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

into her. I’d figured out enough by now to know this weakened my own hold on my body. But sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.

The door to the room opened, and a nurse stepped in. She took the chart off the end of the bed, and wrote some notes on it, then walked over to the monitors and wrote down more numbers. Then she looked at Sarah and gave her a gentle smile, then touched her wrist.

Sarah’s lips moved, and her right eye opened, just a little. The left was still too swollen.

I leaned my head back, a rush of relief running through me. She was awake.

“You’re awake,” the nurse said. “Well, hello there! I’m Nina. How are we feeling this morning?”

Sarah tried to speak, but the tube down her throat prevented it. Tears of frustration appeared in her eyes, and her right arm moved a little.

Daniel’s eyes went wide when Sarah started to move, and now he jumped up and down, a grin on his face. “She’s waking up!” he shouted. I winced. Incorporeal or not, I desperately wanted a cup of coffee.

I nodded. “She’s waking up,” I repeated.

“Do you think she’ll still be just as nuts?” he asked.

I chuckled, looking down at Sarah’s battered body, feeling a warmth and love for that girl, and said, “Probably even more.”

“It’s okay,” the nurse said to Sarah. “I’ll go get the doctor, and we should be able to get that tube out in just a few minutes, okay?”

Sarah barely moved her head in a nod. I found myself pacing, nervous. Sarah’s one open eye was wandering the room, and for just a second it fixed on me. And narrowed. Surely she couldn’t see me. I stepped closer and said, “Sarah ... I’m so relieved.”

She kept looking. But then I realized what she was eyeing was the window. The sunlight outside. And that was ... frustrating ... heartbreaking … exactly right. I was sure she wouldn’t remember anything. And that was best, because who needs to remember this crap? What I wanted her to remember was being alive. I wanted her to remember her first kiss, I wanted her to remember standing up for her twin, I wanted her to remember love, and life, and all of it.

This twilight world? She didn’t need that. No one did.

It was more than a few minutes before the nurse came back with a doctor. The doctor took her chart off the end of the bed. “Sarah, I’m Doctor Norris. I’m just going to check a few things before we take out the breathing tube. Okay?”

Sarah just slightly nodded again. Tears were slowly leaking out of both eyes.

The doctor put on gloves and said, “This is probably going to hurt, a lot, but just for a moment. Sorry.” Then he raised the blanket from her left leg and very gently lifted the dressings to examine the wounds. As soon as he touched her leg, Sarah went completely rigid, and a muffled scream rose from her throat.

Jesus Christ. I wanted to shove the doctor away from her, but I knew he had to do it. I looked at her leg. It was still insanely swollen. Her calf looked like a football had been stuffed inside of it, the skin an angry red around the open slit that went almost from her ankle to her knee. Huge stitches that looked almost like shoelaces held her leg together, and the whole thing was like something out of a nightmare. Very carefully, the doctor covered the wound again, and re-draped her sheet over the leg.

Sarah’s eyes were squeezed shut. The doctor said, “You’re doing very well, Sarah. Very well indeed.” As he spoke, he was writing notes on the chart. He looked up at the monitors and said, “I think we’re ready for that tube to come out. It’s going to be uncomfortable, but not like the leg. Okay? Just stay calm, and I want you to slowly breathe out.”

Very carefully, very slowly, he removed the tube from her throat. She coughed and her body spasmed, then let out a low howl.

“I know, honey,” the nurse said. “It’s all right.”

“The fuck it’s all right,” Sarah muttered. “Oh God, that hurts.”

Absently, I said to Daniel, “Don’t ever use language like hers.”

The nurse said, “I’m going to ask you a couple of questions, they may seem silly, all right? Do you know where you are?”

Sarah said, “A hospital. I guess in Washington?”

“Yes, you’re at George Washington University Hospital. What do you remember?”

“Car accident,” Sarah said.

“Do you know what year it is?”

Sarah frowned. Then she answered, “2013.”

“Very good,” the nurse said.

The doctor said, “Nina will show you how the morphine pump works. It has a limiter on it, so you can only use a certain amount, but that should help with the pain a little. But you’re coming along well. You were in a very nasty accident ... you’re very lucky.”

Sarah nodded and then said, “How is Ray?”

Oh, shit.

The doctor and nurse looked at each other, then said, “He’s just a couple of doors down. And your sisters are fine. In fact, if you’re up to visitors, you can have one at a time, as soon as you are ready.”

The doctor hadn’t actually told her how I was. That didn’t surprise me. But she hadn’t asked about Carrie and Jessica. How much did she remember?

In a hesitant voice, Sarah said, “I’d like visitors. After you show me how to work the pump.”

I don’t see how (Carrie)

Nothing had changed with Ray overnight. The machines were still keeping him breathing. I sat, my hand on his, for a long time. I was numb. The doctors wanted to meet at ten a.m. And I think that terrified me more than anything else.

When we got to the intensive care unit and I went to see Ray, the first thing Julia did was walk to the nurses’ station. From Ray’s room, I could see her over there talking with them, and I