Death Angel

Traumatic? Had it been? What had come before had been traumatic as hell, but her actual death…no. She couldn’t remember being impaled. She knew it had happened, had that hazy memory of seeing herself, but all in all she was glad she’d died, because otherwise she wouldn’t have seen Alban, she wouldn’t have known that wonderful place existed, that there was something else waiting out there. This life wasn’t all there was; there was more, much more, and when people spoke of death as "passing" they were exactly right, because the spirit passed on to that other level of existence. Knowing that was the most comforting thing she could imagine.

So a psychologist, Dr. Beth Rhodes, came several times to talk to her. She said to call her Beth. She was a pretty woman, but there was trouble in her marriage and she was truly more concerned with that than she was about any of her patients. Drea/Andie-or was it Andie/Drea? Which one was first, now?-thought Dr. Beth should take some time off and concentrate on what was important, because she loved her husband and he loved her, and they had two kids to consider, so they should really get their shit together and work things out, and then Dr. Beth would be able to give her full attention to her patients.

If she’d been talking, that’s what she would have said. But she felt no compulsion to answer Dr. Beth’s questions, at least not now. She still had some thinking to do.

For instance: no one knew who she was. As far as the world was concerned, Drea Rousseau/Andie Butts was dead. She was safe from Rafael, safe from the assassin. She truly could start anew, as the person she chose to be. That could be a problem, because one of the people who came regularly to her cubicle was a cop, a detective, who wasn’t investigating her for any crime or anything except driving a car with a tag that didn’t belong to that car, and not having a license, nothing of a hugely felonious nature, but still things that had to be resolved. She was also officially a Jane Doe, and he was as interested as the hospital staff in finding out who she was.

The day came when she was transferred from ICU to a regular hospital room. As her nurses got her ready for transport, removing tubes, chattering to her, telling her how great she was doing and that they’d miss her, suddenly she focused on one nurse in particular. Her name was Dina, and she was the quietest of the nursing squad, but she was invariably gentle and unhurried, and her concern was evident in her touch.

Dina was going to fall. Andie/Drea saw it happen. Not clearly, the surroundings were fuzzy, but she saw it. Dina was going to fall down some stairs…drab, concrete stairs, like the stairs in a hotel or in a…hospital. Yes. Dina was going to fall down the stairs here in the hospital. She would break her ankle, and that would be a bitch because she had a ten-month-old baby who could crawl at the speed of light.

She reached out and caught Dina’s hand, the first time she had initiated any interaction with them at all. The nurses looked at her in surprise.

She wet her lips, because after all this time she had almost forgotten how to form the words, the connection tenuous between her mind and her mouth. But she had to warn Dina, so she pushed harder and finally the words actually happened.

"Don’t…take…the…stairs," said Andie.

Chapter Nineteen

"I HEAR YOU’VE BEEN TALKING."

The charge came from the foot of the bed. Andie opened her eyes, and hovered for a moment between asleep and awake, reality and…other reality. Her perception of time, space, and what was real had been radically altered, the defining lines gone. Maybe with time, and once she no longer needed any painkillers at all, she would regain the sharpness of now, though she didn’t want to lose her sense of connection to the other place.

In the now she had to deal with the surgeon, Dr. Meecham, who was sprawling in a chair a couple of feet from the foot of her bed. His arms, big and muscular and hairy, were revealed by the short sleeves of his scrubs-and they were crossed over his chest, telling her he was feeling stubborn and in the mood for answers.

She ignored him for the moment, her gaze drifting to the windows. Sunlight poured through the glazed reflective glass, which made the sky look as though a thunderstorm were forming but gave her both sunlight and privacy. It was nice to have an actual room, to see the progression of sunlight to darkness, nice to have a little more privacy even though the nurses had the extremely annoying habit of leaving the door open. Someday soon she’d tell them to close it.

But not now. Not today. Telling them would require talking, and she couldn’t bring the words up. Speaking to Dina had been driven by need, and the effort had exhausted her. Answering the surgeon’s questions didn’t meet that level of need.

Besides, he’d cut down on her drugs while she still needed help battling the Great Bitch. Let him stew.

"You might be interested in what happened to Dina," he said.

Was she? She thought for a moment and decided that, yes, she was. She’d cared enough to speak, cared enough to make the words travel from her brain to her mouth, across an empty no-man’s-land. Slowly she brought her gaze back to him.

Despite his callousness with the drugs, she liked him. He had a calling, and he was ruthless about answering that call. He went into battle every day, plunging his hands into bloody body cavities and working to help people live, then doing what he had to do to get them back on their feet. So she would have liked a couple of more days of help in fighting the pain; weighed in the balance, she would rather have pain than develop a drug dependency. Maybe she’d forgive him.

On the other hand, he really needed to stop screwing around on his wife.

"Dina took the stairs anyway," he said, his sharp gaze watching her closely. "But she said she felt uneasy about what you said, so she was extra careful. She kept an eye out for anyone who might be hiding in the stairwell, and she held on to the stair railing. She usually runs down the stairs, but this time she held on to the railing. She was on the third flight when she slipped. If you hadn’t warned her, if she hadn’t been holding on, she’d have gone to the bottom of the flight and could have been really hurt. As it is, all she has is a mild ankle sprain."