Life Support Read Free Page B

You're stinking up the whole room."
    She rolled onto her back. Light filtered, blood red, through her eyelids. She struggled to open them, to focus on Romy's face.
    He was staring down at her with an expression of disgust in his dark eyes. His black hair was slicked back and shiny with pomade. It reflected light like a brass helmet. Sophie was there too, her face slightly sneering, her arms crossed over her balloon breasts. It made Molly even more miserable to see Sophie and Romy standing so close together, like the old lovers they were. Maybe still were. That horse-faced Sophie was always hanging around, trying to cut Molly out.
    And now she'd come into Molly's room, trespassing where she had no right to be.
    Outraged, Molly tried to sit up, but her vision blanked out and she collapsed back on the bed. "I feel sick," she said.
    "You've been sick," said Romy. "Now go get cleaned up. Sophie'll help you."
    "I don't want her to touch me. Get her out of here."
    Sophie gave a snort. "Miss Titless, I wouldn't hang around your pukey room anyway," she said and walked out.
    Molly groaned. "I don't remember what happened, Romy."
    "Nothing happened. You came back and went to bed. And threw up all over your pillow."
    Again she struggled to sit up. He didn't help her, or even touch her.
    She smelled that bad. Already he was heading for the door, leaving her to clean up her own filthy sheets.
    "Romy," she said.
    "Yeah?"
    "How did I get here?"
    He laughed. "Geez, you really did get wasted, didn't you?" And he left the room.
    For a long time she sat on the side of the bed, trying to remember the last few hours. Trying to shake off her residual wooziness.
    There had been a client�that much she remembered. A man all in green.
    A room with a giant mirror. And there had been a table.
    But she couldn't remember the sex. Maybe she had blocked it out. Maybe it had been so disgusting an experience she'd shoved it into her subconscious, the way she'd successfully blocked out so much of her childhood. Only occasionally did she allow a wisp of a childhood memory to return. The good memories, mostly, she did have a few good memories of her years growing up in Beaufort, and she could conjure them up at will. Or suppress them at will.
    But the events of this afternoon, she could hardly remember at all.
    God, she stank. She looked down at her blouse and saw it was stained with vomit. The buttons had been done up wrong, and bare skin showed through an unfastened gap.
    She began to strip. She peeled off the miniskirt, unbuttoned the blouse, and tossed them in a pile on the floor. Then she stumbled to the shower and turned on the water.
    Cold. She wanted it cold.
    Standing under the sputtering faucet, she felt her head begin to clear.
    As it did, another memory flickered into focus. The man in green, towering above her. Staring down at her. And the straps, pinching her wrists and ankles.
    She looked down at her hands and saw the bruises, like circular cuff marks around her wrists. He had tied her down�not so unusual. Men and their crazy games.
    Then her gaze focused on another bruise, in the crook of her left arm.
    It was so faint she'd almost missed the small blue circle. In the very center of the bruise, like the point of a bull's eye, was a single puncture mark.
    She struggled to remember a needle, but she could not. All she remembered was the man in the surgeon's mask.
    And the table.
    Cold water dribbled down her shoulders. Shivering, Molly stared at the needle mark and she wondered what else she'd forgotten.
    A nurse's voice called to her from the wall intercom, "Dr. Harper, we need you out here."
    Toby Harper awakened with a start to find that she had fallen asleep at her desk, with a stack of medical journals as her pillow. Reluctantly she raised her head, squinting against the light from the reading lamp.
    The brass desktop clock said 4,49 A.M. Had she really slept for almost forty minutes? It seemed as if she'd laid her head down just a moment