Lucidity

Chapter 19 - Wishing Hour

Vincent stumbled back as Grace Moran plowed into him. Her eyes were wide, her face a ghastly white, highlighting the faint scars. She looked scared as hell.

“Are you all right, Grace?” he asked, setting her back onto her feet.

She glanced around at the oak doors behind her, as if something was chasing her. “I’m fine. I just need to go home,” she mumbled. She straightened, pulling away from him. “What did you call me?”

“Your name. Grace.” He scrutinized her with the eye of a clinician. She was shaking, looked ready to fall down at any moment. “Here,” he guided her to the love seat opposite the elevators. “Sit. We need to talk.”

She nodded absently, her fingers tracing the seven staples along her temple then pulling her hair forward once more to cover them. The incandescent light from the two stick-lamps on the end tables played over her features, softening them. But Vincent’s vision was filled with images of blood and torn tissue. Each nuance of healed tissue now revealed the grim secret of its origin. His anger at her for interfering with Alex’s care eased.

He was ashamed of his earlier denouncement of Grace Moran as a victim, even blaming her for what he assumed had happened to her. The woman standing before him was no victim. She was a fighter. Or at least she once was.

“Why don’t you want the surgery?” he asked in a gentle voice, laying his hand over hers.

She stared down at his hand, slid hers away, hugging herself around the chest. Vincent wished he had a sweater or blanket to offer her. But all he had was his lab coat.

“Please,” she said, not meeting his eyes, instead staring out the window at the garishly lit helipad on the Annex roof across the void that separated the two buildings. “All I want to do is go home.”

“I know.”

She nodded at that, her gaze still fixed on the Annex.

“Why didn’t you leave yesterday? Why did you stay?”

“I tried. I—I couldn’t. Then I met Kat and Alex—” she broke off, turned to face him as if emerging from a trance. “How do you know who I am?”

“Sean Kelly is a friend of mine. He says hi, hopes you’re feeling better. Ingrid is worried too.”

“Ingrid—you were at my house?” Her voice took on an edge. “How dare you. Who gave you the right?”

“Grace, you’re a sick woman. Wandering alone on the streets for all we knew. Dr. Helman was concerned, asked me to find you.”

“Worried about making history, you mean. With me as a guinea pig.” She stood now, hands dropping to her sides. “Maybe I don’t want to make history. Maybe I just want to go home.”

“To die.” He stood as well, facing her.

“Yes.” She challenged him with an upraised eyebrow. “Happens to all of us sooner or later, Doctor.”

“If that’s what you really, truly wanted, then you would have left yesterday.”

“I thought you were a pediatrician, not a shrink.”

“Actually I’m boarded in both medicine and pediatrics. But it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to see that there was a reason you couldn’t force yourself to leave Angels of Mercy, a reason why you’re here right now.”

She glanced back over her shoulder at the doors to the ECU. “I wanted to help Kat. No one,” she shot a disapproving glare at Vincent, “prepared her for her surgery, what to expect. I promised I’d help and I did. So now I can go home.”