Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Your grid is collapsing.
“I need a favor,” she heard herself say to Vishous. “I need… your help at sundown.”
SIXTEEN
THE HOSPITAL SMELL was what brought him around.
Later, Gus would amend things into something romantic, but the truth of it was… that signature antiseptic-behind-the-fake-Florida scent was the trailhead he followed out of his darkness. At first, he hadn’t been able to track what had kindled his consciousness. One moment he was lights-out; the next, he had some awareness, his brain’s neuropathways starting to cough up a couple of signals.
And then he recognized the telltale hospital fragrance. Citrus II Germicidal Deodorizing Cleaner.
Which, according to the label—that he was somehow able to visualize—met the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s blood-borne pathogen standards for HIV, HBC, HCV, and HAV…—
Wait… what was he thinking about? Lemons…?
As his body floated along in a buffered state of numbness, his mind was like a kitten with a ball of string, batting back and forth with the smell thing, the label thing, and the intersections both had with his past. Except where was he in his own timeline? Was he in med school? First year during gross human anatomy? Or no… third and fourth year during core rotations when he was actually in a hospital, making rounds of the different departments even though he’d decided when he was ten years old he was going to be an oncologist…
How about residency at MGH? Or no, fellowship there? Or when he was a working doctor and a researcher in a lab, teasing out the molecular successes and failures of weaponizing the human immune system against rogue cells, the official names of which all ended in -oma.
Or was it more recently, when he—
As if the cognitive sifting was the choke to Gus’s internal engine, his eyes flipped open. Not that he got much from the lid lift. Everything was bright and blurry, like he was in a cloud. Was this Heaven in the Hallmark sense?
Beeping. Behind him.
Oh, he knew that sound. A heartbeat, nice and steady, if a little slow.
So this had to be Earth, and he was the patient, wasn’t he? Had he been in a car accident or a—
A blurry face appeared in the indistinct visual soup, and he recognized who it was because of the crop of blond hair. And then came a voice. The voice.
Her voice.
Catherine Phillips Phalen said roughly, “Oh, my God… you’re alive.”
“Gus is the name,” he croaked. “Not God. God’s more of… a job description.”
There was a pause. Then a chuckle. Then something soft and warm, a drop, hit his cheek. A tear? Was it hers… was it his…
“You really are back,” she whispered.
“Where… ’d… I go?”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“Feel… shit.”
“Yes, I would imagine you do.”
As much as he wanted to communicate, the conversation was pulling too much energy away from him, his lids drifting back down, his breathing suddenly feeling laborious.
“Don’t know… happened.”
“You’re safe,” she said. “That’s all you need to think about right now.”
“Missed you…”
There was another pause, and the image of the great C.P. Phalen, in one of her sleek power suits and those fucking high heels that made her legs long as a mile, was as clear as if she were standing in front of him and he was up-on-his-Converse-high-tops and a-okay.
He needed to stop talking—
“I missed you, too…” Something brushed his forehead. Her hand? Please let it be her hand. “Don’t leave me again.”
Had he left her? He couldn’t remember. But he knew one thing. There was pain in that steely voice of hers… so much pain.
“Okay,” he replied to the statement that was really a question. “I won’t, Cathy.”
* * *
As Cathy pulled a Kleenex free of a box on the bedside table, she wiped her eyes and reflected on how much she had always hated that name.
Recently, however, she had embraced the honesty that came with it. She had been born in the middle class and had never been anything fancy growing up; so when it had become time to reinvent herself, she had clothed her modest origins in the mantle of Catherine—or even better, the androgyny of her initials, C.P. But now, especially coming out of the mouth it did?
She was ready to get the five letters tattooed on her forehead.
Wadding up the tissue in a fistful of relief, she wanted to touch Gus all over to reassure herself he was alive for real—as if, were she to confirm the warmth of him, it was a predicator that he would stay with her. But that was magical thinking, for one thing. And then there was the horrifying reality that there was almost no part of him that wasn’t bruised.
Taking what she could get, she satisfied herself with brushing his temple, his jawline, the lobe of his ear. She told herself he liked her touch. She didn’t know whether that was true.