Page 13 of Hidden Truths

CHAPTER NINE

WHENNEXTKELLENbounded out of her body, the sun was shining through the windows and she could hear calls from the people she was supposed to visit. Someone or something had set a schedule for her, and she looked forward to the time out and about.

Truth to tell, she was enjoying her role as buttinsky-for-good. She was racking up the points, making it easier for herself on the other side.

True, it was the equivalent to cramming for the final, but she didn’t have much time left to do the right thing. She had to do it now.

As she did every time she rose, she looked down at her hands: paler than before. The closer she got to death, the paler she was. But it didn’t seem to affect the way she felt, which was fine. She had seen Rae and been reassured her daughter would face life with all the support and care she would ever need. And somehow, while she rested, a trickle of reassurance had reached her; Max, too, would have a full and happy life, and soon they would meet again.

She supposedsoonwas a relative term when compared to eternity.

She slipped into the hallway, into the stream of emotions, and rode it toward the infant nursery. She wanted to check on Baby Joy.

But this time her route took her a different way, through the children’s ward. As she traveled, she felt no tugs on her…until she saw murky gray smoke that curled through one door.

Kellen frowned. A fire? She pushed her way inside and found a thin, wide-eyed and frightened four-year-old girl patient prone on the bed. A woman in scrubs stood beside her reading the chart of her symptoms and treatment. A technician was on a ladder, changing a light in the ceiling.

In walked the father. He had drops of water around his hairline, and he used a paper towel to dry his weary-looking face. At the sight of the woman, his face grew lively and intense. “Dr. Parkhurst! I was hoping to catch you. Why does Molly keep having episodes where she can’t breathe? Every time she goes to sleep, she wakes up screaming. She has asthma, but you said if we admitted her, you could try other medicines that would make her better.”

“We don’t understand what’s happening with Molly, either.” Dr. Parkhurst glanced up at the technician, who nodded and descended the ladder.

“But you have to know.” The father walked toward her. “I lost my wife from exactly this kind of horror. I can’t lose Molly, too!”

The doctor shied away from him. “Mr. Quinby, we admitted her just a few hours ago. We have to give the medications time to work.”

“She’s already had another episode!”

“I know. Believe me, I know,” Dr. Parkhurst said. “We’ll continue to do our best. In the meantime, why don’t you go home and get some rest?”

He pushed his hand through his hair. “I can’t leave her. Not like this.”

Kellen switched her attention to the child on the bed. She was a pretty little girl who clutched the covers in panicked hands, and only her eyes moved as she watched her father and the doctor.

She looked as if her nightmares walked in the daylight.

Meanwhile, gray smoke swirled on the floor, climbed the walls, slid across the sheets.

Something was dreadfully wrong here.

Dr. Parkhurst kept her gaze on Mr. Quinby as she slid out the door.

The technician smiled affably. “If you spot any more lights out, just call. I’m Frank. You let me know.”

“I didn’t spot that one,” Mr. Quinby snapped.

“Oh. Must have been one of the medical types that are in and out all the time.” He punched his way through the door, leaving Mr. Quinby alone with his daughter…and Kellen, who drifted to the far side of the bed. She had a better view from here, and somehow she knew she needed to seeeverything.

Mr. Quinby waited, head turned as if he was listening. Turning back to his daughter, he pulled a pillow out from under the child’s head.

“Please, Daddy.” Molly’s eyes looked at her father, but Kellen saw what she saw—a monster. “Please, don’t.”

“It’s okay. Daddy won’t hurt you.” His eyes gleamed with a kind of pleasure. “You know that.”

“This does hurt me.” Tears trickled down Molly’s cheeks. “Please, Daddy, don’t make me.”

“It’s okay,” he crooned. “You’ll only feel it for a little bit. Then you won’t know anything more.” He pressed the pillow over Molly’s face.

The child screamed into the pillow, pushed against his weight, kicked her feet.

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