Never Wake (3 page)

Emma couldn’t keep the side of her mouth from quaking at that comment. Dana glared at her until the urge to laugh faded away. Dana began to laugh and Emma joined her. The laughter was temporary relief from the stress they had both been under since Ida’s death a year ago.

“You’re getting too good with those looks,” Emma said.

“I learned from the best.”

“The best” had been Emma’s grandmother. Ida could wither the backbone of known gang members with that look. Emma had seen it on several occasions. Joe Harmon would not have dared throw fecal matter on anyone during Dr. Ida Glass’ watch.

Ida had given up a lucrative partnership in Salem, Oregon, to move to Portland to open the clinic. It had been her life’s work. Although Emma had always planned to help her grandmother, Ida’s sudden death from a heart defect left Emma with a decision to make.

Either she could keep the clinic open or she could close it and leave the hundreds of people they helped each month with no place to go. The decision hadn’t been a hard one. Now here she was, thirty-one years old, and expected to run the largest charity clinic in the city. She couldn’t even keep the talent.

“I must not be that good because you laughed in that poor woman’s face.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Emma said. “I couldn’t stop laughing at her. I think I’m just tired.”

“Do you—think she’ll call you after she’s calmed down?”

The question was worded too casually. What Dana wanted to ask was if Emma “sensed” whether Sharon was still interested in her. Dana was the only non-family member who knew about the ability Emma and Ida shared. And it made her uncomfortable. Because of Dana’s reaction, Emma had made a vow to keep the ability to herself until she met the person she would spend the rest of her life with. That person would have to be strong enough to accept her and her special ability.

“No, nothing other than her anger and embarrassment. But that’s to be expected, I guess.” Dana looked up from her legal pad and Emma saw the look of sadness in her eyes.

“I wish that could have worked out for you,” she said.

Emma smiled. “I do, too. In more ways than one, but that thing between us was just physical.”

“Dr. Phil says that attraction is the first step in many relationships.”

“I thought your husband asked you to stop watching that show.”

Dana sniffed. “He did, but he’s not the boss of me.”

Emma grinned. Dana and her husband were very religious people. Because of that, it had taken Emma years to tell Dana that she was a lesbian. Dana had already suspected as much and had no issues with it. In fact, almost every other week, she still demanded to know when Emma was going to settle down. The only strain between them had come when Dana found out that Emma, like Ida, could sometimes pick up on other people’s feelings. Ida called it being hyperaware, but even though Dana had never said so, Emma knew Dana felt like it was eavesdropping—an invasion of privacy. Emma didn’t disagree, but it wasn’t something she could just turn off.

“What do you think of this?” Dana pushed the legal pad across the desk. Emma read the ad for a new physician. Her stomach lurched at the figure Dana had written. Although the figure was low for a qualified doctor, it would require her to go to the drastic measure of asking her parents to help make ends meet until the grant came through for the following year. Her grandmother had been a very capable physician, not to mention a phenomenal fund-raiser. Emma was neither of those.

Emma ground the heel of her palm between her eyebrows. “I think we’ll be lucky if we get a doctor with any experience at all.”

“I thought you were going to ask one of the doctors to prescribe something for that.”

Emma shook her head. “Nah, nothing much works except sleep.”

“You going to call them?”

Emma stood, her feet and back protesting all the way. “Them” was the code name for her parents. “Yeah, I’ll have to, but not tonight. Tonight, I’m going to go home, take a hot bath, maybe eat a little something, and get in bed with a good book. And if I’m lucky Dr. Edwards—a more socially conscious Dr. Edwards—will come and ravish me in my dreams. See you tomorrow.”

“Girl, you’re a nut,” Dana said, and her laughter followed Emma to the office door. “Try not to worry about it tonight. Something will come up; it always does.”

Emma held up her hand and waved it without looking back. Something always did come through for her grandmother. But for Emma, it seemed like it was one setback after another, and now she would have to swallow her pride and go running to her parents for the bailout.

She remembered she had forgotten to exchange her lab coat for her Columbia jacket, but decided she would pick it up the following morning. She was just too exhausted to go back for it. She pushed through the front door, imagining the look of I-told-you-so on her mother’s face as Emma explained why she would be needing a small loan—one she could never pay back—to keep the clinic open another year.

Emma let out a frustrated breath. Worrying about the impending conversation was making her head hurt more.
This has got to be the suckiest day in recorded history
. She stopped in front of her 1982 Mercedes Benz and hunted around in her backpack for her keys.

The car was a gas guzzler. All conversations with her mother began and ended with, “Why don’t you trade that tank in for something with better gas mileage, maybe a hybrid or something? You look like a child in it, anyway.” She had to agree with her mother there. The car didn’t fit her, but it was yet another part of her grandmother that she couldn’t bear to part with.

By the time she found her keys, her shivering and the throbbing in her head made it difficult to fit the key in the door lock. She turned it, first one way and then the other. “Damn it, not again,” she said under her breath. She tried it two more times but the lock didn’t budge. This was the second time since she’d inherited the car that she’d had frozen door locks. She would have to slide through the passenger side. She turned to do just that when a blinding pain shot from the back of her head to the front.

She stumbled, dropped her bag, and backed up until the handle of the Mercedes pressed into her back. Her hand went to the warm area at the back of her head. Even before she brought her hand around to see it, she smelled the blood. Working in the clinic for so many years had given her a cast-iron stomach, but her stomach lurched now as she stared at her blood-covered hand.

A man—a shaky, shadow of a figure—stood in front of her wearing what looked like a large rain poncho. He was holding something in his hand. A bottle? A brick? What was it? She squinted into the darkness trying to make it out. For reasons she didn’t comprehend, it seemed important that she know what he’d hit her with.

