In Your Dreams Read Free Page B

discovered,
at the local soda shop like Lana Turner were long gone. Nothing remained for
her. Except death, she’d thought. But even that final role eluded her.
    And wouldn’t her
soon-to-be ex-husband burst into belly laughs over this latest screw-up? Carlo
Romanelli. He was, after all, just another cold-hearted bastard in Hollywood, a
place that bred cold-hearted bastards like cockroaches.
    The door to her
room opened, and a well-stacked, bleached blond nurse strolled inside. “Oh,
good, you’re awake.”
    “What’s so good
about it?” Isabelle grumbled.
    “Well,” the
nurse replied. Her name tag pegged her as Nancy Julian, LPN. Her frozen face
pegged her as having undergone one too many Botox injections. And the bump at
the top of her nose suggested she’d used a sub-par plastic surgeon. “For
starters, it’s a beautiful day.”
    The
Winnie-the-Pooh characters dancing on Nancy’s scrub top should have given
Isabelle a clue that she’d run into one of those perpetual glass-is-half-full
women. “This is L.A. It’s always a beautiful day.”
    Nancy unwound
the stethoscope from around her neck while pushing a wheeled blood pressure
hookup toward the bed. “Could I just say, Ms. Fichetti, I’m a big fan?” She
slipped the cuff on Isabelle’s upper arm and smoothed the Velcro tab into
place. “I mean, you probably hear this a lot, but I grew up watching ‘Shipp
Shape.’ Your character, Bethany, was such an inspiration to me. I don’t think I
would have survived my rocky adolescent years without that show.”
    As the cuff
tightened on her arm, Isabelle gritted her teeth into a smile and offered the
same response she gave all her gushing fans. “Thanks. The show was very special
to me, as well.”
    Hypocritical?
Maybe. But in Hollywood, today’s nurse could be tomorrow’s studio executive.
From the barrista at the local coffee shop to the top plastic surgeon in
Beverly Hills, everyone in LaLaLand was obsessed with the business. They were
either in the business, trying to break into the business, or like Isabelle,
scrambling to get back into the business.
    Apparently, her
trite reply satisfied because Nurse Nancy nodded, then stripped open a package
containing what looked like a white pen and attached it to another gizmo on the
blood pressure machine. “Open your mouth, please.”
    The minute
Isabelle complied, the nurse shoved the pen thingy into her mouth. A disposable
thermometer. “Keep this under your tongue.”
    On a hiss of air
and hum of machinery, the cuff’s stranglehold eased. A series of beeps drew
Nancy’s attention to the thermometer, which she withdrew from Isabelle’s mouth.
After tossing the plastic piece into the wastebasket, the nurse turned her
attention to the digital readout on the machines. She frowned for the briefest
moment. But before Isabelle could bat an eyelash, she had fixed a phony smile
in place. “There. That wasn’t so bad now, was it?” She rolled up the cuff and
pulled the machine back into the corner of the room, near the grimy windows
that overlooked another brick-walled hospital wing. “I’m just going to page Dr.
Valentine, let him know you’re awake. He’s going to want to come in to talk and
review your records with you.”
    Pushing the
button on her remote, Isabelle raised the bed until she sat upright, the
wafer-thin pillow settled somewhere near her hips. “Great. I’m ready for my
close-up, Mr. DeMille.”
     
    ~~~~
     
    “Pause.” Xavia
Donovan halted the scene unfolding in the hospital room on Earth and scowled.
    Not another
spoiled Hollywood starlet who expected untold gifts from the universe because
of a stroke of random luck in her youth. Cripes. In California, they grew the
pity-partiers faster and more plentiful than citrus fruits.
    From her cushy
captain of industry chair in the Probation Department’s office, she studied the
ashen-faced Isabelle Fichetti’s image as it appeared on her clipboard and
scowled again. Wuss. Coward. Xavia