For All Their Lives by Fern Michaels

Author:Fern Michaels
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2013-10-21T21:00:00+00:00

CASEY DIDN’T LIKE the blinding whiteness of the operating room or the strong antiseptic smell. She knew if she closed her eyes she could pinpoint where everything was, right down to the tongue depressors. She’d lost track of the times she’d been wheeled in here and then wheeled out. In a little while, probably less than an hour, when the anesthesia wore off, she’d be able to speak. Questions would be asked and answers would be expected.

All she’d done this past week was think about what she would say. Just last night she’d finally come up with answers. She knew they were the wrong answers, but she didn’t care. When they asked her if she was Lily Simon, she was going to say yes. She would claim that she couldn’t remember anything and that she knew her name was Lily only because they’d been calling her that for all these months. She was never going back to nursing—she’d decided that too. She’d seen too much death, a hundred times more than an average nurse would see in a lifetime. If she ever recovered fully, she wanted no reminders of this time in her life. If she had to sum it all up to someone, to herself, it was simple: she had lost the ability to care. Right now her life as she knew it was over. God alone knew what her future held.

Her future. Was there going to be a future for her? If she mended and was eventually discharged, she would return to Paris and get a job in a shop as a salesgirl. Nicole was banking her money, and there would be more now if the United States government paid off on her death policy. None of that mattered anyway. She was going to be ugly and deformed. All night long she’d dreamed about going to work for the rest of her life wearing a black veil.

It was dawn when a horrible thought struck her. When she was discharged, there would be a hospital bill. Who would pay it? The doctors’ fees must be enormous, with all the skin grafts and operations she’d had.

She hadn’t wanted to cry, but she had, great gulping sobs when she thought of Lily and Sue Collins. She didn’t know where little Eric was now, and if she was going to go through with her plan to pretend to have amnesia, she couldn’t ask.

Could she pull this off? She had to, she had no other choice, she decided. She forced herself to relax when she saw Maline at the foot of her bed, hypodermic syringe in hand. “In just a little while, Lily, we’ll be able to speak to one another. I’ve tried so many times to imagine what your voice sounds like. Very American, very soft and gentle, is what I think.” The needle shot home. It was a trick every nurse used. Talk to the patient, say something pleasant, and then, pow.

For the first time, Casey fought the drug she’d been given.

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