Chapter Forty-Nine. Riley, Present Day
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
RILEY, PRESENT DAY
When I call Sandra to let her know about Betty’s accident and apologize for canceling our dinner plans, she’s both distraught and reassuring. She offers to come to the hospital, but I tell her Betty had a sedative and will likely sleep through the night.
“That’s good. Rest is probably the best thing for her. But please keep me updated,” she begs. “I can’t lose Betty now that we’ve finally found each other.”
I promise to text her as soon as Betty wakes up in the morning.
“I’ve got back-to-back appointments all day tomorrow, but I can cancel everything,” she tells me.
“Oh, please don’t,” I said. “If she’s up to it, maybe we can meet for dinner tomorrow night.”
Once Betty is moved into a private room, I spend the night in the recliner next to her bed, but it’s impossible to doze for more than a few minutes at a stretch.
Every hour or two, a nurse or aide swings open the door, flicks on the lights, and checks Betty’s vitals.
Machines beep in the background, and the ambient noises of the hospital—pages crackling over the speaker, bursts of hallway conversations—filter through the door.
Betty, however, sleeps through it all. The sedative they gave her must have been strong.
It’s after 8 AM when I finally hear her stir. I jump up and see her open her mouth to speak, but only a raspy sound comes out. I press the button to incline the top half of the bed, then hold the plastic cup of water with a big straw to her lips and she drinks in a long swallow.
“You’re okay,” I tell her. “You had a fall yesterday.”
“I remember.” She stares up at me with haunted blue eyes.
I glance at the monitor that registers her pulse. It’s hitching higher, from a steady sixty-two beats a minute to seventy. Then seventy-eight.
“We’ll be able to go home today.” I hope my words reassure Betty. “You didn’t break anything in the fall and you don’t have a serious head injury.”
“I remember,” she repeats.
“What do you remember?” I ask.
“Everything.” She squeezes her eyes shut briefly. Her pulse hits ninety.
“Try to take a deep breath,” I tell her. “Are you in pain?”
I’m about to summon a nurse when Betty reaches out and grabs my arm. Her fingers are ice cold.
“Someone is doing it again,” she whispers. She lifts her head and I see the cords in her neck strain with the effort.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Last night, the technician tried to make me wear eye and ear coverings for some test. He told me to lie perfectly still for the duration of the test. It reminded me of the old experiments … When I resisted, they brought in a nurse and I heard him saying I was the second one talking about Ganzfeld.”
Betty’s head collapses back onto the pillow. “Someone stole the library papers and tried to get Douglas’s old notes. They’re trying to learn everything they can about the experiments. I had no idea why. But now I understand.”
Her pulse is over 110. A machine begins to beat frantically. I hear footsteps rushing toward us.
“Someone is doing it again,” Betty repeats. “They’ve started up the old experiments that killed my friends.”