Such a Pretty Smile by Kristi DeMeester

Author:Kristi DeMeester
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER 14

CAROLINE 2004

The hospital wristband was too tight, and Caroline worked her fingers beneath the plastic and stretched it away from her skin, but it didn’t break. She’d already gone through discharge, the paperwork signed, her head nodding as she listened to her after-care instructions. No alcohol. No driving for at least a week. After the fourth commandment, Caroline lost the thread, but Daniel had asked all the questions she should have asked. She knew he would have already committed to memory every small instruction from the doctor who’d examined her, as well as her test results.

Daniel walked behind the nurse who was pushing Caroline’s wheelchair. Outside, his car was already pulled to the curb. She dreaded being locked inside it with him and the questions he’d been holding back since the ambulance had brought her to the hospital the night before.

There had been blood draws that left her arms burning, and then an EEG, which had come back with a negative diagnosis for epilepsy, and then a placidly smiling doctor who squeezed her knee over and over while he talked to Daniel about what was wrong with her.

“Non-epileptic seizures are fairly common in women. Especially if there’s any depression or anxiety, which I gather from what you’ve told me, Mr. McHough, there has been. We’re waiting on blood results to check for diabetes, but I have a feeling that’s not what we’re dealing with here. We’ll want her to follow up with her primary care physician for a psychotherapist recommendation. That should help her better deal with any anxiety or depression, and get all this”—he waved his hand at Caroline prone in the hospital bed—“under control. No one wants a repeat performance of that, do they, sweetheart?” He looked at her then and winked, and she stared back, unable to do anything other than open and then close her mouth like some dumb cow—a perfect imitation of what he probably thought of her.

“Mind your head now,” the nurse said as she and Daniel guided her into the passenger seat, and then the door was closed, a vacuum of silence dropping over Caroline like a bell jar.

She’d not told Daniel about the dog. The sculpture. The man she’d seen huddled in the corner with his long, curved teeth. Even after the seizure and the trip to the hospital, she didn’t think she could explain all of it to him. The doctor who’d examined her had mentioned something about dissociative periods and how even those were a form of seizure, and that it was possible she’d been having them without even knowing.

“I thought I was sleepwalking,” she’d said, and Daniel had glanced at her sharply as the doctor made another note on his chart.

“Mm-hm. Plenty of people assume that,” he’d said, and then left the room.

The interior light blinked on, and then Daniel was beside her, and they were leaving, the car picking up speed, and she could feel the energy gathering between them, all of Daniel’s unspoken words thickening the air in the car.

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