My Soul to Keep by Melanie Wells

Author:Melanie Wells
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307561558
Publisher: The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group
Published: 2011-08-02T22:00:00+00:00

22

I CAME DOWN HARD from my nervous high after my conversation with David and found myself standing in a bustling hallway full of strangers, feeling embarrassed and alone. Hey, you? Who had I become? I used to be witty. Interesting. Interested. I had sharp social skills and an innate ability to connect with people. I was a confident, assertive woman. Not a nervous, giggling simpleton who generates inane remarks in a simple exchange with an ex-boyfriend.

And I had never in my life been afraid of anything. Ever. Not until that ill-fated August day when I met Peter Terry and learned that fearlessness is almost always based on denial.

Only the ignorant are unafraid.

The crucial error, of course, was that I had ignored my better instincts completely and given that pasty, invasive stranger the time of day in the first place. I should have cold-shouldered him the instant he showed up in the water and stood too close to me—the very second he pushed me to talk to him. I’d known in that moment that he was bad news. And I hadn’t listened to myself.

Anyone who won’t take no for an answer never, ever deserves a yes.

Idiot, my mind said to me.

“Exactly,” I said out loud. “You are a grade-A prime idiot.”

I tried Christine’s room again and then Liz’s cell phone. No answer at either number. On a hunch, I decided to hike the considerable distance to the Parkland main patient-information desk. My feet were blistering under the straps of my flip-flops by the time I arrived.

Maybe it was the smell of the film-developing chemicals wafting through radiology that had triggered the impulse. Smells carry powerful associations with time, place, and memory. Just the smell of canned green beans can knock me back to the lunchroom in my junior high, whether I want to go there or not. Whatever the cause, standing there in the waiting room on the worn, maroon carpet, trying to worm my way back there to see Christine, I had been overcome by a conviction that I needed to find Joe Riley. A man I’d met only once. A man who, at least according to the Parkland Hospital patient records, didn’t exist.

The woman behind the desk tapped the keys with her long, pink fingernails and scowled at the computer.

“No Joe Riley,” she said triumphantly.

“You checked Joe and Joseph, right?”

“No Joe, no Joseph. I checked four different spellings of Riley.”

“Can you see if you have any record of his having checked in at all? Maybe you have a patient record from some other visit?”

“No ma’am. I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”

“Oh. Why not?” I felt strangely indignant, like I did when I was nine and accidentally slammed my bicycle into a wall.

“I can’t go in there and look for just any old Joe Riley ever. Not without an address or a date of birth.”

“Why not?”

“Patient confidentiality just doesn’t allow for that sort of thing. If you had the DOB or maybe the Social, I could tell you if he wasn’t here.

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