Part 11
Clara opened her eyes and leaned closer to the plastic rim of the oxygen mask. “You found the door, Judge Evelyn,” she said, her voice steady and clear. “Now you just have to turn the handle and walk through.”
Inside the mask, Evelyn’s breathing hitched. The slow, rhythmic fog on the clear plastic broke into a rapid, uneven mist. Her eyelids fluttered. They squeezed shut tight, the muscles in her face contracting as if she were trying to push away a massive, physical weight.
Then, slowly, her eyes opened.
She blinked against the harsh fluorescent panels overhead, her pupils struggling to adjust to the sudden onslaught of light. She looked entirely disoriented, her gaze sweeping blindly across the acoustic tiles of the ceiling before she rolled her head heavily against the stiff hospital pillow. Her eyes drifted downward, finally locking onto the bright yellow coat and the small face hovering just inches away from the bed rail.
“Clara,” Evelyn rasped. Her voice was barely a whisper, the sound dry and cracked, like crushed gravel rubbing together.
“You’re awake,” Clara said, a quiet, brilliant smile breaking across her face. She didn’t shout or cry; she simply stated it as a fact that she had known was coming all along.
“What…” Evelyn swallowed hard, wincing as the dry air scraped her throat. “What happened? Where is this?”
Julian moved immediately, stepping between Clara and the bed. The shock that had momentarily paralyzed him vanished, instantly replaced by the rapid, clinical focus of an attending physician. He pulled a small penlight from the breast pocket of his scrubs.
“Evelyn, do not try to sit up,” Julian ordered, his tone firm. He gently held her chin, flashing the sharp beam of light into her left eye, then her right, checking for pupil dilation and symmetry. “You are in the Intensive Care Unit at Mercy Medical. You had an accident at the Oakhaven park. Your chair went over the embankment and you hit your head. You’ve been unconscious for several hours. How is your vision? Are things blurry?”
Evelyn lay perfectly still under his hands, her brow furrowing as she tried to process the information. She looked past the doctor, her eyes finding Clara again. “I was… it was freezing,” she murmured, the words sluggish. “It was so dark. I couldn’t find the way out. But then… I heard the music.”
“I told you the door was there,” Clara whispered, stepping back slightly to give the doctor room to work.
Julian clicked the penlight off and slid it back into his pocket. He needed to establish her Glasgow Coma Scale score immediately. “Evelyn, focus on me. I need to ask you some standard cognitive questions to check for swelling. Can you tell me your full name?”
“Evelyn Margaret Caldwell,” she answered, her voice gaining a fraction of strength.
“Do you know what year it is?”
“It’s two thousand…” She paused, her eyes narrowing in concentration, then gave the correct year.
“Who is the governor of Pennsylvania?” Julian pressed.
Evelyn answered flawlessly. Despite the heavy concussion and the lingering effects of whatever sedatives the EMTs had pushed, her analytical mind was sharp and intact.
Julian let out a long, ragged exhale, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders. “Your cognition is baseline. That is incredibly good news. We’re going to order another CT scan just to be absolutely certain there isn’t a slow bleed, but waking up coherent is the best indicator we could ask for.”
Evelyn didn’t look relieved. She frowned, her eyes darting around the room, tracking the IV lines and the pulse oximeter clipped to her finger. Then, her gaze dropped.
“Julian,” Evelyn said, interrupting his assessment. “Something is wrong.”
Julian’s hand shot toward the call button on the bed rail, anticipating a sudden drop in blood pressure or a seizure. “Are you experiencing nausea? Vertigo? A sharp spike in head pain? That’s entirely expected with severe head trauma. I can push something for the pain right now.”
“No,” Evelyn said. She shook her head slightly, gritting her teeth against the motion. “Not my head. I feel… strange.”
“Strange how?” Julian asked, his hand hovering over the button.
Evelyn took a deep, ragged breath, the oxygen mask fogging completely for a second. She used her elbows to try and prop herself up, forcing her chin down so she could look past the medical equipment resting on her chest. She stared at the thick white thermal blanket covering the lower half of the bed.
“I feel…” She stopped, her chest heaving. A look of sheer, unadulterated terror washed over her face. “Julian. I feel a burning sensation.”
Julian relaxed slightly, stepping back from the call button. “Evelyn, phantom nerve pain is a very common psychological response to physical trauma. Your body went through a violent shock today. The brain often misfires signals from the upper spine and interprets them as pain in the paralyzed extremities. It’s an echo.”
“It’s not an echo,” Evelyn said, her voice rising in pitch, cracking with a sudden, desperate panic. “It’s like… it’s like pins and needles. Like static electricity.”
Daniel took a step forward from the doorway, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Evelyn squeezed her eyes shut, her hands gripping the metal side rails of the bed so hard her knuckles turned stark white. She screwed up her face in an expression of intense, absolute concentration. The entire room went dead silent. The only sound was the mechanical hiss of the oxygen.
Slowly, agonizingly, the heavy thermal blanket draped over her right foot shifted.
It wasn’t a muscle spasm. It wasn’t the involuntary twitch of a dead nerve. The blanket visibly tented upward as her right foot flexed at the ankle.
Julian Mercer stopped breathing. He backed away from the bed, his mouth falling open, staring at the shifting blanket as if the laws of physics had just shattered in front of him.
A second later, the blanket over her left foot moved.