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

stuff of nightmares and horror films. I’d last maybe a week or two before I turned into a gibbering maniac. If this is what death was like it’s no wonder people had such a horror of the idea of ghosts. They were probably all nuts, wandering around haunting everyone they had loved.

And what if it lasted even longer? What if I had to stay in this awful silence and watch Carrie grow old without me? What if I had to watch her die?

I closed my eyes and shook my head, trying to shake the hideous, maudlin thoughts that were crowding my brain.

One thing at a time. Right now I needed to focus on today, and the really big question ahead of me: was I even going to live another day?

With the thought, I found myself in the intensive care unit, my body laid out before me. Daniel followed along. The kid had adjusted to our new reality a lot easier than I had.

The rasp of the respirator. Inhale. Exhale. The cold, mechanical breath that was keeping my body alive. I studied the electronics tied to my body, the monitors that measured my pulse, my respiration, my oxygen levels. It was easier to study those numbers than it was to look at my ravaged body.

I shook my head, then wandered out into the hall. My room was two doors down from Sarah’s.

A touch of fear tightened my chest as I approached her room. Had I done the right thing? Forcing her back into her body? I didn’t know. I didn’t have any way of knowing. It was just a wild-assed guess that might have been the wrong one entirely.

She was laid out on the bed, connected to the monitors same as I had been, except that the tubes down her throat weren’t connected to a respirator. She was breathing on her own. I slumped against the wall, studying her. They’d covered her in a sheet up to her neck, but that didn’t disguise how grossly swollen her left leg was. When she woke up, that was going to hurt like hell.

Daniel sat in the chair next to her bed as I stood, studying her. The ward was quiet, visiting hours long since over, though I didn’t think that really applied to me. Sarah seriously looked like crap. The bruising all over the side of her face had taken on a purplish, almost black hue, yellowing just along the edges, and one of her eyes was swollen completely shut.

As I watched, her lips moved, just a little. Her head moved, just a hair, and her lips moved again too. Like she was trying to talk. Like she was dreaming.

I closed my eyes in relief. If she was dreaming in there ... if she was trying to say something ... then that meant ... just maybe ... that she was going to be okay.

“Ray?” Daniel said.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“I’m scared.”

I opened my eyes and turned toward him, then put my hand on his shoulder. “I hear you. What do you say we walk down to the pediatric ICU and check in on you?”

He nodded slowly, and we left Sarah and started walking.

“Is Sarah going to die?” Daniel asked.

I shook my head. “No ... I don’t think so. I think she’s back in her body and recovering. Did you see how her lips were moving?”

“Why did she attack that guy? It was scary.”

I sighed. “Long story, kid. But ... short version is, he’s kind of a bad guy, and he was being mean to Carrie. And well ... you know, Carrie and her sisters stick together.”

“Is what she did why all that stuff happened? The alarms?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

We were out in the hall now. “Sarah took you to the pediatric ICU, right? Which way?”

He pointed, and we walked.

After a couple of moments, I said, “Listen, I don’t want you to be scared. I know this is freaky, and you miss your mom and dad. But ... I promise I’ll do whatever I can to help. We’ll stick together, okay?”

“You’re not going to disappear? Like she did?”

I didn’t want to lie to the kid. But how could I know the answer to that? I settled for a half-answer. “I don’t plan to go anywhere kid, until I know you’re safe. All right?”

I swallowed after I said those words. My life was a web of promises, and it wouldn’t take much to pull the thread on them.

You look like death (Carrie)

I felt a hand shaking my shoulder, and I wanted it to go away, so I slapped it, then a little harder, then a voice said, “Carrie, wake up.”

I mumbled something obscene, then felt, rather than saw, the light come on. It was red through my eyelids. “Leave me alone,” I groaned.

“Oh, sis, if I did you’d be mad later.”

I cracked my eyes open just a hair. My sister, Julia, was sitting on the edge of the bed, an unfamiliar bed, and she was touching my shoulder. For just a second, I was completely disoriented. What was Julia doing here? Where was here?

And then I remembered. The accident. Sarah, and Ray. And then I felt gorge rising up my throat, and I jumped up, untangling myself from the covers and ran for the bathroom. I just made it, throwing myself at the toilet, grabbing the bowl with both hands as a flood of stomach acid and bile came up my throat, burning my sinuses.

“Oh, fuck,” I said, feeling tears at my eyes. Then Julia was at my shoulder again. “Carrie, are you okay?”

I shook my head, the tears starting again, and then, I was vomiting again, out of control. Julia, practical as always, filled a glass with water, passed it to me as I finished and said, “Rinse.”

I leaned back against the tub. Christ. I stank. My clothes were dirty, and I’d gotten puke on my sleeve. I took a mouthful of the water, sloshed it around in my mouth, and