had everything the doctor had ordered. Room 27 was dealing with gastrointestinal issues she was fairly certain would lead to gall bladder surgery later on that night. She understood they needed an ultrasound and possibly a CT scan, but when it looked like a duck and the patient was screaming and holding his upper right quadrant, it was usually gallstones.
She chuckled as she glanced down at her watch. The night shift usually went by at breakneck pace, and tonight was no different. Big-city emergency rooms were pretty crazy any night, but on a Saturday the hits never stopped coming. She’d already missed her break. Damn it. She pushed through the doors and looked around for Maryanne.
Maryanne would cover for her while she choked down a yogurt. She would skip it but light-headedness was not a good thing for an ER nurse.
She stopped because something was wrong. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to be in Louisiana.
A chill snaked over her skin as she looked across the floor and saw a man entering with a ball cap pulled low on his head.
This was the moment when she would turn and find Maryanne and the man with the ball cap would step inside the room. He would lock the door and then he would pull a gun and fire into her friend’s torso, hitting her in the right lung.
Her feet started to move. No. She wasn’t going that way. She wasn’t going there again.
She screamed but her body kept moving and she knew where this would end.* * *• • •
Lila came awake on a gasp, reaching for the light to prove she was exactly where she was supposed to be. She was in Papillon. She was in her new house, with all the collections of crap she was going to have to go through. It was okay to be here.
It was okay.
Her hands were shaking and she forced herself to take a deep breath.
When would she stop dreaming about it? When would the sight of that man fade from her memory? Sometimes she worried she was doing nothing but marking time to that moment when she could close her eyes and not remember his face.
Three twenty-four a.m. The old-school alarm clock on the bedside table showed the time in red block numbers.
She laid back and wiped away the tears.
Meditation. That’s what her therapist had told her to do. Cleanse her mind. Let it go blank. Think of nothing at all.
How the hell was she supposed to think about nothing? Every time she tried to make her mind some kind of blank space, it crept in. When she tried to make her inner vision blank, she could smell the coppery aroma of blood. When she got that scent out of her head, she could hear the way a lung sounded when it had been split by a bullet. When the sound was gone, she could taste bile in the back of her throat.
She sat back up.
She could move five hundred miles away but it meant nothing at all if she’d brought her ghosts with her. She’d dumped most of her life, an enormous amount of the things she’d bought and collected because she’d thought things made up a life. She’d managed to fit everything she now owned in her medium-sized overpriced trendy crossover, but she’d forgotten to dump her memories.
She tried to settle back down in the surprisingly comfy bed and listened to the fan spinning over her head, trying to let the sound lull her back to sleep.
She’d hoped tonight would be different than all the others she’d been through since that terrible moment. She’d hoped she would close her eyes satisfied with the knowledge that she’d begun something.
All she could think about was that young woman with the fractured arm and the big doe eyes. No one would listen to her. No one would believe her until there was a body to deal with, and then they would all shake their heads and talk about how Maryanne should have spoken up sooner, should have done something.