MirrorWorld Read Online Free PDF

fall to my knees.

 
    3.
    “Do you know what you did?” the paramedic asks me, her thick British accent distracting me from the question. Her face is hidden by a surgical mask and thick glasses. An explosion of hair frames her nonface. Graying. Maybe fifty-five. Despite the accent, I hear the bewilderment in her voice and replay the question in my mind.
    A full twenty seconds later, I lean up and look down. My shirt is missing, but the plastic pendant still hangs from my neck. Which is good for everyone in this ambulance. I turn my gaze lower. The knife handle sticks out of my gut like the first skyscraper built in Dubai. “I stabbed myself.”
    “More accurately?” she asks.
    “I stabbed myself in my right kidney.”
    She presses on my torso with her gloved fingers, feeling all around the wound. “Actually, you missed it. Nothing but muscle and fat. Mostly muscle.”
    “Even better,” I say.
    “But why?”
    “Because I wanted to leave.”
    “What I meant,” she says, “is why did you choose to stab yourself in the kidney?”
    “You mean, why did I choose to stab myself next to my kidney?”
    “Right.”
    I shrug. I don’t recall making the decision, but I understand the logic of my subconscious. “If I missed and struck my kidney, who cares? I have two of them. If you ever need to stab yourself, keep that in mind.” I lean back. “I can’t feel the wound.”
    “I’ve given you a local anesthetic so we can take care of this.”
    I look around the ambulance’s interior. It’s what you’d expect, except I’m alone in the back with this woman. I think there are usually two people in the back. But what do I know? Aside from where my kidneys are and what Dubai is like. While I don’t remember the events of my own life, I know a lot about the world. “Aren’t you a paramedic?”
    She pulls out a hooked needle and thread. “I’m your doctor.”
    “My doctor?”
    “For now.” She threads the needle, ties a knot, and cuts the remainder. “Not afraid of needles, are you?”
    I motion to the knife in my gut. “I stabbed myself.”
    “I was joking.” She places the needle on a tray as the moving ambulance bounces over something in the road. My doctor leans toward the front and raps on the door. It opens a crack. “We’re starting now, so do try to avoid any more bumps for a few.”
    “Trying,” says a man. “But it’s hard to with all this—”
    She shoves the door shut. “Right. Enough of him.”
    “Who is he?”
    “Your driver,” she says. “Try to hold still.” Before I realize it, she’s dousing the knife with alcohol. “Still nothing?”
    “Fine.”
    “Wonderful.” She takes hold of the knife and slips it out of my gut. The ceramic blade clangs against the tray, and she scoops up the needle and thread. She leans over my exposed stomach and starts sewing. Her hands move quickly and efficiently. She’s done this before. Not just stitching a wound, but while on the move.
    “You were in the military,” I say.
    “Handsome, fearless, and perceptive,” she says without looking up. “My, my.”
    She’s clearly not going to say anything more, so I don’t bother digging. There’s something else I’d rather know. “Why am I fearless? The woman I met told me my doctor could explain it.”
    “The woman?”
    “Who told me to stab myself.”
    She gives the needle a few tugs, cinching my skin together. “You trusted a woman, whose name you didn’t know, who asked you to stab yourself?”
    “I don’t know my own name,” I tell her. “Or yours.”
    She pauses, turns to me, and offers me a bloody gloved hand. “Doctor Kelly Allenby, at your service.”
    I shake her hand. “I’m Crazy.”
    “With a capital C, ” she says, the phrase old hat.
    My mind freezes up for a moment. How did she know? Before I can ask, she turns to me and says, “Winters filled me in. She’s the woman you met. Jessica Winters.”
    “Who is she?” I ask.
    “Not my place to say.”
    “You’re