by Nic Joseph
“You wake up.”
“Yes!” she said. “You have it, too?”
“No, it was pretty clear where that was going—”
“Shut up,” she said, grabbing a pillow off the couch and slinging it at me. She placed a finger on my forehead. “Whatever. I’m guessing that’s not as bad as whatever you’ve got going on up here.”
We were both quiet for a moment.
“You sure you don’t want to talk about it?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
She drew her finger slowly away from me.
Damn it, Gayla. Don’t do it.
“But…”
Here it comes.
“I mean…”
Come on. Just say it.
“At some point, you’re going to have to talk about it,” she said. “I haven’t told them anything about the nightmares, I promise. But if it’s in any way related to what happened—”
“It isn’t,” I said, the lie slipping easily from my lips.
She sighed and sunk down on the couch beside me. “I’m going to have to tell them something.”
It was the massive, glittery, top-hat-wearing elephant in the room. It was the perverted uncle or grandma’s drinking problem. Completely obvious, incredibly embarrassing, and something we both wanted to avoid for as long as possible.
But Gayla was right.
She was going to have to tell them something.
“I know,” I said. “But…maybe another time.”
She sighed deeply and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Another time.”
• • •
Six weeks.
Only six weeks, or forty-two days, or one thousand hours were left in the ridiculous, ass-backward investigation surrounding whether I was fit for my job.
Six weeks of everyone wondering if it was going to happen again. Six weeks of me having to be more vigilant than ever to make sure that no one knew how bad it was. Six weeks of Gayla asking me to promise I’d tell her about it “another time.”
I’d honestly thought I could do it.
Just like the day I heard Nell and Mike whispering about me in the kitchen, I was determined to prove to everyone that I was okay.
Hell, I’d been managing the dreams and visions my whole life. What was six more weeks?
That’s what I thought at first.
But it didn’t last long.
Because then, on a cool summer night, I walked into a hospital room and met Emily Lindsey.
And just like that, everything—absolutely everything—went to shit.
Chapter Four
“I know you have as much interest in pop culture as you do in bird feed,” Gayla said as we got out of the car. It was a breezy night, and we both hunched our shoulders as we crossed the four-lane street in front of the hospital. “But how in the hell do you not know what Carmen Street is? Seriously, that blows my mind.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but she cut me off quickly. “And you can save your lame joke about how Carmen Street is a street south of Lake,” she said in what I guess was a nasal mimicry of me. She shook her head as we headed into McKinney Memorial Hospital. “To think, Emily of Carmen Street had your name in her pocket. I’m not going to lie: I’m a little bit jealous.”
“And deranged, given the circumstances,” I said.
The call had come in half an hour ago.
Caucasian female, late thirties.
Found alert but unresponsive in her home.
Covered head to toe in blood, holding a wood-handled, clip point hunting knife in her hands.
And if all that wasn’t enough, the responding officers had found two names on a Post-it Note shoved in her pocket.
Max Smith.
And Detective Steven Paul, Douglas County PD.
Me.
“Emily’s blog has been featured on everything from CNN to the Herald,” Gayla said. “She’s sort of amazing.”
“I didn’t say I hadn’t heard of Carmen Street Confessions,” I said. “I said I don’t read it.”
“Well, you should. You know she’s the one who broke the whole Kempton Food Pantry thing. The guys who were trading canned food for hand jobs. They are in jail because of Emily.”
“Why is it called Carmen Street?” I asked. “I mean, given that she lives up in Whitewater. That’s nowhere near Carmen.”
“That’s the thing. Nobody knew where she lived, not until tonight.” Gayla’s eyes sparkled as we stepped through the sliding doors of the ER. Gayla is an accomplished and successful detective, but she lives for things like gossip blogs, The Bachelorette (not The Bachelor, for reasons she once described in excruciating detail), and magazines with exclamation points in every headline. “Everyone speculated that she lived somewhere on Carmen, but of course, that could mean anything from Franklin to the lake. Now we know that it wasn’t Carmen at all. Hell, until today, nobody actually knew if there really was someone named Emily who worked for the site. Every post was signed by an Emily, sure, but that could’ve been a team of teenage boys for all we knew.”
“Teenage boys writing about neighborhood affairs, corruption, politics, and scandal?”
“You know what I mean. It could’ve been anyone.”
I stared at the bustling ER waiting room as we stepped inside. As we walked up to the front desk, the two attendants looked up.
“Can I help you?” the woman closest to us asked.
“Yeah, I’m Detective Gayla Ocasio, and this is Detective Steve Paul,” Gayla said as we flashed our badges. “We’re here to see Emily Lindsey.”
The woman nodded and stood, walking around the counter. She led us through the double doors and back into the emergency room, past the triage area. The smell of the ER stung my nostrils; it was the strong scent of a disinfectant or some other chemical mixed with the tangy smell of something decidedly human that it was failing to hide.
The woman led us through a maze of small rooms closed off only by thick curtains that ended three or four feet above the floor. It was warm in the back of the hospital, and I tugged at the collar of my long-sleeved shirt.
