The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [9]
Then her hand makes contact with Paisley’s brick of a liver. At that instant a hellish wave of darkness washes over her, a bilious tsunami of liquid night. A liquid firestorm of wet, toxic heat, unleashed from some hidden, secluded place within. It rides her bloodstream, drowning her but fiery, too, invading every vessel, cutting off her breath.
“What’s wrong?” Paisley asks, frowning.
Julianne can’t answer, can’t move. Her flesh feels singed wherever the darkness has passed. Her ears fill with a sizzling she knows is no earthly sound. Hanging on to consciousness by a supreme effort of will, she gasps, struggling to draw air. She’s going to collapse. Just as it threatens to crush her heart, annihilate her brain—just then, instead, it passes out of her, a literal thing, the embodiment of darkness. Gone.
“Julianne?”
Julianne gulps air and lifts her hand, trying not to snatch it back, away from Paisley’s flesh. “It’s nothing. Just concentrating. I always do that. Didn’t mean to scare you.” She inhales again. “Time for Dr. Dunn to come in now. Back in a minute.”
In the corridor outside the examining room, Julianne plasters herself against the wall and waits for her head to clear. She knows what this is. It happened once before.
She’d thought it was a fluke. It couldn’t possibly repeat itself. That’s what she’d thought.
It had been one of those tender, warmish mornings with everything in bloom, when the last place anyone wanted to be was a doctor’s office—including Julianne, who was doing a pre-op for hammertoe surgery. The patient’s name was unforgettable even without the drama. Eudora Nestor. How was Eudora feeling? Oh, fine, fine, just the usual allergies that bothered her every year. Julianne made a notation on the chart, checked the patient’s sinuses, found a swollen gland in her neck. The pins and needles began then in Julianne’s fingers, a tingling that happened sometimes, that signal of illness she’d grown accustomed to over the years. What was it? Maybe simply a reaction to her surprise at finding anything amiss. Peter Dunn’s patients tended to be vibrantly healthy. Only the diabetics had underlying health problems—poor circulation, ingrown nails that escalated into infections, occasional rotting, gangrenous toes. But they were the exception. Most of the patients simply wanted to have something fixed. They wanted to start jogging again, improve their golf game, play tennis. Like Paisley, they aspired to be a whole new person in the spring.
In that room with Eudora, the tidal wave of darkness replaced the tingling with the suddenness of an electric shock, flaying her with twin punishments of water and fire, like a visitation from hell. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. She must be dying. Poisoned? A heart attack? A stroke?
Then it passed, exactly as it had today.
Excusing herself, Julianne had fled into the same hallway where she stands now, as much confused as panicked. What had happened? It had been a physical thing and yet . . . not. Her heart drummed a frantic cadence, but otherwise the physical effects of the assault seemed to be gone, leaving behind only a dull headache. She was, remarkably . . . all right. Then she understood that, in some profound way, Eudora Nestor was not. She grabbed Peter’s lab coat as he swished by between patients. “Come into number three,” she demanded. He had to follow because she wouldn’t let go of his sleeve. After palpating Eudora’s swollen gland, he raised his eyebrows, puzzled. A swollen gland could mean anything or nothing. Julianne trailed him out of the room. “I know you think I’m overreacting, but I’m sure it’s something serious. I have a feeling.” Julianne never had “feelings,” so Peter ordered follow-up tests. Eudora turned out to have an aggressive, undiagnosed form of leukemia. Why the first, routine blood tests hadn’t picked up something, no one knew. Eudora Nestor was fifty-one years