Page 133 of Never Alone
CHAPTER 25
Cole
The painkillers were wearing off.
That was the first thing I knew. The ribs were back. The shoulder was back. The kidney they were watching was doing something my body didn't have a name for, and my head wasn't ready to look at.
The room was light. Late dawn, gray-blue. I turned my head on the pillow.
The chair next to the bed was empty.
I told myself she'd gone for coffee.
I told myself she'd gone to call Jamie. To check on Noah. To eat something downstairs.
I lay still and let the stories happen.
After a few minutes, a nurse came in. The early one. Different from the night nurse. She had a clipboard.
"How're we feeling, Lieutenant?"
"Where'd she go?"
"Sorry?"
"The woman in the chair. Last night."
She looked at the chair. Looked at her clipboard. Flipped a page.
"Looks like she signed out at three eighteen. Said she had to handle something. I'm sorry—I'd assumed you knew."
"Yeah. No. Thanks."
She did the vitals. Asked me about the pain on a scale of one to ten. I told her four.
It wasn't four.
She left.
I looked at the chair.
The indentation in the cushion was gone. The chair had been sat in long enough last night that the seat had taken the shape of her, and that shape had finished smoothing itself out in the hours since she'd gone. The chair was a chair again.
I got my phone off the side table.
I called her.
It rang once and went to voicemail.
Her voice on the recording said the thing her voice said on the recording.Hi, you've reached Tessa. Leave a message.The pause beforeleave a message.The small smile inTessa.The recording was the same. The world was different.
I called again.
Voicemail.
I called Jamie.
She picked up before the second ring.