Gayla saw me and frowned. “Aren’t you hot in that thing?” she asked.
I shrugged her off. “I’m fine.”
She slowed in front of one of the private rooms. A doctor stood outside of it, typing on a small computer on wheels. She looked up as we approached. “You’re with the police,” she said. “I’m Dr. Erica Suda.”
We introduced ourselves. “What happened?” Gayla asked, nodding her thanks to the woman who’d led us back.
“They brought her in about thirty minutes ago. Covered in blood. I’ve actually never seen anything like it. I could barely see her face,” the doctor said. “But we cleaned her up, and the crazy thing is that there wasn’t a scratch on her.”
“Nothing?”
“Nope. Not even a paper cut, as far as we can tell. We’re running some tests to see what could be going on internally, but from the looks of things, physically, she’s fine.”
As she spoke, I turned to look through the small gap between the curtain and the wall. I could make out a mere whisper of woman, sitting straight up on a small cot, facing us. She was older than me—according to the paperwork, a few months shy of her fortieth birthday—but she was so small and frail that she looked much younger. Her eyes were open but unfocused. A thin, white sheet was pulled up to her waist.
We were only ten feet away from her, with just the small curtain in between us, and I wondered if she could hear what we were saying.
“Her husband is the one who found her. He’s around here somewhere,” Dr. Suda said. “He said he called her aunt in Tampa. No other known relatives—her parents died in a car crash when she was younger.”
“What about the blood?” Gayla asked. “You think it belongs to someon
e else?”
“Well, it’s definitely not all hers, if any at all is,” Dr. Suda said. “We’ve sent it away for testing.”
“Can we go in?” I asked.
Dr. Suda seemed to expect the question, but she watched us carefully as she responded. “Yes, but just for a few minutes. She’s still in shock from whatever happened to her. I doubt you’re going to get much right now. You may do better coming back later.”
Gayla and I both nodded as she gently pulled back the curtain.
We stepped forward, and suddenly Emily Lindsey of Carmen Street Confessions was real, sitting motionless on the bed in front of us. She stared past us into the emergency room, not acknowledging either of us as we walked in. The doctor drew the curtain closed behind us, giving us just a scrap of privacy.
I stared at the woman in the bed. Except for the fact that her eyes were open and her chest was rising and falling from her breath, she might have been dead. Her skin was splotchy, her complexion was pale, and her brown hair hung around her shoulders in a dirty, tangled mess. Her eyes were dark, almost black, the skin around them tight and gray. Her mouth hung open, just slightly, as the loud, shallow breaths escaped her. There wasn’t a trace of blood left on her, but in the harsh hospital lights, I could almost see the residue, as if it had tinted her skin and seeped its way deep into her pores.
What happened to you? I thought, and I almost asked the question aloud. Why did you have my name in your pocket?
Emily was wearing a simple hospital gown, the sheet still covering half of her body. I watched as Gayla took a few steps closer to the bed before stopping to look back at me. I nodded, understanding, and hung back near the curtain.
“Emily, I’m Detective Ocasio,” she said. “And this is my partner Detective Paul. Can you hear me?”
Silence.
Gayla took another step closer. “Emily? I just need to know if you can hear me. Can you nod your head?”
Still no response. Emily continued to breathe loudly, and her unfocused gaze landed squarely between us at the slit in the curtain that separated her from the rest of the world.
“Emily?” I said from my position near the corner. “I’m Detective Steven Paul. Were you looking for me?”
Emily began wringing her hands together beneath the sheet, and she shook one foot fervently, but she didn’t say anything as Gayla approached. The shaking got worse with every step Gayla took, and I thought about what Dr. Suda had said.
“Maybe we should go to the house first and come back,” I said.
Gayla turned to me and nodded. “Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to get anything right now. What the hell happened to her?”
Gayla asked this in a stage whisper, and though Emily didn’t say anything, the fidgeting seemed to get worse. Gayla and I both watched her for a moment. Emily knew we were there—she was responding to us—just not in the way we needed.
Gayla tried a final time. “Emily, did someone hurt you?”
But still, nothing.
Gayla sighed and walked back to my side. “Later,” she said before opening the curtain and stepping out.
I nodded and turned to follow her, taking one more look over my shoulder.
But I stopped when I saw something on the sheet.
It was a small, dark-brown spot, no larger than a dime.
The small stain had appeared on the sheet above Emily’s hands, where she continued to fidget.
On its own, the spot itself wouldn’t have been too worrisome. It could have been anything.
The problem was that it hadn’t been there before.
And it was growing before my eyes.
“What the—” I said, moving back into the room.
Gayla whipped around. “Hey!” she exclaimed.
We quickly covered the steps between the curtain and the bed. I tore back the sheet to expose Emily’s hands, and my stomach lurched when I saw what had caused the stain.
Emily’s fingernails weren’t that long, but they were long enough. She’d use the nails on her right hand to dig a small, jagged hole—not a scratch, but an actual hole—into her left palm. Blood pulsed from it, covering her hands, the gown, and the sheets. Her breath was coming out in loud pants now, but she still didn’t say a word.
