Listen to the Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page B

to let it work its miracle. Within minutes, the pain receded to a dull echo of itself.
    Through half-closed lids, Katie followed Nurse Ring’s movements about the room. She walked on cat’s feet, busying herself, smoothing this, plumping that, now and then a hand going to the short, dark hair beneath her crisp nurse’s cap. She transferred folded linen from the chair by the door to the closet shelves facing Katie’s bed. This completed, she moved to the window and opened it a couple of inches, adjusted the drapes to let in some air. The nurse turned, a faint expression of wariness in her eyes. “Is there something I can get you?”
    “No, I’m fine, thank you,” Katie half-whispered. Then she blurted out the question that had begun to prod at her. “What day is this?”
    Outside her window, the day was sunny, the sky a clear, unbroken blue as far as she could see. The last she remembered, it had been dark and raining.
    The nurse didn’t answer right away. Then, her bright, practiced smile switched on, she said, “Wednesday. You’ve had a long sleep, Miss Summers.” She pretended to study something on her chart. Katie’s mind did a fast computation. Wednesday. The accident happened on Saturday. An eerie feeling, cool as ice-crystals, swept through her. Four days gone from her life. Just as if they had never been.
    “Is—is there anything else I should know?” The question brought a fake-puzzled look from the nurse. “No, I don’t think so. There’ll be further tests, I expect—those that couldn’t be performed while you were comatose—but you heard what Dr. Miller said. He feels you’re out of any immediate danger.” She hesitated, and Katie sensed there was something else, something the nurse was keeping from her.
    “What is it? What’s wrong?”
    “I really should wait for Dr.—”
    “No, please. You tell me. It’ll stay between us, I promise.”
    “Well—uh—you did give us quite a scare on Monday morning.”
    “Why? What happened?”
    “You just decided to stop breathing. A little bout of respiratory failure. The shock. It happens sometimes. It got pretty tense there for a while. We had to hook you up to the respirator for a few hours. But you rallied nicely, thank the Lord.”
    Yes, thank the Lord. She could simply have died right there on the table, just slipped away, and not been aware of anything that was happening.
    In one way, it had nothing at all to do with her. Today, instead of waking, she might have been buried. Katie gave herself a mental shake to expel the morbid thoughts.
    The nurse approached the bed and helped by slipping thermometer under her tongue, feeling for a pulse, talking. The nurse’s hand on Katie’s wrist felt cool and light.
    “By the way,” she said, “you’ve had friends calling to ask about you. Maybe tomorrow, if you’re a very good girl, you can have visitors. I’ll see what Dr. Miller has to say about it. Oh, and there’s an absolutely spectacular bouquet of red roses out in the corridor with your name on it. Someone special, maybe?” she added with a conspiratorial wink. “Would you like me to bring them in?”
    Katie managed a “yes” around the thermometer.
    “I didn’t bring them in right away because some patients are allergic.” Removing the thermometer, she shook it, read it, then jotted something down on the chart, which Katie tried to catch, and couldn’t.
    “Besides, flowers use up precious oxygen, and you did have that episode.”
    Surely there was enough oxygen for herself and one lone bouquet of roses, Katie thought, and said so. She wished the nurse would stop treating her as if she, Katie, were a child. Or mentally deranged, which is probably what she did think, and who could blame her? She was beginning to doubt her own sanity.
    Alone now, she puzzled over the fact of the police finding only her at the scene of the accident. Why? Surely there was some logical explanation. There had to be. She was just too exhausted to