The Blessed Read Free

Vicodin.”
    Dr. Moss shook his head and left the curtained cubicle. He noticed the photographers and bloggers uploading and posting from their mobiles, calling sources, vigorously updating editors on the second-rate “it” girl’s breaking news. Suddenly, as if the fire alarm had gone off, the crowd dispersed, off to chase the next ambulance.
    The nurse poked her head into Lucy’s bay to let her know things had settled down.
    “Shit!” Lucy spat, her chance for a little cheap ink thwarted by someone else’s personal tragedy.

    Hours passed, lights dimmed, staff, shifts, and dressings changed, and fifteen-minute-interval checks on Agnes’s restraints took place—also mandatory procedure—but the sounds of the sick, the injured, and the dying persistedlong past visiting hours, into the night. It was sobering and depressing. Patients came and went, some discharged, some admitted, others like Agnes, Cecilia, and Lucy left in limbo, waiting for a bed or further observation, forced to endure the suffering of others as well as their own.
    Agnes’s cell went off and she knew immediately by the Dynasty TV-theme ringtone that it was her mother. She hit the mute button and tossed the phone, limp-wristed, onto the monitor stand next to her gurney, ignoring the caller just as she had the digital cascade of text messages that now clogged her mailbox. She sighed and drifted off to sleep, like Lucy, whose lost photo op, and a first round of questioning by the NYPD, proved totally exhausting.
    It was practically silent. Still.

    13 An ER tech ripped open the curtain all at once, as if he were ripping off a Band-Aid, and wheeled in a computer on a mobile stand. “I need to ask you a few questions Cecilia . . . Trent.”
    Cecilia didn’t budge.
    “Address?”
    “Pass.”
    “Ah, okay.” He skimmed the screen for an easier question. “Religion?”
    “Currently, I’m practicing the ancient art of”—she paused as he typed—“I don’t give a fuck-ism.”
    He continued typing until the end and then pressed the delete button. “I can’t type that.”
    “Sure you can.”
    “No, I can’t.”
    “And they say this is a free country,” Cecilia said. “Okay, I’m a practicing nihilist.”
    “Why don’t I come back later.” He pushed his computer cart out of the room as he closed the curtain.
    “Don’t be like that,” she called after him apologetically. “I’m just bored.”
    “Get some rest.”
    She should have been able to, with all that sedation flowing through her, but she couldn’t. She kept replaying the evening over and over in her head, the little she could remember of it. After a while, the ER went almost totally quiet except for the sound of hurried footsteps. They sounded heavy, not like the surgeons’ paper booties or the nurses’ rubber soles that had been scurrying through the ward until then. Cecilia, an experienced night owl by nature and profession, felt uneasy for the first time in a very long time.
    Cecilia looked up and noticed the shadow of a male figure on her curtain, passing by her bay. “Coming back for more? They always do.”
    She glanced down and saw the coolest pair of black biker boots she’d ever seen. Even in silhouette she could tell, whoever he was, he was hot. Definitely not the douche bag ER tech. She’d gotten really good at determining a guy’s “attributes” in the dark.
    He stood still, as if he were intensely plotting, his back toher curtain divider, giving her time to wonder about him. Visiting hours were over, and from the almost chiaroscuro outline of his hair, jeans, and jacket, she wondered if this was the guy she’d hooked up with earlier. She could barely remember what he looked like, but maybe he’d snuck past the desk to see her. See if she was okay. Even if it was out of guilt.
    “Are you decent?” he asked. “Can I come in?”
    “No and yes. Two things about me—I never get on a plane with a country star and I tend to never say ‘no’ to a