am I?”
Speaking was difficult, as if she hadn’t used her voice in a long time. It also hurt. She realized bandages were taped over her jaw and part of her neck, that they encircled her head and wrapped across her eyes.
Her eyes? Why were they covered?
Dizziness rolled over her, leaving her nauseated and frightened, a sensation that seemed all too familiar, although she couldn’t recall ever experiencing it prior to this moment. Clutching Kate’s hand, she realized she was terribly weak. And helpless.
“You’re in the hospital. You were lucky. A surgeon from Denver was up at the ski resort with his family. He came to the hospital when he heard the news—”
“What news?” Nothing was making sense.
“That you were shot,” Megan said from the other side of the bed. “Don’t you remember?”
“No. Wait. Yes.” Shannon paused and tried to see through the swirling fog in her brain. It even hurt to think. “I remember going in someplace and…yes, there was a guy with a gun. He shot at me. It really happened? It seems more like a nightmare than reality.”
“You relived it over and over during your coma,” Kate said in soothing tones.
“I’ve been in a coma?” This was becoming more bizarre by the minute.
There was a slight pause. Shannon imagined the other two cousins looking at each other and wondering how much to tell her. “How long?” she asked, needing to know everything, to understand what had happened to her.
“A week,” Kate said, her voice soothing and firm as if she had everything under control. “The doctors put you in a coma to allow your body time to heal. You were very agitated after the…the incident.”
Shannon tried to comprehend what the words meant, but it was hard to sort out. Struggling with an urge to fade back into the serene, foggy place she’d been for a week, she forced herself to concentrate. A scene popped into her mind. “The gas station,” she said. “Did he get away?”
“Who?”
“The robber. I walked in on a robbery. I had to stop him. He was armed. He shot at me—oh!” Her hand went once more to the bandages. “He hit me?” she asked in a disbelieving voice. “In the head?”
“Shannon…”
The hesitancy in Kate’s voice rasped across Shannon’s nerves like a file. “What is it? What’s wrong with me? Am I…am I…is it my eyes? Is something wrong with my eyes? Why are they bandaged?”
Kate gripped her hand again. “The bullet went through your temple, around the inside of your skull and out under your jaw. The bone wasn’t shattered. You were lucky.”
Lucky? Being shot in the head was lucky?
She almost laughed at the irony in that statement, but it hurt too much. She cautiously explored the gauze wrapping her head. “My eyes?”
“The doctors don’t know,” Megan said quickly. “One eye was affected, but the other—”
“Which one? Which eye?”
“The left one might be permanently injured. The bullet grazed it near the optic nerve.”
“I can’t lose my sight,” she explained to them as reasonably as she possibly could. “I have plans. My degree, the future, everything.”
There was the practice she intended to open when she got her Ph.D. in psychology. And what of her dream of helping families work through their problems?
“No,” she protested, pulling at the covering over her eyes. “No. I’ve got to see. I’ve got to!”
She heard another voice in the room. “Keep her hands still,” the new person said.
Little squeaky sounds accompanied the voice, as if the woman carried mice in her pockets. Shannon struggled with the hands that grasped hers.
“It’ll be all right,” she heard both her cousins say.
The words were a lie, meant only to soothe. “You don’t understand,” she told them. She was having trouble speaking, but she had to explain, to make them see…
Her mind went hazy. Sounds faded. She fought the darkness, then realized she’d been given a sedative.
“Don’t,” she said, her voice sounding far away. “I need to know, to find out… Oh, please, please, don’t…”
She realized she was begging, just as she had when her father had packed and left. It hadn’t done any good then, either. The tears came, helpless and despairing, then everything fell into darkness.
Shannon woke slowly, fighting her way through layer after layer of cloudy material. The room, which she somehow knew wasn’t hers, smelled of antiseptic and flowers. An odd combination. She listened carefully, every nerve alert and tensed for trouble. However, the room felt empty.
The soft clink of metal against metal and the whir of a motor alarmed her, but then she recalled she was in the hospital. The floors were cleaned and polished during the wee hours of the morning. That was the sound she heard, coming from down the hall.
So it must be after midnight but before dawn.
She’d been dreaming—dark, restless dreams that still troubled her. In them, she faced the robber again and again, always experiencing the pain anew—quick, hot and blinding in its intensity.
Then someone—an ethereal being of coolness and light, such brilliant light she couldn’t see his face—came to her, lifting her out of the hot pain and scary darkness, taking her to a secret haven, his arms strong, his embrace sweet, his scent fresh as the outdoors. She had instinctively known him. He was the one she’d been waiting for. He’d made her feel safe….
It was a foolish dream. No guardian angel had come to her rescue. An illusion, her mind’s way of coping with the reality of being shot, was all it was.
Turning her head against the pillows, she gingerly examined the bandages covering her head and half her face. Pressing her left temple, she found that to be a sore spot. Also a place under her jaw.
It hurt to move her mouth, either to talk or eat. Swallowing the liquids they’d put her on was difficult. However, it wasn’t as bad as yesterday, and tomorrow would be better than today.
Thus speaks the optimist, she mused, attempting a smile. That hurt, too.
That morning—no, this was a new day, so it was Tuesday, the first day of the New Year, she realized. The day before, when the nurse had come in, her mind had been clear for the first time as the heavy drugs left her body. Every sound had made a sharp impression.
During the day, she had listened to footsteps and tried to guess who the person was. She had known when Kate or Megan arrived before they spoke. And the hefty nurse who was always so cheerful. Her shoes made squeaky noises on the floor when she stopped or turned.
No mice in her pockets. Shannon had liked that image.
She
