Joanne looked coldly at me.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
Hearing her voice stunned me. It was pure English words spoken by a voice I knew. How distressing can a nightmare be?
“Oh my God, Joanne. How long have I been here? I feel weak and ragged and . . .”
“It’s been a while,” she said. “You were brought here in bad shape, Emily. You’ll still need to convalesce for a while, but seeing you awake is a good thing.”
She might have said so, but her face didn’t deliver the same message. I wanted news. Suddenly, all I worried about was my position in Johnson & Brothers Co.
“How’s the firm doing? Did you send anyone to attend Rio Firearms Expo in my place?”
Joanne frowned. But then relinquished her grave expression.
“Of course not. I believe you should rest a little longer. I’ll come back later.”
Her uneasiness bothered me. We were used to talking plainly, and besides my boss, I’ve always considered her a friend. But now she seemed hard and distant. Was it the hospital room?
“Why don’t you stay a bit longer? I feel like it’s been a lifetime since I last spoke to someone friendly.”
Joanne stared at me.
“I’m sorry, Emily. I have lots of work to do. My affairs at Johnson & Brothers Co. have been put on hold since you . . . since all this shit happened. You have good people taking care of you. You’ll be fine.”
Joanne nodded, got up from the chair, and left the room. She also lied.
Because Joanne didn’t really believe I would be fine. If she did, she would say so looking straight into my eyes, instead of wavering her eyeballs around and turning her face to the floor.
I outstretched my arm, trying to grab her, to stop her from leaving. Her face had thawed some of the cold inside, but there were many ice patches yet to dissolve. She was already out of reach. My movements felt limited. My body squeaked as though made of rusty iron when I tried to raise an arm.
“Please, Joanne, don’t leave. I . . . I feel strange. How long do I have to stay here? What do the doctors say about me?” I said.
Joanne stopped walking and looked back at me.
“You might leave the hospital in a few days.”
“Oh, great. I can’t wait to go back home. How did Mom handle this all? Is she ok?”
“Your mom doesn’t know what happened to you, Emily. We thought it would be better not to worry her.”
I wished Mom knew what I had been through. She had always been beside me. Always ready to dab wet gauze on a knee scratch, ever so zealous about my fevers. I can still smell the nutritious hot soups she fed me with whenever I caught a cold as a child. But I grew up, Mom’s mental health degraded, and now it was my turn to protect her.
Joanne trying to leave the room made me feel impotent. A strange sense of fear had dawned upon me. The sense of willing to get the hell out of that place but not being able to. The sense of being shackled to that damn bed.
It was pure fear. Fear of putting my feet on the cold floor, right beside the entrance to the cave, under the bed, where that treacherous, noisy beast hid itself. In the darkness beneath beds where all terrors become true.
But I was not a child anymore, and I would not surrender my grown up thoughts to the fantasies of a young brain.
The room started to go back to its whiteness and normality, where everything was cold. Joanne stopped by the door before going outside only to land a quick, last glimpse on me. The air chilled.
The chill resonated to my bones. And it came in the form of letters put on a small sign which had been embroidered to the outer face of the door. I knew those letters. But not the way they had been arranged in: “Quarto 206.”
Chapter 38
“Where am I, Joanne? What happened to me?” I said.
I tried to raise my body to sit on the bed. Tried to take those frozen bedsheets from over my body, but my hands didn’t obey.
Joanne gazed at me from under the door frame.
“Emily, you need to calm down. I know that you’ve been through terrible things. But you need to stay calm.”
“Where am I? What do you mean?”
“We’re at a hospital in Rio. You’ve been held captive for a month inside a slum. Now you’re safe. Just calm down.”
I wasn’t calming down.
I twisted my body, strained my arms, but they didn’t leave the cover of the bedsheets. The only sound that escaped from under it was metal rattling.
“That was a nightmare. I’m not in Rio . . . I’m not. I thought it had only been a nightmare, Joanne.” That sign on the door didn’t lie. My eyes welled up, but I couldn’t wipe them.
“Don’t move like that,” Joanne said. “You’ve been handcuffed for your own safety. You may get hurt if you continue acting like this.”
Tears streamed down my face. Joanne remained cold as steel.
“Why am I handcuffed? I’m the victim, Joanne. They wanted to kill me, they wanted to hand me over to drug lords, to Flavio Beirario’s faction—and Renato—Renato gave his life to save mine,” I mumbled.
“Emily, please.” Joanne looked outside into the corridor, beckoned someone to come. “They’ll give you something to help you relax.”
I looked around at those white walls, my mind wandering through the scenes of the past, the stains of blood. Had I gained some weight since I had been put on that bed? Had Marlon come to
