Chapter 28
Hospital
Light stabbed from beyond my eyelids. In the distance someone was calling my name.
“Amelia, Amelia? Open your eyes, Amelia. Can you open your eyes for me, sweetheart?”
I was too tired. I wanted to sleep. I wished the voice would go away. My chest felt like something heavy pressed down on it, and it hurt to breathe. My throat was sore and my leg throbbed painfully.
“We’ve lost her,” I heard another say, a heaviness to her tone.
I wanted to ask who, but I felt the sharp sting of a needle in my arm, then nothing.
My eyes peeled sluggishly open into the shadowy dark. I was half sitting, and a sheet covered my body. Light leaked from under the bottom of the door. Something hard pressed against my face.
My chest felt heavy. My leg stung, but not as painfully as before.
My throat felt like I’d swallowed sand laced with razor blades.
I turned my head and noted a drip fed into my left arm.
Swallowing, I turned to the other side. Karson was sitting beside me.
Why would he be by my bed? Then it all came crashing back—orange flames .
. . the heat and the smoke . . . Karson’s face .
. . the feel of his chest pressing into my body and the whirl of moving at speeds not humanly possible.
I must’ve dreamed it; it was the only logical explanation. I closed my eyes, trying to clear my thoughts. It all felt so surreal—nothing made sense.
“Amelia.” Karson’s voice pulled my eyes open, soothing and very real.
“Where am I?” I tried to speak, but my throat was raw, and my voice was a strangled whisper muffled by whatever sat on my face.
My fingers fumbled to pull it off and realized it was an oxygen mask as he answered, “Hospital.”
“Water,” I croaked.
He took a plastic jug off the side table, poured a drink into a small cup, and handed it across.
My hand trembled as I took it, and drank it all, the cool liquid soothing my sore throat.
Karson took the empty cup and placed it back on the bedside table.
I rested my head on the pillow and licked my dry, cracked lips.
“The Millers, the Torontos?” My voice was raspy and barely audible.
“They’re aright.” He reached across, placing the mask back over my mouth. “Go back to sleep, sweetheart.”
“You’re safe now, sweetheart.” The words echoed in my head alongside the feel of his lips on my forehead.
Exhaustion dragged my eyes shut. I was safe, they were safe. I fell back asleep.
When I woke again, it was to daylight. Blinking through stinging eyes, the world drew back into focus. Bright rays of light burst through the window, falling neatly on the crisp white covers of my bed. A nurse stood over me, the pressure of an arm cuff pumping on my arm.
My eyes went where Karson had sat last night, but the chair was empty.
Disappointment grabbed a fistful of a weird hollowness inside.
I rolled my head to the left. A tube slithered from my arm, attached to a bag of clear liquid, and a machine recording my stats sat to the side.
My leg felt like someone had taken a knife and flayed my skin off, and my fingers stung.
I lifted my hand up—it was bandaged like a boxing glove.
“Amy, thank god.” Georgie’s face shot out from nowhere, hovering in front of mine. Mascara bled under her eyes. She was wearing a tracksuit and her hair was disheveled. She stroked my brow.
I pulled the mask from my face. “The fire,” I squeaked out.
She nodded and looked like she was going to cry. “You’re okay.” She poured a glass of water without me asking, and I drank it and handed the cup back.
“Karson?”
“He left when we got here. BJ and Jodie just left—I said I’d call when you woke.”
“He saved me.”
“Who?”
“Karson,” I whispered. “He saved me.”
She shook her head. “No, you managed to run out. Ambulance officers found you by the side of the road.”
Confused, I stared at her. I didn’t run out; I could barely crawl, let alone run. The deafening roar of the fire, the whip of the wind in our faces. The whole forest was engulfed, from my cabin to the Toronto’s place.
“The Millers, Torontos?” I needed confirmation. “They got out?”
A pause, and her eyes welled. She took a deep breath. “We—”
“Good morning, can you tell me your name?” A middle-aged doctor with sandy hair strode in, cutting off her response. He had a clipboard in one hand. Dark rings circled his eyes. He looked tired, but his face was pleasant.
“Amy,” I said.
He nodded. “Do you know where you are?”
“Hospital.”
“Good girl, I’m Doctor Page. Your throat is sore from the smoke you inhaled. Thankfully your lungs were not burned, but you have a bad burn on your leg.”
“The Millers, the Torontos?” I pressed.
Georgie and Dr. Page exchanged, fast worried looks. He forced a smile. “I’m sure they’re fine. You’re doing well. However, we will keep you here for a few days and reassess from there. You must keep the mask on.” His brow crinkled as he lifted the chart, studying it.
“Oh, Amy, I was so worried,” Georgie said, grabbing my hand.
Swallowing, I tasted ash. I closed my eyes and an image scorched my mind, flames clawing at the world like the hell itself had risen.
