Dark Legacy Read Online Free PDF Page B

patient.
    It had never been this bad before. The shaking and confusion after she read a patient’s condition. The darkness closing in—the way it did in her twin’s demented nightmares. Only now, Jarred’s fear for her was part of the mix. His shock flaming through her mind, then her body. And Britton’s anger, harsh and confusing and impossible to shut out.
    She shouldn’t be able to feel either of them. Not on her own. That only happened to Sarah.
    This was wrong.
    Not her.
    Not possible…None of this should be possible.
    Jarred and Britton were still arguing. Their words, their thoughts, made no sense through the frigid nightmare Maddie was slipping into. Maddie’s fingers grazed her patient’s arm. Warmth shot through the contact, softening the jagged chill and anchoring her to here and now. Then her relief sparked to agony. She gasped in a moment of blinding clarity.
    Jarred jerked at her side as if he’d felt it, too. He turned shocked eyes toward her.
    “What the hell was that?”
    “He’s bleeding from his spleen,” she croaked, needing him to believe her. “Please…”
    Jarred blinked down at her. His expression shifted from surprise to a touch of awe.
    He grabbed the lapels of Britton’s lab coat and hauled the man closer to the exam table. “Don’t just stand there,” he insisted.
    Pain was swamping Maddie. Her patient’s pain. A father’s staggering flood of confusion and desperation. Growing weaker by the second.
    My wife and daughters. Save them!
    “Get off me!” Britton fought Jarred’s hold.
    My fault… The patient’s head shook side to side. Death called to Maddie from his injuries. Menacing. Triumphant. …all my fault. Let me go…
    Let him go… Sarah’s voice taunted. You’re too chicken to help him. Coward. Go ahead. Let the man die. Give up on being a doctor. Just like you gave up on being my sister…
    “No!”
    Maddie snatched up the portable ultrasound. She shouldered in front of both men and prepped the patient’s abdomen with gel. Explored for all of five seconds before she had it.
    “There!”
    The distorted image on the monitor shimmered as white misted the edges of her vision. The lesion along the man’s spleen was a deadly shadow. A fatal rupture if it wasn’t treated immediately. An injury there was no denying Maddie had felt, then seen with her mind. Long before the diagnostic equipment had revealed it to the men standing beside her.
    “Shit!” Britton knocked her aside. “Bellamy,” he yelled to the doctor who’d triaged the father. “Get your butt over here!”
    The senior resident was laboring over the ten-year-old girl whose heart had stopped at point of impact. He and other staff poured into the tiny alcove. Maddie stumbled away, shivering, while the father’s stats dropped. Alarms sounded. There was a shout for plasma. Orders for IVs. Adrenaline. The fight was on.
    The trauma team’s determination to cheat death whipped at Maddie. In the hallway outside, her hands covering her ears, she tried to block out her patient’s silent pleas and the memory of her own father begging for Sarah’s salvation.
    People’s thoughts. Their feelings. Their everything. From before. From now. Things that were still to come. Angry. Dark. Freezing dark. Building. Spinning inside her, until she clutched her stomach.
    The reality of what she’d just done sunk in. The insanity of it. How was any of this possible? Her patient’s injuries had…talked to her. Her patient had talked to her, and his mind was still screaming. Fury and fear and pleading she couldn’t ignore. Just like Sarah hadn’t been able to.
    “Oh, my God!”
    She would have collapsed, but Jarred’s hands were there to support her.
    “Get away from me.” Nausea burned the back of her throat. Sarah’s demented laughter seared the frazzled corners of Maddie’s mind. “I…I’m going to be sick.”

C HAPTER S EVEN
    “You’re making a mistake if you think another program lead could have