“Shit!” Gayla exclaimed, running out of the small room to get help while I grabbed a tissue from the table beside Emily. I reached for her hand, and she swung it away, droplets of blood coating the air, and she made the first noise she’d made since we arrived: a loud, guttural moan that flooded out of her body as swiftly as the blood flowed from her palm.
Chapter Five
I was all but dragged out of the room as two nurses rushed in, followed seconds later by Dr. Suda. Gayla walked up behind them and stood next to me at the edge of the curtain, and we watched as the team sprang into action. One of the nurses grabbed Emily’s wrist and pressed a large piece of gauze on the wound to stop the bleeding. The other stood at the bedside, one hand on each of Emily’s shoulders.
“Mrs. Lindsey, I need you to calm down,” the nurse said quietly but firmly.
Emily didn’t respond, and she continued to moan, the loud, painful sound exploding from her parted lips.
“What’s going on?”
The question came from behind us, and Gayla and I spun around to find a tall man standing there, peering over our heads.
His face was filled with concern. “What happened to her?” He took a step forward, past the curtain, causing the medical team to look up.
“I need you all out,” Dr. Suda said firmly.
Emily continued to moan, a deep, haunting sound that seemed as much a protest as it was a warning. Gayla and I took a couple of steps back, but the man persisted, moving even closer to the bed.
“Mr. Lindsey,” the doctor said, straightening as he approached. “Please. We’ll let you know the moment it’s okay to come back in.”
The man said something quietly and urgently to Dr. Suda before turning and joining us out in the corridor. One of the nurses stepped forward and yanked the curtain closed behind him.
Emily’s husband zeroed in on us. He had jet-black hair that hung low over his forehead, pale skin, and piercing gray eyes, and he was wearing a simple cotton T-shirt under a worn, tan jacket. He was holding a small, red handbag in his hands. He looked back and forth between Gayla and I. “What happened to my wife?”
“Mr. Lindsey—” Gayla started, but he cut her off.
“I went around the corner to make a call. I was only gone for a minute.” He sounded frantic. “Who are you?”
“Detective Ocasio and Detective Paul,” Gayla said. She reached out her hand, and the man hesitated a moment before shaking it. “We just wanted to speak with her—”
“Who said you could do that?” he asked.
I saw Gayla’s jaw clench. “Her doctor,” she said. “Not to mention the fact that she’s an adult who doesn’t need your permission to be spoken to.”
His eyes darted to me, and he took a deep breath. His entire expression changed, and his shoulders slumped forward. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice softening. “I just—is she okay?” He turned and tried to peer through the curtain where the moaning continued.
“She scratched herself pretty badly,” I said. “But to be honest, we know far less than you right now, Mr. Lindsey.”
“It’s Dan,” he said.
“Can you tell us what happened tonight?” I asked.
Dan blinked and shook his head, his shoulders slumping a little. “I really don’t know,” he said. “A few hours ago, I was at work. And now, I’m”—he waved his hand around him, the other hand clutching the red handbag—“I don’t know what.”
“At work?” I asked.
“Yeah. I own an HVAC service and repair company. Most of the jobs are at night and on the weekends, so sometimes I have
to fill in at off times. I got home around eight. Emily wasn’t even supposed to be home yet.”
“Home from where?”
He swallowed. “She was on her way back from Madison,” he said. “She was up there on assignment. Since Friday.”
“What was she doing up there?”
He shrugged slightly. “I have no idea. Everybody keeps asking me that, because they think it might make a difference, but I don’t know. Emily doesn’t talk about her stories very much, and I’m okay with that. It’s what she wants.”
Gayla nodded for him to continue. “What happened when you got home?” she asked.
He swallowed again, and I got the sense that he was thinking hard about the words he was saying. He looked down at the ground. “I didn’t know anything was wrong at first,” he said before looking back up. “I was actually calling her when I walked inside, just to tell her I was home and to see how close she was. But it was on the second or third ring when I got to the door and saw that it was open.”
“Completely open?”
“No, well, it was pushed,” he said slowly, his eyes shifting back and forth between Gayla and myself. “But not closed. That’s when I started to panic. Part of me knew I should call the police, but I thought maybe I’d left it that way or something, you know, when I left in the morning. It was possible, and I guess I didn’t want to believe that someone had broken in. But none of that mattered anymore when I saw the blood.”
“You saw the blood before you saw Emily?”
“Yes,” he said. “I turned on the lamp in the front hallway, and I saw it on the wall. A big smudge in the middle of the white paint. I didn’t know it was blood at first, but I knew that whatever it was, it hadn’t been there when I left this morning. I’d made up my mind to call the cops, but by then, I was in the living room, and I saw her—” He broke off.
“And what?” Gayla asked, stepping forward. “What’d you see?”
“She was just sitting there,” he said softly, and it was evident that his wife wasn’t the only one still in shock. “Not doing anything, not saying anything, but just sitting there on the couch. And the blood was all over her.”
