Siobhan's Beat Read Free

audience and the music would bring her to life once again.
    Through it all, she watched her three dearest friends move across the stage. Their powerful voices combined into a sweet, rich harmony, stirring goose bumps along Siobhan’s arms. She peeked discreetly into the house, noticing the crowd was enthralled. Siobhan offered up a small, three-word prayer that filled her heart and soul to overflowing: Thank you, God.
    “Siobhan, are you ready for the next number?”
    Her smile to the technician spread wide and fast. “Always!”
    Following a scripted bit of repartee between Aileen, Kassidy, and Maeve, the lilt of a piano filled the air. The song “Holy One” began, which was a duet performed by Kassidy and Maeve accompanied by Siobhan’s dance moves during the instrumental and bridge sections.
    Siobhan exited the wings on cue, swirling into a series of light, airy spins….
    And her world dissolved.
    Pain ricocheted through her body, hot, sharp, and completely unexpected—completely enveloping. She gasped and cried out. Her legs buckled. Toppling onto worn, wooden floorboards, Siobhan screamed. The stage, her friends, her joy, evaporated into a black void that swirled with white, with gray, with a blinding, piercing red that flooded her mind and soul.
    She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. Suddenly she heard voices all around, soft and beckoning, laden with concern. The voices called, loving and tender in tone, yet indiscernible. Where did they come from? What was happening?
    Gripped by horror, Siobhan remained trapped within an unforgiving vortex that sucked relentlessly against every cell in her debilitated body.
    “Siobhan? Siobhan, honey, please, hear me.”
    Siobhan tried to cry out to Aileen Brewer when she heard her best friend’s voice. Cottony dryness stuffed her mouth, robbed her of the ability to speak.
    “You’re almost there. We’re all here for you. We’re waiting. Come back to us.”
    Liam. Now she heard the voice of her big brother Liam. He was on the other side of this thick, wretched wall—but he sounded so scared, and that was unheard of when it came to her solid-as-a-rock sibling.
    Siobhan struggled through a dense white fog. Pain kept trying to overwhelm and suck her back down, but she fought with all the strength she possessed. She lifted toward the voices of the ones she loved.
    She couldn’t wait to wake up and leave this nightmare behind.
     
     
     
     

2
     
    Doctor AJ Cooper prepared to enter the hospital suite, but what he saw and heard from the threshold held him in place. Sometimes the best thing a doctor could do was observe circumstance, absorb nuance.
    “This can’t possibly be real. This can’t be happening. Not after everything we’ve been through.”
    A tall, softly curved woman with long brunette hair was the one who spoke. Distraught, she shivered and wept openly. Her head rested upon the shoulder of a dark-haired man AJ already knew to be his patient’s brother. The woman’s voice was hoarse and raspy and she was instantly joined by two other girls as well as Siobhan Douglas’s parents. The family gathered around the bedside causing his gaze to auto-track toward the small-framed, petite woman stretched out on the gurney and covered by a light layer of blankets.
    Fresh from the ER, AJ’s patient rested within a chemically aided sleep from which she would soon awaken. The already fair-skinned blonde was pale to the point of translucence. Her left arm was sprained, so it sported a heavy bandage and had been made immobile. Her left leg was stabilized by a cast and rested on a foam elevation pillow positioned across the foot of the bed. This woman bore the delicate looks of an angel; Coop only hoped she possessed a huge measure of fighting strength as well, because she faced an arduous road to recovery.
    As that thought dawned, Liam Douglas tapped shoulders and began a chain reaction until everyone in the room stood hand-in-hand. He even clasped Siobhan’s