Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(107)
“Why not?”
“You sure you’re twenty-one?”
“Hay-ell, yes.” Tossing her a look, he walks toward the bar.
“Wait, sugar?”
He turns to see the hostess with a pen poised over the clipboard.
“I need your name.”
“It’s Jeremy.”
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SCARED TO DEATH,
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Wendy Corsi Staub
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Dallas, Texas
September
Mind if I turn on the TV?”
Hell, yes, Jeremy minds.
Minds the disruption of television and minds suddenly having a roommate.
Until an hour ago, when an orderly pushed a wheelchair through the doorway, Jeremy had the double hospital room all to himself. He should have known that was too good to be true.
Most good things are.
An image flashes into his head, and he winces.
Funny how, even after all these years, that same face—a beautiful, female face—pops in and out of his consciousness. He doesn’t know whose face it is, or whether she even exists.
“Hey, are you in pain?” the stranger in the next bed asks, interrupting Jeremy’s speculation about the face: Is she a figment of my imagination—or an actual memory?
He almost welcomes the question whose answer is readily at hand.
Am I in pain?
Hell, yes. He feels as though every bone in his face has been broken—and that’s pretty damned near the truth.
“I can ring the nurse for you,” the man offers, waving his good hand. The other hand—like Jeremy’s face—is swathed in gauze. Some kind of finger surgery, he mentioned when he first rolled into the room, as if Jeremy might care.
Reaching for the bedrail buzzer, he adds, in his lazy twang, “That Demerol’s good stuff, ain’t it?”
Yeah, and I wish you’d take some and knock yourself out.
Aloud, Jeremy only says, “No, thanks,” and shakes his head.
Bad idea. The slightest movement above the neck rockets pain through his skull. He fights the instinct to scream; that would be even more torturous.
“You sure you’re okay, pal? You looked like you were hurting for a minute there. Before. I saw you wince.”
Jeremy’s jaw tightens—more agony. Dammit. Why won’t this fool leave him alone? Doesn’t he realize it’s a bad idea to stick your nose where it doesn’t belong?
“You don’t have to be a hero, you know. If you’re in pain, all you need to do is—”
“I’m fine,” Jeremy manages to interrupt, in an almost civil tone. “Really. Just—go ahead, turn on the TV.”
“You sure? Because if it’ll bother you I don’t want to—”
“I’m positive. Watch TV.”
“Yeah? Thanks.” Working the remote with his unbandaged hand, his roommate channel surfs.
Face throbbing, Jeremy gazes absently at the barrage of images on the changing screen, halfhearing the snippets of sound from the speaker above his bed. Audience applause, country music, gunfire, a sitcom laugh track, meaningless words.
“…ladies and gentlemen, please welcome…”
“…be mostly sunny with a high of…”
“…and the Emmy-nominated drama will return on…”
His roommate pauses to ask, “Anything in particular you feel like watching?”
“Nope.”
“You a sports fan?”
“Sometimes.”
“Rangers?”
“Sure,” Jeremy lies.
“News should be on. Let’s see if we can get us some scores.”
More channel surfing.
More fleeting images.
More meaningless sound, then…
“…in Manhattan today indicted Congressman Garvey Quinn for…”
“Here’s the news.” The clicking stops. “I’ll leave it. Sports should be coming up soon.”
“Great.” As if Jeremy gives a damn about sports, or the news, or—unlike the rest of the world, it seems—television in general.
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” someone—Lisa?—once said to him.
She was right. And when you grow up deprived of something, you can’t miss it.
Or can you?
“…kidnapping the seven-year-old son of Elsa and Brett Cavalon. In an incredible twist, the child…”
A close-up flashes on the screen: a photograph of a striking couple. The woman…
Jeremy gasps, his body involuntarily jerking to sit up.
“What?” Glancing over, his roommate immediately mutes the volume. “What’s wrong? It’s the pain, right? I knew it!”
Jeremy can’t speak, can’t move, can only stare at the face on TV. It’s as if the pain exploding inside Jeremy’s head has catapulted a fragment of his imagination onto the screen. Of course, that’s impossible.
But so is this, unless…
As suddenly as she appeared on the screen, she’s gone, and the camera shifts back to the anchorman.