Page 25 of Midnight Between Us
Not right away.
She studies the clipboard like it’s more important than me.As if she’s here to update medications, chart vitals, and move on.Like I’m just another patient.
But she’s lying.
I know it—before she even opens her mouth.
Because her voice is burned into me.Not the one she uses now, clipped and professional.The other one.The voice I heard in the dark, calling me back like it cost her something to say it.
“Hi,” I rasp.It barely registers as a word—just breath and sound, scraped together by effort.
She freezes.It lasts only a second, but I catch it—the way her breath falters.
Then she straightens.The mask slips back on.“You shouldn’t talk yet.Your throat’s still raw.”
I swallow.It burns.“Why am I here?”
Her gaze finally lifts to mine, and for the first time, she actually sees me.
It’s not warm.It’s not even angry.It’s wary—like I’m a live grenade in her hands, and she’s still calculating how far she can toss me.
“We already went through this,” she states.“There was a crash.You were found unconscious.You’ve been here for several days.”
I try to nod.It feels sluggish.Off.Like my body’s half a second behind everything else.
She takes a cautious step closer.
“You had a traumatic brain injury.Emergency surgery was necessary.We sedated you afterward to manage swelling and stabilize you.”
“Who ...found me?”
She hesitates.
Not long—but just enough for the silence to stretch and scrape against the inside of my chest.
“A rescue team,” she finally says.“Sheriff’s department got a call about a wreck on Route Seven.”
She says it as if it’s just another fact, and somehow her professional voice bothers me.Still, something shifts when she says Route Seven, like she’s holding something back, like there’s more she isn’t letting me have.
Panic scrapes raw beneath my skin, rising fast enough to leave me gasping.Did someone die while I drove?
Did I lose someone?
I try not to react, to keep my breathing even.But I’m doing a shitty job.My heart pounds harder, faster, like it knows more than I do.
“Was I ...alone?”
The words barely make it past my throat.Maybe the voice I keep hearing isn’t mine at all.Perhaps it belongs to the person I left behind.
“Yes,” she says, simple and sure, and somehow, I believe her.
“Do I know you?”
Silence stretches out between us.I let it sit there for a while, but eventually she answers, “No.”
Another lie.I can feel it in my chest.
She turns to the machines, as if they need her attention more than I do, fiddling with one of the monitors just to avoid the space between us.Her hands move, but her mind’s somewhere else.She’s already retreating.
