Live to Tell - Lisa Gardner [110]
“Common area,” Karen said immediately. She was already out of her chair, grabbing the keys around her neck, running for the door.
D.D. was right on her heels. She could just make out words now. “Devil!” the children were screaming. “Diablo. Está aquí. Está aquí. The Devil is here.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
VICTORIA
I dream of distant beaches. Of silky white sand that sinks beneath my feet. Of turquoise waves rocking against the shoreline. Of a deep-orange sun warming my upturned face.
I dream of walking with my husband, hand in hand.
Our children are running ahead, laughing together happily. Evan’s golden curls stand out in the bright sunlight, Chelsea’s darker-topped head bent near his. They dig a hole with a stick, just out of reach of the lapping ocean.
Then Evan reaches over and casually pushes his sister into the hole. The sand collapses, swallowing her in one greedy gulp. Laughing, Evan runs back toward us. Now I realize he doesn’t hold a stick, but a long pointed blade. He aims it at his father, and picks up speed, the phantom dancing in his eyes as he races across the opalescent beach.
“You’re mine,” he says to me as he runs his father through. “You will always be mine.”
Then he advances with the bloody sword….
I wake up to a strange beeping sound. The high-pitched tone hurts my ears. I squeeze my eyes shut as if that will dull the sound. It doesn’t, so I open them again, becoming aware of many things at once.
I’m in a hospital room. My side aches with a nearly impossible pain. Monitors surround me, with wires and lines sprouting from my left hand. I’m hot. I’m confused. I have no idea what has happened to me.
Then I discover belatedly that Michael’s asleep in a chair next to my bed.
While I stare at him in bewilderment, he slowly rouses, glancing at me, then performing a double-take when he realizes I’m awake.
“Victoria?” he says in a raspy voice.
“Evan?” I ask in panic.
Immediately, Michael’s face shudders. He climbs out of the chair, wearing the same khaki shorts and Brooks Brothers shirt he wore to my house. This confuses me more. What day is it? What’s happened to me?
“How do you feel?” he asks, crossing to the bed, glancing at the monitors, as if they mean something to him.
I swallow once, twice, three times. “Th-thirsty.”
“I’ll ring for a nurse.”
I nod. He pushes a button. “Evan?” I try again.
“He’s okay.”
“Chelsea?”
“She’s at home. With Melinda. What do you remember?”
I shake my head. I don’t remember. But then it comes back to me. Sitting down on the couch next to my sun-drunk child. Feeling a little sleepy. The sudden pain in my side …
My hand drops down to my ribs. Sure enough, my left side is covered in a swathe of gauze. I don’t have to touch it to feel the pain, the red, swollen mess of it. My son stabbed me.
“The knife penetrated your liver,” Michael tells me, as if reading my thoughts. “If the EMTs hadn’t gotten you here in time for emergency surgery, you would’ve died.”
“Evan?” I ask for the third time.
“Do you understand me, Victoria? You would’ve died.”
A nurse appears. She bustles in, picking up my wrist, checking my pulse even though some cumbersome plastic object attached to my fingertip must be telling her the same thing. “How do you feel?” she asks, studying the monitors.
“Thirsty.”
“I can bring you ice chips. If you hold those down, next we can attempt water. Sound like a plan?”
I nod. She exits, returning quickly with half a cup of ice chips. I take them sparingly, realizing the increasing discomfort in my abdomen. I’ve never been good with anesthesia. Ice chips probably are the best I can do.
“Doctor will be in to talk to you shortly,” she says. Then the nurse is gone and Michael and I are staring at each other again.
“Thank you for coming,” I manage. I don’t know what else to say.
He shrugs. “Someone had to come. It was either me or your mother.”
We both know what he means. My mother