Hiding in the Shadows Read Online Free PDF

recent part of her life?
    A nurse came in carrying a stack of magazines. “I brought you a few more, honey.” She was a motherly woman with a warm voice and gentle hands, and over the last few days she had been the most helpful and encouraging of the nurses.
    “Thanks, Kathy.” She eyed the short, neat, unpolished nails of the nurse, then looked at her own still-ragged ones. “Kathy, do you happen to have a nail file?”
    “I’ll get one for you.” Kathy put the magazines on the bed and smiled at her with genuine pleasure. “You’re looking much better today, honey. And obviously feeling better.”
    Faith smiled at her. “I am, thanks.”
    “Dr. Burnett will be pleased. You’re one of his favorites, you know.”
    Faith had to laugh. “Because he wants to write that paper on me, and we both know it. Not too many long-term-coma patients wake up.”
    “That’s true,” Kathy said soberly. “And those who do tend to be in much worse shape than you are, honey. With you, it’s almost like you were just sleeping.”
    Faith didn’t feel as though she had just been sleeping, but said only, “I know how lucky I am, believe me. And you and the other nurses have been terrific. That makes a difference.”
    Kathy patted Faith’s shoulder, said, “I’ll go get that nail file,” and left the room.
    It was easy enough to say the right words. Faith had been doing that for days now. She had been positive and upbeat. She had listened closely to the psychiatriston staff and obediently followed her advice to take things one step at a time. She had agreed with the nurses’ cheerful predictions that her life would get back on track sooner rather than later. She had read newspapers and magazines and watched television to catch up on current events. She had made herself smile at Dr. Burnett when he visited and had not mentioned the devastating panic that was always with her and how she often woke in the night terrified by the blankness inside herself.
    She had some knowledge now, but almost all of it dated from the moment she’d opened her eyes in the hospital. The nurses’ faces were familiar, as were the doctors’. The layout of her floor and that of the physical therapy rooms two stories above.
    These things she knew.
    And there was, absent from her mind until someone asked her a direct question, the sort of knowledge that came from a normal education. She had completed several crossword puzzles, and a game show she had found on television had shown her that she had some awareness of history and science. Facts. Dates. Occurrences.
    Fairly useless trivia, for the most part.
    But of memories, all she had, all she could claim as her own dating from that otherwise blank part of her life, were the dreams of a blond man she thought she had loved.
    There had been two other dreams before today, and they were brief and very similar; just scenes from a relationship, casual and intimate. Each time, the scene had erupted into laughter and ended in lovemaking.
    But she still didn’t remember his name.
    She hadn’t mentioned the dreams to anyone. They were something all her own, a piece of herself not given to her by someone else, and she held on to them as to an anchor.
    “Here you go, Faith.” Kathy returned to the room and handed her the nail file. “Before you start working on those nails, how about a trip around the floor? Doctor’s orders.”
    Faith was more than ready to move. Painful as it still was, at least it allowed her to concentrate on muscles and bones and balance, instead of having to keep thinking and wondering.
    “You bet,” she said, and threw back the covers.
    On November fourteenth, three weeks after waking up from her coma and nine weeks after the accident, Faith went home.
    She was not fully recovered. She still got tired very easily, her sleep was erratic and disturbed by dreams she remembered and nightmares she didn’t, and her emotional state was, to say the least, fragile.
    Dr. Burnett drove her to