Renegade Nuns: Sisterhood Is Powerful by Lisa Jones

Author:Lisa Jones [Jones, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780982654453
Google: rc40vgAACAAJ
Amazon: B01MYCJMR8
Goodreads: 34052605
Publisher: Verbal Construction, LLC
Published: 2017-01-26T03:00:00+00:00

9

MARYDALE

I awoke. The room was dimly lit with twilight. Whether the sun was setting or rising, I wasn’t sure. The fact that I was in bed was the only indication that I had slept. Had I actually slept? I felt as if I had been climbing a mountain and fighting to survive a freak blizzard. As I tried to remember what had happened, the details of my dream became confused.

I became aware that I was not alone. The mystery patient from Holy Cross—the woman named Graziana Contini—sat at my bedside. Her cheeks were gaunt. Her eyes were sunken and dark, as they had been when I saw her in Dr. Blanton’s lab at the hospital. She was no longer wearing her respirator mask. I could see a faint smile on her lips. Her smile made her look kind and wistful. I heard the click and whoosh of a ventilator, just as I had heard in Riva’s hospital room. I heard the beeping and humming of hospital equipment. I saw that I was paralyzed—lifeless—in the bed, just as Riva had been. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I realized that I was unable to open my eyes. I was seeing the whole scene from a perspective outside my own body. I was in my body yet somehow I was outside my body at the same time.

“Becky,” I heard Graziana say. “All three of us are needed to open the portal.”

Graziana reached out to me with her right hand. She reached into my ribcage. She grabbed my heart. I saw her pull it out of my body. My heart quivered and thrashed in her hand like a cutthroat trout pulled from an icy mountain lake. With her left hand, Graziana reached into her own chest and removed her own heart. It was a sickly thing. Thick with scars, it labored to beat. She pressed her sickly heart through my ribs. Graziana put my heart into her chest. Almost instantaneously, Graziana’s appearance changed. Her eyes were no longer dark and sunken. They sparkled. Her cheeks glowed with health. “This will take me far,” she said. “Come find me so I can return it to you.”

Graziana stood and walked out of my bedroom. Suddenly, I saw that it wasn’t my bedroom at all—rather, it was Graziana’s hospital room at Holy Cross. The bed was empty. The room was empty. I was there, but I wasn’t there.

I awoke with a gasp. My heart raced as I looked around at the familiar items in my bedroom. I sat up. I grabbed my phone off the nightstand. Yes, I am awake, I assured myself. This is real. I checked the news headlines on my phone. Yes, politics as usual. All is well, I told myself. And all shall be well.

I paused—and all shall be well? I repeated the phrase in my mind. Why did I say that? This didn’t sound like something I would say. Rather, it felt like a call and response, as if I had said to myself, “All is well,” and some other voice had replied, “And all shall be well.

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