The Last Hour (Thompson Sisters), Sheehan-Miles, Charles [reading an ebook .txt] 📗

out and gently pushed my head back and forth, side to side.

“I’m a little stiff, that’s it.”

The doctor looked doubtful. “I’m concerned about possible head injuries. I’m going to order a CT scan.”

My stomach clenched, and I said, “For now I want to go up to the surgery waiting room. Can I do that later?”

He frowned. “All right. But if you start to feel nauseous again, or the headache gets worse, you need to let us know. Head injuries are nothing to play with.”

A thousand times worse (Ray) 

Sarah and I sat next to each other on plastic chairs a few feet away from the exam rooms where Jessica and Carrie were. Sarah looked irritated and bored, and toyed with a lock of her hair.

“When did you meet Carrie, anyway?” Sarah asked.

I didn’t really want to talk, especially about the past. But then I thought about Sarah … seventeen years old. She didn’t know what was happening any more than I did. And maybe chatting about … anything … would be better than sitting here brooding and worrying.

So I decided to talk. Keep her occupied, and not thinking about what we were going through. She’d been in San Francisco when I met Carrie, and except for a concert at New Year’s and a few minutes here and there at Dylan and Alex’s wedding, I’d not spent any time with Sarah at all. All the same, it surprised me they hadn’t talked about this. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about it though, so I changed the subject.

“What’s up with the dress?” I asked. “I’ve never seen you in anything but black.”

She shrugged. “I asked you first.”

“I’m older than you.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Seriously? I’m almost eighteen.”

I smirked. “In what, eleven more months?”

“Close enough.”

“So what’s the deal?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I never wear stuff like this anymore.” She swept her eyes down the dress. “In fact, I recognize this dress ... and it doesn’t make sense, because it shouldn’t fit me.”

I raised an eyebrow. She grimaced. “Mother used to dress us in matching clothes. Always. It’s not like we’re identical twins. It drove me nuts, because she insisted on it even as we got into middle school. She got us these dresses for Christmas in the eighth grade.”

“So ... I don’t get it.”

“I don’t either. Because I took it downstairs to the garage and poured bleach all over it.”

“What?”

She gave me a rueful look. “Mother threw a fit.”

“Yeah, I bet. Dramatic much?”

“You try growing up with no identity of your own.”

I studied her. Before this visit, I’d only met Sarah twice. She was bold, assertive, and a little cynical. She reminded me a lot of a couple of the Goth girls I knew in high school. Nothing at all like her twin, Jessica, who was much more reserved.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve definitely got an identity.”

She shook her head, rolling her eyes. “Only because I carved it out myself. Now I’m stuck in this dream or whatever the hell it is, and I look like Jessica.”

“Don’t sweat it, Sarah. This will be over soon, one way or another.”

She was quiet, then said, “You don’t think we’re dead, do you?”

I had to consider the question. This was so far out of my experience, I didn’t know what to think. Finally, I said, “I don’t know what’s going on. I do know, if we were dead, they wouldn’t be rushing us up to surgery.”

“Yeah, but ... I mean, what the hell? Aren’t we supposed to be unconscious or something?”

I shook my head. “Don’t they always say when you die, there’s a white light or a tunnel or something?”

She shrugged. “I guess. I’ve never given it much thought.”

I’d given it way too much thought. Couldn’t help it. Kowalski: blown up when he threw himself on a grenade. Dylan: leg torn all to hell, evacuated from the war zone. Roberts: not enough was left of him to fill up a body bag. Weber: shot by a sniper while he was taking a piss. By the time Weber died, I’d stopped making friends with the new guys. Then Sergeant Colton went off the edge. Martin shot himself, because of what I’d reported. I’d seen plenty of death. I’d seen nothing to convince me that God gave a crap about His creations. Seemed to me death was just as likely to be nothing more than oblivion than anything else.

Yet, here I was. Here Sarah was. Unless she was right, and this was just a dream.

“Wonder what happens next,” I said out loud.

“I guess we go check out the operating rooms. Find out what’s going on.”

“Don’t you think we should stay with Carrie and Jessica?” I asked.

She gave me the kind of look a young mother might give an errant toddler. “They don’t know we’re here, Ray. ”

I sighed. “Yeah, all right, whatever. We’ll go in a bit, when Carrie and Jessica go up. I don’t want to leave them. So while we’re doing all this sitting around waiting, I’ve got questions for you.”

“You first. We’ve established that.”

Right. The night Carrie and I met. “I’d just gotten home from Afghanistan and was hanging out with Dylan for a few days. Carrie was in town for the weekend to visit Alex, so they introduced us.”

I gave Sarah an edited version of our first meeting. But in my mind, I remembered all the sharp-edged details. It was easy to recall the moment I first laid eyes on Carrie, because that memory was embedded in me permanently. Dylan and I had been walking across the green at Columbia, and I knew who the girls were immediately. I had been expecting to meet a reasonably attractive girl—I’d seen Alex’s picture—but I was not expecting the six foot two Amazon goddess who stood next to her.

Carrie had shoulder length brown hair framing a pert nose, blue-green eyes, and a long frame. She wore a perfectly fitting flowered dress that cut off just