Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Marisol looked behind her the way she had in the trauma room when the woman had woken up. There was nothing there. Whatever her patient was seeing had to be a hallucination. Marisol didn’t see anything, and obviously no one else had either.
“What are you seeing?” Marisol asked, mind buzzing with potential brain injury symptoms. There had to be something they’d yet to find. Once they had a diagnosis they could do more than keep this poor woman under observation.
“Wings,” she replied, like she couldn’t believe it herself.
“Are they still there?” Marisol reached for the penlight in the ample pocket of the fresh scrubs she’d changed into.
She shook her head. “It was only when you touched me.”
Marisol approached. “May I touch you again?”
She nodded like she was still too stunned to speak.
Looking at her smartwatch, Marisol pressed two fingers to the inside of her patient’s wrist. Ten seconds in she already knew her pulse was too low. Agitated as she was, she shouldn’t have the resting heart rate of an Olympic athlete.
“Do you see them now?” Marisol glanced up from her watch.
Disappointed, she shook her head. “I can’t remember a damn thing about witches,” she lamented. “Obviously you’re some kind of healer,” she added. “When you touched me just now, I felt so much better.” She flexed her hands, looking at them like they belonged to someone else.
Marisol clicked on her penlight, checking the woman’s pupils. They contracted normally. “I’m just a regular nurse, no special talents,” she joked, remaining calm. “But human touch can be very powerful medicine.”
Marisol ran through a basic neurological exam, assessing her cognitive function. No obvious impairments apart from the lower body paralysis. But her memory issues were still extensive. Worried by the hallucinations and serious talk of witches, Marisol began a different battery of tests.
“Do you ever hear voices that other people don’t hear?” Marisol asked, watching her reaction closely.
“Only my inner monologue, which is currently screaming obscenities at this entire situation.” She looked down at her legs.
Marisol pressed on, careful to maintain a non-threatening demeanor. “Do you ever feel like your thoughts are being controlled by someone else? Or that someone is putting thoughts into your head?”
“What the hell kind of questions are these?” she snapped. “I was kidding about the monologue, poor choice on my part, but I didn’t make up the damn wings.”
“There’s no need to get upset,” Marisol said, voice slow and steady.
“I’m living an actual fucking nightmare.” She threw her head back on the pillow.
“Tell me?—”
“Marisol. My mental faculties are intact,” she insisted. “I mean other than the memory thing,” she conceded before changing tactics. “How good are you at your job?”
“You’re in good hands if that’s what?—”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m not talking about me.” She sat up, dragging herself up to a seated position more easily than she had before. “I don’t know how they rank nurses, Lilith knows I would never be caught in one of these places of my own doing. The stench alone.” She brought herself back to the point like it took effort and Marisol made a note of that. “Are you like a blue ribbon nurse? Accolades? Awards?”
Marisol was happy to talk about anything that prolonged her opportunity to observe her patient. “I’ve won nurse of the year four times in the last seven years.”
“Is that like a record or something?”
Clearing her throat, Marisol was hesitant to respond. She didn’t want to feed any delusions, but she didn’t see the harm in the truth. “It is, yes.”
“Has a patient ever died on your watch?”
“You don’t have to worry about dying,” Marisol promised. “Your injuries are serious, but we have no reason to think they’re life threatening.”
Her patient’s lips flashed into a momentary smirk. “I don’t fear the reaper, darling. Answer the question.” After a beat, she added, “Please.”
“Of course, we all lose patients.” Marisol sat at the edge of the bed in an attempt to keep their energy loose and relaxed despite the stressful topic. “Everyone has a natural end?—”
“Well, almost everyone.” She chuckled. “And that’s not what I meant. I should have been more specific. Has a patient ever died while you were in the room with them? While you were actively rendering care? Has anyone ever died on your literal watch?”
“I’ve been a nurse for nearly ten years. Unfortunately I can’t recall every patient I’ve seen. The ER is a busy place and we get a lot of people that we just can’t help,” Marisol explained, hoping that would move them to another topic so she could continue to rule out reasons for her patient’s situation.
“Fine.” Her big brown eyes were alive with something new. “Think of one single person who has died in your arms. Certainly that must be a traumatic memory for someone in your profession. Who was the first person you couldn’t save while you were in the room?”
Marisol tried to remember. There had been many patients that they’d tried to save but couldn’t. All she could remember were the ones that arrived at the hospital already dead. The ones that didn’t survive surgery or the ICU—places Marisol didn’t usually go.
“You can’t, can you?” she asked, eyebrows raised and dripping with arrogance.
Marisol stood.
“Wait, don’t leave,” her patient begged. “Maybe we can figure it out together. Something has to put all my puzzle pieces back in order. Maybe if we?—”
“I’m going to be back to check on you.” Marisol stepped back, a mass of nervous energy rotating in her chest. She was uncomfortable. She had to go. Needed a second to think. “Don’t get out of bed again,” she warned before disappearing behind the curtain.
“I can show you?—”
Cold sweat prickled on Marisol’s skin as she fled the room, her mind racing to make sense of the impossible. People came into the ER broken, bleeding, clinging to life by a thread. People died. It was a fact of life, a harsh reality of her job.
And yet, she couldn’t recall a single time she’d ever had to record a time of death. But that couldn’t be right. Could it?