Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)
Wendy Corsi Staub
Prologue
Dallas, Texas
September
Mind if I turn on the TV?”
Hell, yes, Jeremy minds.
Minds the disruption of television, and 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 it 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?
He feels as though every bone in his face has been broken. That’s pretty damned near the truth—and not for the first time.
“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 bed rail buzzer, he adds, in his lazy twang, “That Demerol’s good stuff, ain’t it?”
“No, thanks.” Jeremy starts to shake 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 look like you’re hurting.”
His jaw tightens—more agony. Dammit. Why won’t this guy leave him alone?
Jeremy closes his eyes.
He’s in another hospital, long ago and far away. In pain, terrified, surrounded by strangers…
“You don’t have to be a hero, you know,” his roommate rambles on.
But there’s another voice, in his head, the one that belongs to a face he still sees in nightmares even after all these years: “All you have to do is triple up on his pain meds tonight. Maybe quadruple, just to be sure. Then tuck him into bed…”
“If you’re in pain, pal, all you need to do is call a nurse and she’ll give you something for it.”
Jeremy’s eyes snap open.
“I’m fine. 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 the healthy hand, his roommate begins to channel surf.
Face throbbing, Jeremy gazes absently at the barrage of images on the changing screen, half hearing the snippets of sound from the speaker. Audience applause, country music, stock reports, 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, and then…
“…in Manhattan today indicted the congressman 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 said to him in a bar not long ago, when he professed ignorance about the reality show finale playing on the television overhead.
True. 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? 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 piece 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.
Unless…
Unless she’s real.
She was there. On TV.
She does exist. She has a name—one he’s heard before, in another place, another time…