Chapter 3
Juniper
Later, when June tried to remember those first hours after her heart stopped beating and then she was brought back to life,
she would mostly have vague impressions of confusion, fear, pain.
Tiny shards of memory lingered: the shock of finding strangers peering over her; wondering why she was lying down on some
kind of stretcher in the elevator; why she had a mask over her face; where they were taking her.
Waking up to find herself here, in this hospital room, while someone sat in the corner and a nurse bustled around checking
her IV, the leads on her chest, her oxygen settings.
She wasn’t sure exactly what was happening. She only knew her chest ached like hell. Once she had suffered a cracked rib after
a hard fall during a race. This felt worse somehow.
The person in the corner didn’t move, even after the nurse left. She couldn’t quite see anyone, could only sense a presence
out of the corner of her gaze.
Could it be Adam? He was in Hong Kong this week, wasn’t he?
It was a woman, anyway, she realized. Not Adam. A small woman, at that.
Maybe it was Jade or Luce, one of her two closest girlfriends. Except the person whose face she couldn’t quite see didn’t
have Jade’s long, sleek black hair or Luce’s auburn curls. June shifted for a better look and saw a woman with honey-colored
hair caught up in a messy bun.
Recognition flared. She knew this woman. Her rather incompetent intern, Alison Wells, looking much more rumpled and casual in yoga leggings and a hoodie than she did in the business attire she usually wore.
What was she doing here?
June frowned, trying to grasp hold of her thoughts that seemed slippery and elusive.
She must have made some kind of noise. Alison uncurled from the chair, blinking her eyes open.
“Oh. Hi. You’re awake.”
“What happened? Why am I here?” Her voice came out in a raw croak. She desperately wanted a drink of water. On a rolling table
slightly out of reach of her arms, she could see a plastic cup with ice water and a straw.
Alison must have seen her looking toward it. Without being asked, she lifted it and held it out to June, who sipped at the
straw gratefully, then had to lower her head back to the pillow in exhaustion.
“You’re okay to drink. The nurse said it’s fine, otherwise I wouldn’t let you.”
“What happened to me?” she asked again.
Alison looked uncomfortable. “The doctors and nurses can explain it all better than I can.”
“Tell me,” she pressed, trying for her most commanding voice. It came out like a ridiculous little squeak.
Alison pursed her lips, looking undecided. “It would be better if you heard it from a medical professional.”
“I need to know. Please.”
The other woman sighed. “You had a cardiac event apparently. A pretty major one.”
That couldn’t be right. She was thirty-four years old. A very healthy thirty-four. She ran half-marathons. She couldn’t have had a cardiac event. Whatever that meant.
“No, seriously. What really happened?”
Alison’s expression melted into sympathy. “Exactly what I said. One moment we were talking in your office, the next you collapsed at your desk. You stopped breathing. It was terrifying.”
Her brain seemed to be slowly clicking back into action. The pieces were all there but she couldn’t quite fit them together.
“I... stopped breathing?”
Alison nodded. “You didn’t have a pulse and your heart wasn’t beating so I started CPR while Jason called 911.”
“That’s... impossible. No way.”
She worked out every day. She had been a high school track star and had run at the collegiate level. Her entire life was devoted
to fitness. For heaven’s sake, she was an executive vice president and head of marketing for Move Inc, which made the hottest
fitness devices on the market.
“Impossible,” she said again. Alison didn’t appear to be joking, though.
“They’re running tests to figure out what happened and are hoping to have some answers tomorrow. Meanwhile, you’re in the
cardiac intensive care unit. They are taking good care of you here.”
Nothing made sense. Why was Alison here? And why was she lying to June about why she was here?
She had a flash of memory of walking into her mother’s hospital room, seeing her bandaged and pale as death, eyes lifeless,
with tubes attached everywhere.
She remembered her bewildered and frightened fifteen-year-old self sobbing as she said goodbye while a social worker from
child protective services waited to take her to the next phase of her life.
Panic flared, harsh and noxious. “I can’t be here.” She started clutching at her leads and moved to get up.
“Hey. Don’t do that. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
Alison stepped closer to the bed and rested a hand on her arm. A nurse in blue scrubs also hurried in and adjusted some settings on the machines.
“You can’t do that. If you’re going to be agitated, we will have to ask your guest to leave,” she said, her voice stern, before
she walked away to the patient in the next bay over.
“Why are you here?” June asked, forcing herself to breathe through the ache in her chest.
“They needed someone to sign forms and give them information about you. We—Jason, Margaret and I—didn’t know who else to contact.
We couldn’t find Mr. Martinez so we called Mr. Greene and he asked one of us to handle it. He’s got meetings in the morning
but plans to fly home immediately afterward so he should be here tomorrow evening or the day after.”
Adam Greene and Rudy Martinez had been her dearest friends for years. Together, they had started Move Inc when they were all
in college and had built it from the ground up. Rudy was gay with a long-term partner. She and Adam had tried to date once
but quickly realized they were much better as friends than as lovers.
After more than fifteen years as friends, she saw Adam too clearly. He could be selfish and single-minded, with little patience
for the weakness of others. No doubt he had a list of her own faults that probably stretched much longer than his.
Still, they were the closest thing she had to family. She needed one of them here right now, not tomorrow when it was more
convenient.
“Do you have family in the area I could reach out to?” Alison asked, as if reading her thoughts. “I asked around the office
and neither Jason nor Margaret knew whether there was someone else we should be contacting.”
Despite the busy hospital and the activity she could see through the glass windows, she suddenly felt very alone.
What was new about that? She had been alone for years.
“No. I don’t have any family in the area and I don’t need you to call anyone.” She curled and uncurled her fingers against
the sheet. “This is all so stupid. I don’t need to be here. I’m perfectly fine.”
Again, she lifted her fingers as if to reach for the leads attached to her chest, but Alison placed a restraining hand on
her arm. “I know you’re upset. I’m sorry. This has no doubt been a shock. I mean, it’s not every day a person dies and is
brought back to life.”
If she had died, who would have grieved her death?
Adam and Rudy and his partner would. Her other friends, some of her coworkers. But that was about it.
The nurse bustled in again, this time holding a syringe.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself earlier. We had a bit of an emergency next door. Hi, Juniper. My name
is Katherine and I’ll be your nurse tonight. How are you feeling?”
Like she had been hit by a truck and then thrown over the side of a cliff.
“June. My name is June. I shouldn’t be here. This is a mistake.”
“I imagine all of this has been very upsetting. But you’ve got the finest cardiac team anywhere taking care of you and they
will get you sorted.”
She nodded, not sure what else to say.
“I’m going to give you some medicine now for the pain. You’ve got a cracked rib from the CPR, which I know must hurt like
the devil. It’s going to make you sleepy but that’s completely normal.”
She gave a comforting smile and pushed something into the IV hooked up to June’s arm.
As the medicine seeped through her blood, she felt almost instantly better. She was so very tired. She would sleep for a while
and maybe when she woke, she would find this was all a bad dream.
As she looked at Alison Wells, whose face was swirling in her vision now, June had the random thought that there was something she should be remembering about the other woman. Something important between them had happened or was supposed to happen today.
She couldn’t seem to grab hold of any of her increasingly slippery thoughts, so she simply closed her eyes and surrendered
to the inevitable.