“Could you call her tomorrow?”
“Of course,” Bev replied. Then: “Take care of her, Tony. To have this happen after what happened to Brad — well, I just don’t know how she’ll be able to handle it.”
“It will be all right,” Tony assured her.
“Thank you.” She was silent for a moment, then: “She’s so lucky to have you.”
“No,” Tony said softly as he hung up the phone a moment later. “It’s me that’s the lucky one.”
Putting the phone back on its cradle, he returned his full attention to soothing his distraught wife. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “I’m going to take care of you. You, and the children too.”
CHAPTER 23
The sound of the clock striking in the apartment’s large foyer echoed like a death knell in Caroline’s mind, and her body responded to every drop of the clock’s hammers with an involuntary twitch, as if it were she herself who was being struck. As the resonance of the final chime faded away, Tony drew his wife even closer.
“You have to sleep, darling. Staying awake all night won’t change anything.” “If I sleep, I’ll dream, and I know what I’ll dream about,” Caroline replied, her voice as hollow as the sound of the clock striking midnight.
The children had been asleep for hours, and Tony had finally convinced Caroline to go to bed just before eleven. Neither of them had slept though; instead they’d simply lain in the darkened room, his arm around her. He’d waited for her breathing to fall into the gentle even rhythm of sleep, but it hadn’t come. Instead he’d heard her struggling against the tide of emotions that kept rising inside her, threatening to overwhelm her once again. “Did you take the pills Dr. Humphries gave you?” he asked.
“One of them — I hate taking pills.”
“Everybody hates taking pills. But sometimes they can actually help.” Gently easing his arm out from under her, Tony slid out of bed and went to the bathroom. A moment later he was back, holding a glass of water. “Where is it?” he asked.
Sighing heavily, Caroline hitched herself up, turned on her bedside lamp, and found the pill. Gazing at it dolefully, she finally put it in her mouth and washed it down with the water Tony had brought her. She managed a wan smile as she handed the empty glass back to him. “If I have nightmares, this is going to cost you.” “I’ll risk it,” Tony replied. He took the glass back to the bathroom, and a moment later was beside her again, his arm once more protectively around her, her head once more snuggled into the hollow of his shoulder. He kissed her gently on the cheek, then reached over and switched off her light, plunging the room back into darkness.
A few minutes later her shallow breath began to deepen.
At last she slept, and he knew she would not dream.
Laurie felt dizzy, and her eyes felt so heavy she couldn’t quite make them open, and at first she thought she must be dreaming. But if she were dreaming, she wouldn’t know it until she woke up, would she?
Where was she? She felt disoriented, like she should know where she was, but couldn’t quite remember.
Her room.
She was in her room, and in her bed.
But why did she feel so strange?
She struggled to open her eyes, but it was no use. Then, even though she could see nothing, she sensed that she was not alone.
She tried to speak, but it was as impossible to form words as it was to open her eyes, and all that came out was a low moan.
“It’s all right. We’re not going to hurt you.”
Though the voice was barely audible, there was something familiar about it. But she couldn’t quite recognize it, and instead of making her feel better, the words that had been whispered into her ear only made her more frightened.
Now she struggled to sit up, but her whole body felt as heavy as her eyelids.
The glow of light that filtered through her closed eyelids dimmed for a second, then brightened.
A shadow?
Someone passing between her and the source of the light?
Once again she tried to force her eyes open; once again she failed.
Another shadow, then another.
Something touched her!
She tried to pull away from the touch, tried to cry out, but once again the terrible heaviness that lay over her prevented her from doing anything more than uttering a nearly inaudible groan.
More touches.
Hands slipping beneath her.
She felt herself being lifted off her bed and moved to the side. A moment later she was lowered down again.
She was no longer in her bed — whatever she now lay on was much harder than her mattress, and the pillow beneath her head much thinner than her own.
Another shadow fell over her face, and she felt herself begin to move.
Something clicked in her mind, and she knew what was happening — she was on a gurney, like the ones she saw on hospital shows on television all the time!
But she wasn’t in a hospital — she was in her bedroom!
Wasn’t she?
“Go to sleep,” the same familiar voice whispered, and though the words seemed to come from far, far away, she felt herself responding to the command, felt herself starting to give in to the strange force that held her in its grip. “That’s right,” the distant voice soothed. “You’re very tired. Just let yourself go to sleep.” So easy. It would be so easy just to let herself drift away from the shadows, and the voices and the touches.
The light around her changed, dimming almost to blackness. Now her thoughts seemed to come from somewhere beyond herself, as if her mind were somehow disconnecting from her body.
Dying?
Was that what was happening?
Had she gotten sick, and been taken to the hospital? Were the people around her doctors who were trying to save her life?
But hospitals weren’t dim — they were always brightly lit with big fluorescent lamps that cast no shadows at all, and even though her eyes were still closed, she knew she was in almost total darkness now.
She heard something.
Not voices — something else.
A soft rhythmic sound, almost like a ticking clock, but not quite.
More like a clicking, but with a hitch to it.
Cli-click.
Cli-click.
Cli-click.
Like the voice that had whispered to her a moment ago, the sound lulled her nearly into unconsciousness, but once again she pulled herself away from the edge of sleep.
What was the sound? If she was on a gurney—
Wheels! Wheels clicking on a tiled floor.
The clicking stopped.
The gurney began to tip and sway, and she felt blood rushing into her head.
The swaying stopped. The pressure in her head eased. But her mind seemed to have cleared slightly, and
