Chapter 24 The Nurse in the Doorway #2
The nurse moved to Amy’s bedside with unhurried grace. She checked the monitors, moving as if Amy was sacred, not just another patient on her rounds. She pressed two fingers against Amy’s wrist, finding her pulse point, and something happened.
The monitors steadied. The erratic beeping that had been stuttering, slightly off-rhythm, found its beat again. Amy’s chest rose in a deeper breath, more natural than the shallow mechanical ones she’d been taking.
The room seemed to warm around us.
May gaped at her. “What did you just do?”
The nurse didn’t answer. She continued her examination like she hadn’t just performed a miracle in plain sight. She adjusted the IV bag, made a note on the chart, and checked the ventilator settings. Then she turned her attention to May, and recognition passed over the nurse’s expression.
“You’ve got more in you than you think, sunshine,” she said, and the nickname felt specific, weighted with meaning I could feel pressing against my chest. “The light doesn’t just come from your dreams. It’s in your blood, your bones, your very essence.
You just haven’t learned to call it forth yet. ”
May stilled, her hands trembling at her sides. “What are you talking about? How do you know about my dreams?”
The nurse raised her brow, lips quirking in a knowing grin. “Your sister needs you awake. She can’t fight this battle alone.”
“I don’t understand—”
The nurse’s smile was sad and knowing. “When the fire finds you, don’t fight it. Let it burn and consume everything false until only the truth remains.”
She moved toward the door, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I stepped forward.
“Do I know you?”
She stopped and turned to look at me for the first time. Her gaze met mine, and the world shifted.
It wasn’t like remembering—it was more like being remembered. Like every version of me that had ever existed was looking back at me from behind her eyes, and she recognized all of them. Images flashed through my mind. Not memories exactly, but echoes.
Torch lit hallways, a hand guiding me through shadow, a voice whispering warnings I never recalled upon waking.
“You will,” she said, smiling. “When the time’s right.”
My pulse stuttered. I wanted to demand answers, but before I could form a single question, she slipped past us toward the door.
“Wait,” I tried, but the word came out thin.
She paused at the door, hand on the handle, but didn’t turn back.
“Trust what grows in darkness. Seeds planted in shadow still reach for light.”
Then she was gone. The door clicked shut behind her with terrible finality.
For a long moment, none of us spoke. We just stood there in Amy’s room, the lingering scent of myrrh and sage hanging in the air.
Leo broke the silence. “What the hell just happened?”
I couldn’t answer. My skin crawled with a strange familiarity I couldn’t shake.
That nurse, whoever she was, wasn’t just here for Amy. She was here for me, and I had a hunch deep in my gut that she would be back.
I lingered outside the hospital longer than I meant to, bitter coffee cooling between my palms. My mind wouldn’t stop circling back to the nurse, to her eyes and her warnings and the way she’d looked at me like she knew every life I’d ever lived.
But who was she?
When I finally pulled out my phone, I thumbed open my texts, half on autopilot.
Me: Amy’s holding steady, for now. Heading back to the dorm with Luz. Not going anywhere alone, I promise.
The bubble beneath lit up almost immediately: Read 9:12 p.m.
I waited a minute, then two. By the time five crawled past, my stomach knotted tighter. It wasn’t like Kian not to answer.
Me: Are you alright?
There was another long pause before, finally, my phone chimed.
Kian: Yes. I apologize, I am busy.
I told myself it was fine. He was busy, he’d said so himself.
But the pit in my chest said otherwise. Lately, there were cracks in him that I hadn’t noticed before—silences that stretched too long, times where I felt like he was preparing for something he wouldn’t tell me about.
Me: Okay. Text later?
Read 9:25 PM.
I shoved my phone back in my pocket and looked up to find Luz waving me over to the Uber she called. I followed, trying not to spiral over his silence.
When we reached our dorm, Luz dropped her bag by the door and flopped onto my bed with a groan.
“I feel like we aged a decade today,” she mumbled into my comforter.
