“I’ll figure it out,” she promised. She wished the noise would stop. That she could catch her breath. That Ned would leave. Her throat ached as if her attacker’s hands had just been there….
“When?” Ned pressed. “When will you figure it out?”
“Soon.”
He tightened his grip on her arm. “Listen to me,” he said, but at that point someone else entered the room. A nurse.
“Is everything okay?”
He released her. “Fine. I was just trying to learn a few things about the incident that put her here.”
“I think it’s too soon for that. She really shouldn’t be bothered right now.”
“She was the one who wanted to talk,” he said as Cain hung up.
Sheridan didn’t bother trying to contradict him. Physically and emotionally spent, she couldn’t even open her eyes.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you both to step out of the room,” the nurse said.
“I’ll check in with you this afternoon,” Cain muttered.
A moment later Sheridan sensed that both men had withdrawn. The nurse’s shoes squished as she walked around the bed, tucking in the blankets.
Relieved by the woman’s matter-of-fact presence, Sheridan let go of reality and the blinding sunlight pouring through the window, let go of the fear and the confusion. But Ned must’ve poked his head back into the room, because she heard him speak again.
“By the way. What are the chances that she’ll recover?”
Sheridan wasn’t ready for this answer. But she had to listen, had to know the truth.
“I’d say they’re good,” the nurse replied. “I talked to the doctor barely an hour ago. He’s very pleased with her progress.”
Ned cleared his throat and this time his voice fell to a whisper. “And her memory? Do you think she’ll ever be able to recall what really happened to her?”
“That’s hard to say. Many patients with head injuries experience ongoing problems. Dizziness. Depression. Disorientation. Memory loss. Those problems can last for a few weeks or several months, even longer.”
That gave Sheridan a lot to look forward to….
“But there’s a possibility it could come back to her, right?”
“It’ll depend on how well she’s able to cope with the trauma. She could develop acute stress disorder, posttraumatic stress syndrome or a whole host of other things. But the doctor’s optimistic that won’t be the case.”
God, please, no more problems. It’d taken her a decade to get over the shooting.
5
A raging headache woke Sheridan in the middle of the night. She lay perfectly still for several seconds, trying to cope with the pain. Where was she? Something bad had happened….
And then she remembered. She’d nearly died. Someone had beaten her until she couldn’t fight back anymore, then left her for dead in the mountains of Tennessee.
Now she was in the hospital in Knoxville. The same hospital where they’d taken her at sixteen, when she’d been shot.
At least she knew that much. It was more than she could recall the last time she’d awakened.
Encouraged by the improvement in her mental acuity, she decided not to ring for the nurse to request more pain medication. Hurting like this was better than the disorientation caused by the sedatives, mostly because she didn’t know how much of her confusion to blame on the analgesic and how much on her injuries. She needed some time to assess her situation, to get her bearings.
Taking a deep breath, she glanced at the medical equipment surrounding her, feeling more alone and adrift than when she’d been admitted to this hospital twelve years before. Back then, she’d had her worried parents constantly by her side, could hear the soft rumble of her father’s snoring if she happened to wake at odd hours. Tonight, there was no snoring. She was an adult and her parents didn’t even know she’d been hurt. They were on a cruise ship. Her sister was in Wyoming expecting her first baby. And Sheridan’s friends were several states away. Skye and Jonathan lived in Sacramento and Jasmine in New Orleans.
Sheridan knew her friends and family would come if she called them. But she doubted she could make a long distance call from the phone in her room, and she had no idea what’d happened to her cell. Whenever she tried to remember, panic set in.
Despite the jab of pain, she turned her head toward the window and gazed out at the moonlight filtering through the tall trees. Somehow, she could still smell Cain’s cologne. And it made the hospital seem less sterile, less frightening. All she had to do was get through the next few minutes, she told herself. Those minutes would turn into hours, which would soon bring the dawn. After enough hours and enough days, she’d recover—and she’d do for herself what she did for other victims: make sure the person who’d hurt her was put away.
The fact that Jason’s killer had never been caught threatened to erode her fledgling confidence, but she was older than she’d been back then. She had control of her own life and some experience in criminal justice. This time, she’d fight back—no matter what. She wouldn’t just go on her way, hoping the police would take care of it. That had been her parents’ approach and it hadn’t worked, had it?
Nausea roiled in her stomach. Closing her eyes, she focused on Cain’s cologne because it seemed like the only raft in this undulating sea of uncertainty, fear and pain. “Hang on. Just hang on,” she breathed.
“Sheridan?”
The voice that came out of the dark made her heart jump into her throat—until she realized it was Cain’s. Evidently, she hadn’t imagined the smell of his cologne. He was there, cloaked in shadow, sitting in the chair in the corner. And she got the impression he’d been with her for some time. Judging from his lack of movement and the scratchiness of his voice, she’d awakened him. “Cain?”
She heard a rasp as he dragged a hand over the beard-growth on his chin. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“It’s late, isn’t it?” she asked in confusion.
“Two or three in the morning.”
His presence bolstered her spirits even more than she would’ve expected. He wasn’t part of her family or her circle of friends, but he was company. “I didn’t know I had a visitor.”
“I tried to wake you earlier, but you didn’t stir.”
“It’s the drugs. I’m still groggy.” Careful not to move her throbbing head, she eased herself onto her side. She couldn’t see his face, but now that she knew where to look, she recognized his feet beneath a hospital-issue blanket. “What are you doing here?”