Pieces of Hope Read Online Free PDF Page A

but aren’t there some things you just know?” He
smiled painfully, pausing to kiss my palm again. “I don’t know the details, but
I do know this . . . You have to wake up! We need to figure this out! I get the
craziest feeling we’re—”  
    “Ethan,”
a stern voice called from the door. The older-looking blond wore scrubs like
his, but she exuded such authority that I suspected she was the manager on
duty. He placed my hand gently at my side, and stood slowly to face her
disapproval.   
    On the
surface, Ethan looked unperturbed as the blond yanked the privacy curtain
across the glass, then closed the door to my room. But I felt a confusing
mixture of anger and embarrassment that I didn’t think belonged to me. Maybe
from Ethan. Or the blond. I wasn’t sure. But if these were Ethan’s emotions,
they didn’t match his exterior. Standing at his full height in a sort of quiet
defiance, only the clenching and unclenching of his jaw gave anything away as
to the tension churning beneath the surface.
    “Do you
know this girl?” Her tone was nasally unpleasant. The woman’s eyes slid
sideways to the bed, lingering, it seemed on his close proximity to me.
    “In a
manner of speaking,” Ethan said vaguely.
    “I hope
I don’t need to remind you about . . . attachments, and the point at which
you’ve crossed the professional line.” Her attention snapped back to Ethan.
“You should watch your step. You’re dangerously close to the edge.”
    He
clenched his jaw once. “I’ll be sure to do that. Thank you, June.”
    June
yanked back the curtain, mumbling something about double shifts and young
nurses and exhaustion. “And that’s a requirement, not a request.” Ethan gave a
brief nod, stealing one last look at me before following her out of the room.

3   Eavesdropping

 
    Once the
idea crossed my mind, it became impossible to resist. Given my limited
experience with such things, it probably wasn’t a great idea. Not wise. Not
well thought out. Possibly dangerous. But on some unfathomable level, I needed
to know more.
    It was a
mystery, this whole, “I’m certain that I know you.” But the strength of his
conviction made me question the possibility. There had to be a reason for it,
didn’t there? Either he was the most confident person on the planet—or he was
the craziest. And I was about to find out which one.
    Leaving
my hospital room, I could see that Ethan wasn’t at the nurses’ station, nor did
I sense him anywhere in the ICU. The very notion that I could sense his
presence, as if a magnetic force pulled us together, led me to question if
there might be something to his confession. In reality, it seemed highly
unlikely. Forget meeting Ethan? Not in the course of several lifetimes. Shoving
aside any realistic expectations that it might be true, I focused on where he
could have gone. June had told him to rest before he started his next shift.
But where could a person rest in a noisy hospital? Did they keep a quiet little
room somewhere for such a purpose?
    The
instant I wondered this, I knew where to go. I took the elevator down several
floors, carefully waiting until it was nearly empty to avoid any patients or
visitors and the possibility of experiencing their pain. All it would take, I
guessed, was for one of them to walk through me. And, somewhat ironically,
that’s just what I was counting on.
    The room
sat at end of a quiet hallway. I knew this was the one because when I pressed
my hand to the door I could feel him inside. A good minute slipped by before I
found the courage to walk through the door. Old habits, I supposed, died hard.
One big breath and one strong tug later, I dragged myself through the steel
door.
    Dim
emergency lighting illuminated a long, narrow storage room. Shelves stuffed
with assorted cleaning supplies and paper products ran along both walls of the
windowless room. Towards the back of the room, beyond a stack of mops and
brooms clustered together, Ethan was