Lucidity

Chapter 21 - Razor's Edge

Grace rolled over on her side, the plastic-covered mattress crinkling under her weight. The burnt smelt of hospital linens was suddenly replaced with Old Spice and Ivory Soap. She squeezed her eyes shut. Go to sleep, she commanded herself. Just ignore it and go to sleep. This was all a crazy dream. A hallucination brought forth by a broken mind.

Either that or she was already dead, lying in the rain on the helipad in the dark, crows squawking as they descended to pick at her remains. Her body shuddered at the thought and she almost opened her eyes to decide once and for all which was the truth: death or insanity?

But then his hand slid over her shoulders, lifting her hair, cascading it through his fingers to rain back down on her.

“You’ve let your hair grow,” Jimmy whispered, his breath stirring the fine hairs of her cheek. “I like it.”

She cursed her body as it responded to his touch, relaxing as his arm curled around her chest, his fingers playfully stroking hers. If she was dead, a murder of crows currently feasting on her body cooling on the rooftop, then how could he make her feel like this? Unless, somehow, this was real?

No. It couldn’t be—that would be worse than being dead. Because if Jimmy was here with her now, and she was still alive, then that meant—

“I’m here, everything’s all right now,” he assured her.

She sucked in her breath even as he rolled her over to face him. Don’t look, don’t look, became her mantra.

For four years she’d sold her soul in an effort to resurrect the dead—all that time it was as simple as a brain tumor invading key areas, eroding her mind, stealing her senses. She’d straddled the knife edge of reason for so long, occasionally tempted to topple over into insanity, that now she clung to the knowledge that she wasn’t crazy, that there was a reason for this hallucination.

Please, Lord, she prayed, really prayed, for the first time in years. But that was how desperate she had become, death or insanity was preferable to the possibility that what had happened on the helipad, in the corridor, was real. No. Please, let it be just a dream. Because I can’t bear to lose him again...

His lips moved over hers and she tasted barley and hops of Guinness and the salt of bar nuts. Hands that knew her better than she knew herself caressed her.

“Please Grace,” he begged. “Look at me.”

She was drowning in the smell of Ivory Soap and Old Spice. Still her eyes remained clenched shut, even as she clung to him, not wanting to release him. Ever.

It had almost killed her to lose him once, how could she risk it again?

He brushed his lips against both her eyelids, his light caress tempting, oh so tempting.

“Our love lives forever,” he whispered. “Did you doubt me? Think that I wouldn’t find a way? Tsk, Grace. Anything is possible. You should’ve had more faith than that.”

Faith? He thought she lacked faith? What did he think had kept her alive the past four years?

Unable to bear it any longer, she opened her eyes and faced Jimmy’s too-solid countenance. “You bastard.”

The sound of her slap echoed through the small room. His flesh was warm; her hand left a pink imprint on his cheek. Grace blinked, then fell against him, her fists pummeling his bare chest, as she collapsed under the weight of her anguish.

“How could you leave me? You left me, I was alone, alone—” Her sobs choked the words so that they emerged in short, breathless cries of desperation. “And now you’re going to leave again, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”