The back of her neck tingled and her legs felt numb. How many times had she been hit? She should have known. She should have sensed…

Her eyes were still glued to the object in the dark figure’s hand and, almost as if a microphone were zeroed in on it, she heard her own blood as it dripped from the brick onto the ground.

“No,” she said with her hand out in front of her.
This can’t be happening. It’s a nightmare, Emma—just a nightmare
.

“All you had to do was give me a little something,” he said.

“Give you…” Her words were slurred, but in the instant before Joe Harmon hit her again, it unfolded behind her closed eyelids like a movie projected on a white screen. She saw Sharon tossing her lab coat into the trash as she walked out the door and she saw herself as she walked into the parking lot wearing her own white lab coat. In the dim light, she and Sharon would be hard to tell apart. But why hadn’t she sensed danger before she walked into the darkened parking lot?

She was hit twice more before she lost count and had to block out the sound.

“Wake up, Emma…” The voice was too calm. Was it her grandmother’s?
No, it can’t be. She’s dead
.

“Just wake up now. Open your eyes.”

“Emma? Wake up!”

Nickel-colored light spilled through the blinds and onto the floor. By the time Troy admitted to herself that no one would be coming to check on her, it had pooled like mercury in the center of the room. She thought she might have slept after trying to sit up earlier, but it was possible that she had fainted from the pain.

When she’d moved out of her foster home on her eighteenth birthday, she had spent half of the five-hundred-dollar check from the state of Oregon on a deposit for her two-room cottage and a can of “oops paint” from The Home Improvement Co-op. The label on the top of the can had said sunflower yellow, but the paint inside was the color of a Hershey chocolate bar, or as Patricia liked to call it “shit brown.” Troy had painted the walls twice. Always in that same color palette. She couldn’t bring herself to change it to something more cheery.

But these walls were painted institution white. It felt like a hospital, but she couldn’t be sure. There were no decorative pictures and no medical equipment, just a bed and a chair. Fear, anxiety, and desolation flooded over her. Now, this she was familiar with. Something had happened to her. She didn’t know what. The last thing she remembered was visiting Patricia, but her memory went blank after that.

She flexed her toes first, followed by her calves, thighs, back, biceps, and hands. One by one, she assessed each body part until she was certain that, although sore in places, everything seemed to be in good working order. She tried to convince herself to try to get up again, but the memory of the pain kept her shackled to the bed.
Come on, Troy, you can’t just lie here
. The truth was she wouldn’t have minded just lying there. Someone would remember to check on her soon. But until they did, she wouldn’t be expected to hold a conversation, or work, or even look like she was interested in what the world was doing around her.

But the truth was she couldn’t afford to stay in this bed any longer that she already had. She was a private contractor, responsible for purchasing her own health insurance. Therefore, she had none. She couldn’t afford the premiums; she didn’t know of any bike messengers who could.

She’d been lucky—at least the other messengers thought she was. Troy knew it was more than just luck. She obeyed the traffic laws—for the most part—and she knew Portland like the back of her hand. Still, even with being smart, careful, and yes, maybe a little bit lucky, she had been doored twice when careless people had swung open car doors in her path.

“All right, enough of this,” she said aloud. “Time to get out of here before Raife sends out a search party.” She eased up on her elbows, wincing ahead of time against the pain. It did come, but it was already ebbing away, like the tail end of a bad hangover.

Good. She sat up with her head resting on the headboard for a few minutes longer until a new ache in her shoulder blade and neck told her it was time to sit all the way up. She did so cautiously. Her back was a little stiff, but it often got that way when she lay in one position for too long. She also felt a little feverish. But none of that was unbeatable. The last thing she remembered was riding home after work, but nothing after that.

She seemed to be fine, but if some idiot had doored her again, or if someone had walked out into her path, it was no telling how her bike had fared. If Dite was a goner, then she would be out of work for God knew how long until she could cobble together another bike.
Which means you better stop the meter on this hospital bill right now, Troy Nanson.

Galvanized, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stretched, first her toes, then her calves until she felt confident enough to stand. The carpet was a gray, rough, low-pile industrial—the type used in public places because it didn’t show stains. She clutched the headboard and tried not to think about the substances hospitals would want to hide with dark carpets. The muscles in her quads and calves quivered from the effort of holding her weight. What the hell had they given her? Her legs were her livelihood. They were capable of giving her upward of seventy miles per day, if she asked them to. They just needed to give her a few feet now. She took one step toward the door and then another.

Her legs felt stronger with every step she took. Whatever she had been given was wearing off a lot faster than she would have expected. She hesitated and put her hand on the door. She pushed through the door and peered out into the fluorescent light of the hallway. There were two doors to her left and three to her right. At the end of the corridor was a red exit sign.

Unease caused her to glance behind her once before entering the hall. She was very tempted to peek into some of the rooms along the way but decided not to. There would be someone at the front desk and she would explain that she felt much better and would like to check herself out. As for the bill—if they were lucky and reasonable, with the interest, she’d have them paid off in about thirty years. She almost snickered but didn’t quite make it.

She rounded a corner and found herself in a small waiting room, half of which was taken up by a crescent-shaped front desk. The desk and the small room behind it were empty.

The clock on the wall confirmed that it was early, but not so early that a hospital wouldn’t be staffed unless… Troy walked toward a set of double doors marked “Conference Room.”

Of course. How many times had she walked into the deserted lobby of an office because there was some kind of meeting? That’s why she couldn’t find anyone; they were all in a meeting or something. “That’s just too damn bad,” she said, and ordered her sore muscles to move.