I sank into the desk chair and peeled off my shoes, wiggling toes that had gone numb in the fall evening chill. “If we’re going by metaphysical years, I think I’m already ancient.”
That got a soft laugh from her. “You’re Persephone, not Methuselah.”
I snorted at that. The shadows in the room stretched long, moonlight pooling against the floor in silver patches. I looked at my phone again. Still no word from Kian or from my mother.
“They’ll come back,” Luz said, like she’d read my mind. “Both of them. Your mom’s not the kind to leave a battle unfinished. And Kian—” She hesitated. “He’s fought for you across nineteen lifetimes. He’s not giving up now.”
I nodded, unsure if I believed it or just needed to.
“Let’s talk about the podcast,” I said, redirecting before I broke completely. “Map out our strategy.”
Luz sat up and crossed her legs, pulling her notebook from her bag. “Okay. We’re not just exposing a shady supplement company. We’re unspooling a whole conspiracy. Corporate corruption, police involvement, human experimentation. This goes deep.”
I rubbed my temples, feeling the tension headache building behind my eyes. “Then we need to be surgical. One thread at a time, lay the groundwork carefully. Question everything. Target their credibility.”
She nodded, pen poised over paper. “Start with the small stuff. Side effects users have reported, recruitment inconsistencies and gaps in their clinical trial documentation. Then the funding trail. Where does their money come from? Who sits on their board? What other companies are they connected to?”
“We bring in experts,” I added. “An episode on medical ethics. Another on the placebo effect versus actual harm. Maybe one on how corporations use wellness culture to disguise human experiments.”
“Historical context,” Luz suggested. “Other pharmaceutical scandals. Thalidomide. The Tuskegee experiments. Show this isn’t new, it’s a pattern that Ekklesia fits right into.”
“Slow drip truth,” I murmured. “So we don’t spook whoever’s really behind this before we have enough evidence to actually take them down.”
“Exactly,” she said. “And if Leo can get back into their systems, we can start connecting dots we can’t reach from the outside.”
I wasn’t ready to think about Leo risking himself again, but I didn’t argue. We needed all the pieces we could get, and Leo was good at what he did; he just needed to be smarter about not getting caught.
As Luz kept talking—outlining episode ideas, potential guest experts, covert ways to collect testimony from other study participants—I felt a warmth bloom in my chest. Not quite hope, something more grounded like roots anchoring into soil.
Then a flicker of a memory hit me.
I saw Luz’s face, but not as it was now. Her hair was braided with a silver cord, white poplar leaves woven through the dark strands. Her arms were cut and bloodied, her dress torn and scorched at the edges.
She was gripping my hand, dragging me through a collapsing stone doorway. Fire roared behind us. Behind the flames, a figure watched us flee with the certainty of a predator that knew its prey would tire eventually.
“You have to live,” She had whispered, her hand crushing mine. “No matter what. No matter what it costs. You have to make it out.”
“Not without you—”
“Especially without me.” Her grip tightened until bones ground together. “Promise me. Promise me you’ll run and you won’t look back.”
And I had, right before the doorway collapsed between us, and I ran. She stayed behind, and I heard her screaming as the flames took her, and I couldn’t go back or save her. I could only run and run and run until I finally died alone some time later in the dark, calling her name—
I blinked, and the vision dissolved into the dim dorm light.
I looked at Luz. She’d gone back to jotting ideas in her notebook, completely unaware I’d remembered her dying for me in another life.
Completely unaware that she’d done it before and would probably do it again because that’s what she was for—what she’d chosen to be, lifetime after lifetime.
Or maybe she was aware, and that’s why she’d come back. Life after life, always finding me, always protecting me, always choosing to stand between me and the fire.
“Hey,” I said, voice rough with unshed tears. “Thanks for staying.”
She glanced up, and something in her expression said she understood. Not just what I was thanking her for now, but what I was thanking her for always. Across centuries, through fire and shadow and death.
“Always,” she said, giving me a small smile.
And somehow, I knew she meant it.