9. - – Elias
CHAPTER NINE
-
ELIAS
It had already been twenty-four hours since Clara vanished.
My eyes remained fixated on the hall, anchored by the hope she would appear.
At first I hoped that maybe she’d been sidetracked and fallen asleep in one of the designated rooms. Maybe she was just exhausted and too tired to close her trunk or grab her phone.
But the more I tried to build a sanctuary of excuses, the more the truth pushed through. She was gone.
While they should have been searching for her, the detectives were too busy watching me. The air in my hospital room grew tight with their silent accusations.
Apparently, someone thought I was capable of vanishing from a hospital bed with a bum arm, or placing secret calls on a non-existent cell phone.
Isolation was my only company as I didn't dare use the monitored hospital lines.
Their logic was as hollow as the silence they kept when I woke up crying for my daughter, leaving me to call out for a ghost that may never be found.
I would never forgive them if they didn’t find Clara.
The door hit the wall with a violent crack, jolting me back to what was actually happening around me.
A man’s hand gripped the frame as he followed the momentum in, offering a hurried apology about getting used to these heavy doors.
He began to introduce himself, but his voice was just background noise, a low hum couldn't penetrate my fog. He wasn’t Clara, which was all that mattered.
He seemed pleasant enough, certainly a step up from Nurse Grumpy, but a dark thought took root: how long until he vanishes, too?
If someone was thinning out the people in my life, he was just going to end up another target.
Though, if Nurse Grumpy was next on the list, I doubted I’d find the breath to protest.
Stop, Elias, you can’t think that way or they’ll catch you in something you aren’t a part of.
The new nurse cinched the blood pressure cuff around my bicep, the velcro scritching in the quiet room.
He was rough, a stark contrast to Clara’s touch.
At easily six-foot-three, he was a looming presence, with a face weathered by years that likely mirrored my own.
There was something in the set of his jaw and the way he moved that tugged at a frayed wire in my memory.
I watched him intently, desperate to catch a spark of recognition, terrified the accident hadn't just broken my body, but had wiped away all the faces of my past.
He cleared his throat while he began to pump the cuff. “So, I hear you were in a pretty bad accident. You’re lucky all you walked away with was a broken rotator cuff.”
I let out a dry, hollow chuckle. What about the concussion and amnesia?
“Yeah,” I muttered, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Extremely lucky.” I glanced at his chest, catching the name on his badge.
Josh. “So, Josh,” I drew out his name in one long breath.
“How long have you been in medicine?” If I was going to be stuck with him, I might as well play the part.
Maybe a bit of forced rapport would earn me an extra juice cup or two.
That would be a small victory against the endless cycle of lukewarm tap water since the ice machine here always seemed to be broken or out of ice.
Is there only one ice machine in this entire place?
Josh smiled. “Actually, I’m fairly new.” He paused and I watched his eyes searching for his next words. “I’ve only been doing this job for around a year. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I have always had a passion for taking care of people.”
I could have sworn his eyes darkened as the last words left his mouth.
Suddenly, the extra juice cup didn't seem worth the price of his attention. Every instinct I had left screamed at me to pull away. Maybe it was just the way he’d taken my blood pressure, as if he were trying to wring the life out of my arm, but my gut told me Josh was someone I needed to be cautious of.
Had the detectives hired him? Had they decided I shouldn’t be involved with female nurses? Even though Clara was the only one whom I wanted to receive any attention from.
“I’ll let you rest. I’ve heard a rumor you’ll be getting out of here soon!” Josh seemed positive again, but I didn’t believe him.
I forced a smile, offering a friendly wave which felt more like a mask.
“Thanks, man. It’d be a dream to finish healing in my own bed.
” Josh retreated, closing the door with a gentle click that felt more ominous than the initial slam when he came in.
Could I really leave? It seemed impossible.
The detectives would never let their prime person of interest just walk out the door.
Would they? Unless, somehow their focus had shifted to building an actual case that didn’t involve me.
I stared at the workstation across the room, my fingers itching to hack into the system and peel back the layers of their digital notes.
It had been days since a doctor had even graced this room which was yet another red flag in a building already full of them.
This place didn't run on medicine, it ran on secrets.
I needed to get out, and once I was free, I was going to tear this mystery apart.
Clara was everywhere in my mind, a constant ache fueling my need to escape.
I promise, Clara, wherever you are I won’t stop searching until I find you.
I’d go back to my roots. Security. The realization sparked a cold fire in my chest. I remembered the high-stakes pressure, the elite nature of the work, but the finer details were still trapped behind a veil of trauma.
I found myself desperate to claw those memories back.
If I could just tap into my old training, I could be the hunter instead of the prey.
I just had to hope my mind would unlock the doors before it was too late.
I longed for everything she was - the warmth of her hand in mine, the light she brought into every sterile corner of my life. I need you Clara.
My eyelids grew heavy and sleep began to take precedence.
As I closed my eyes, she appeared, looking so real I reached out into the empty air.
But the image began to vibrate with a sudden, sharp anxiety.
My chest tightened. I wasn't just remembering her, I was feeling her.
I felt the claustrophobia of her prison, the raw edge of her worry.
She was scared, lost in a place that didn't belong to her.
A desperate urge surged through me to reach into a mental landscape and drag her back to safety, to be the shield she no longer had.
I wanted to hold her and assure her she was safe in my arms. Clara.
My breath hitched, then vanished. A crushing, blunt force descended on my chest, sealing off my airway like a vice. I fought to snap my eyes open, to find the world, but everything remained a suffocating vision of pitch black.
The vision of Clara began to fray at the edges, dissolving into the dark.
No, I screamed internally. Not again. I couldn't lose the only piece of her I had left. If she slipped away now, she’d be gone forever.
“Help,” I tried to rasp, but the word died against whatever was smothering me. What is happening? Who is doing this?
I hated being in this weakened fragile state. It wasn’t me.
“He should have killed you when he had the chance.” The voice sounded faintly like Josh’s, only this time there was no denying the sinister tone.
Shouts erupted around me, muffled and distorted as if coming from underwater, but the crushing weight vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
I surged upward, my lungs burning as I dragged in a jagged, desperate breath.
I was alive, but the terror wasn't over.
I came to just in time to see Miller and Hill dragging Josh out of my room in handcuffs.
Why was he trying to kill me? Our interactions from earlier replayed in my mind.
Even as my heart hammered against my ribs, I squeezed my eyes shut again. Reaching out with the last ounce of my will, I tried to catch the fading hem of Clara’s memory before it dissolved back into the dark.