The Blessed Read Free Page B

nurse call button. He beat her to it, snatching it away. She immediately extended her hand to grab it, then winced in pain, pulling back as the IV lines stretched to their limit and tugged at her veins. “Point blank, I will hurt you.”
    He pulled out a gorgeous bracelet made from what looked to be the oldest, most extraordinary rough ivory beads, and dangling from it, an antique gold sword with a slender cello bow fastened from the handle to the tip.
    “Holy shit.” Cecilia marveled at it and was both touched and spooked that a total stranger would give her such a stunning, obviously ridiculously expensive, personal, and unique gift. “Were you the one who brought me here?” she asked. “Were you the one who saved me?”
    Sebastian placed the bracelet in her hand and clasped his around it, gently but firmly, and backed away toward the curtain. “Later.”
    Something in his voice sounded to her like he meant itliterally. She believed him. This was the most honest conversation she’d had with a guy maybe ever. And he was a total stranger. But an old soul. Like her.
    “Listen. I have a few gigs this week. Cecilia Trent. Google me. Maybe you’ll find me and come down and check me out minus the IVs.”
    “Maybe you’ll find me first,” he said.
    “Wait,” Cecilia whispered hoarsely after him, holding up her wrist adorned with the bracelet. “What is this?”
    “Something to hold on to.”

7 Sunday morning.
    The day of rest. Regret. And cotton mouth.
    Lucy was lying on her side when she came to. She listened for a while before opening her eyes, holding on to that serene moment before what she had done the previous night revealed itself to her sober and fully conscious mind. The sliver of time before excuses of a sick grandmother or friend in turmoil emerged, all while performing an underwear scavenger hunt.
    Her first reflex was to feel beneath the pillow for her Hermès flask, half gray and half salmon-hued with black leather straps and a sterling silver lid, it resembled an oversize necklace rather than something camouflaging alcohol. The promoters at Sacrifice, an upscale DUMBO nightclub, gave it to her after they hosted an exclusiveHermès party for fashion week . . . along with free top-shelf refills for life, which always kept her coming back, because drink tickets were so last millennium. This morning, however, there was no comfort to be found, under her pillow or anywhere else; she didn’t feel a flask.
    The pillowcase had slid partially off and her mouth was in direct contact with the plastic blue cushion. It took an instant before she realized this and panicked, logging a mental inventory of who could have potentially died on it and then lay there for hours, leaking body fluids over it and inside it. Hospital pillows, like airline pillows, were reusable and no one had actually ever seen them changed, she was sure. The plastic cover didn’t fool her one bit—all of its infectious contents were now swirling around her mouth playing a game of tag with her immune system. Whatever it was, it was in her.
    Lucy opened her ghostly pale blue eyes—blood vessels creeping through the whites of them like a spiderweb—and knew she was in a hospital. She tried to go back to sleep, back to numb, but the whiz and buzz of medical equipment booting up along with the hallway chatter made it impossible as did the commingling vapors of ammonia, feces, drying blood, and puke that seemed to permeate the entire ER.
    “I need to get out of here,” Lucy said, peeling her face off of the plastic pillow.
    The nurse simply ignored her and began taking Lucy’s vitals before she retreated to paperwork. Lucy’s eyes were fixed on her Parisian weekender, the one that she got fromher dad when they visited a flea market in France. It was made from an antique rug—hand-woven blooms of rich reds, bright magentas, royal blues, and peridots.
    He took her to Paris when she was ten, right before her mother left them, saying that