“You’d better leave now, Georgie. She needs her rest,” Dr. Page said kindly.
Georgie adjusted the mask on my face, kissed my cheek, murmured she would be back later, and left.
“I’m sure they’re fine.”
Not, “They are fine.” Or, “Yes.”
“We lost her.”
Lost who? Me? Did death’s hand snatch hold of me?
Did the nurses bring me back? But that hardly made sense.
My injuries weren’t life threatening. My mind spun.
I stared up at the white ceiling. Obi and Summer’s faces flashed before me.
Those heads full of curls, their cheeky grins.
Emotion scorched my eyes, blurring my vision.
The doctor slipped my chart on the end of the bed, then he moved to the side stand and handed me a tissue with a sympathetic smile.
Turning away, he said to someone outside the door. “Just a few minutes—she needs rest. And the mask stays on.”
I blinked, surprised to see Ethan standing in the doorway.
“Hey, Cinderella.” His voice was flatter than normal. He sat down on the seat beside the bed. His eyes were rimmed red, like smoke had stung them. Or he’d been crying.
My stomach sank.
I grabbed the mask, pulled it down, and rasped, “Are you alright, Ethan?”
He drew a deep breath and looked out the window, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. When he looked back, his blue eyes were dark lakes.
“Katrina and Robert passed away.”
I heard him, but my mind refused to register it. “What,” I stuttered.
He thrust a hand through his dark hair. “They’re gone,” he whispered.
The blood drained from my face. My mind whirled. The fire must have been huge. How much of Church Heights was left standing?
I fought to hold back tears. Ethan just lost his friends, and I needed to say something to comfort him. Finally, I strangled out, “Oh, Ethan. I’m so, so sorry. The fire?”
He shook his head. “Car accident.” The pain in his voice nearly broke me.
There was a long silence—I didn’t know what else to say. Words felt inadequate to the scale of loss. It was like trying to stick a Band-Aid over a fatal wound and expecting it to help.
I croaked out, “I can’t believe it.”
“Careful, Amy, if you keep using your sexy bed voice, I may start to think you’re hitting on me.” He smiled, but it didn’t go anywhere near his eyes. He reached out to put the mask back on. I clasped his hand in mine, stopping him.
Images flashed through my head, one after the other, like scenes from a movie that didn’t make any sense.
Ethan crying by a fireplace. His hand clutched around someone’s throat. Something sharp, glinting—a blade? Blood. There was blood everywhere.
I gasped and took my hand away. Whatever drugs they’d given me were playing tricks on my mind.
Morphine, most likely. The same thing had happened after the car crash; the drugs had played havoc with my head.
Maybe it was because of my ability to mentally record things, and something in my brain went haywire.
Maybe it was part of a delusional disorder.
I didn’t know, but sometimes images appeared as if they were real.
“Are you in pain?” Ethan leaning over me, frowning and worried. Worried about me. He’d just lost his friends, but his thoughts were on me.
I shook my head. “No.” My fingers twitched against the sheets. “What happened, what caused them to crash?”
He placed a hand on my wrist, a buzzing shot through my arm, warming my blood and stilling my fingers. Sighing, he sank into the chair. “The road had a sharp corner, they went off and over a bank . . . the storm maybe . . . I don’t know, Matt is still investigating.”
I knew then that I really liked Ethan—perhaps not the Ethan who sat in the bar playing Eeny Meeny. But the real Ethan, the one who lived below the surface, the one I saw when we went to Katrina’s, and whose soul showed itself now. That was the Ethan I was fond of.
His thumb swept abstractly over my knuckles. He stared at the floor, a deep pain in his eyes. I just wanted to hold him, to pull him to my chest and ease his hurt. I took his hand in mine.
“I’m so sorry, Ethan.”
“They were good people.”
“The Torontos and Millers. Did they get out?” I asked, my stomach in knots.
He shook his head, as if to say no. “We don’t know. The rain put out the bulk of the fire, and they have fire crews and search teams looking for them. But their homes were destroyed.”
Cindy and Luke had been out, they would have needed a babysitter, I didn’t notice any cars as we drove past, maybe their children stayed somewhere else? “Were the kids home?”
Ethan flinched. “As far as we know . . .” He trailed off.
The lake was close to their homes; if they got out, they should have made it . . .
“How far did the fire spread?” I croaked.
“Not too far, so there’s a chance.” He paused, swallowing. “We were lucky the rain came when it did.”
“Time’s up, she needs rest,” a nurse said, peering up from under her lashes at Ethan.
Ethan stood, staring at me tenderly for a long beat. “Get better, Amy.”
Reluctantly, I released his hand. My fingers felt oddly vacant without his in it. I watched as he sauntered out the door, the nurse gazing, smitten, after him.