Sea of Dreams

  * * *

  There were bits and pieces that I remembered over the new few days. Apparently, I didn’t do so well with the anesthesia. It made me sick, and the doctor had to compensate by giving me something else. He cheerfully reassured Zach. “She’s got the I.V. She’s breathing steady, and her blood pressure is excellent. The rib is repaired, and the lung is staying inflated. It doesn’t get much better than that.”

  “Why is she so groggy?”

  “Side effects of the anesthesia. Not uncommon. And treatable.”

  But Zach’s voice was concerned and aggravated at the same time.

  Then Kara was there for a little while. She held my hand and talked to me about the new people, but I think I fell asleep on her, and I couldn’t remember anything she said later.

  Some unknown time later, they were getting me on my feet and walking me around. I didn’t like it much, but I felt better after I did it. Kara said, “It’ll keep you from getting pneumonia. What did he do? Punch you in your ribs? Oh, sorry, I know you can’t answer me yet.”

  And there was another time lapse. It seemed as though they were always getting me up and down, but it turned out it was once an hour or two. Just when I thought that I was starting to feel better, the doctor took the tube out of my throat.

  Boy, was that a lot of fun. Not.

  After the removal, I started feeling a lot better. I had a sore throat, and my chest still hurt, but I could stay up longer, and my strength was coming back.

  Kara told me it was two days later, but it felt like it was two weeks.

  Zach came periodically to peer in the door at me. But after the tube was removed, he didn’t come back, and I didn’t ask where he’d gone. Kara stayed with me, and she was gently optimistic.

  The doctor’s name was Sinclair. Whether it was his first name or his last, I never asked. He was nice enough for a man who liked to take my temperature and my blood pressure and click his tongue knowingly.

  Two days later, it was evening, and I was sitting by the window looking out at the sunset pensively. I didn’t like being cooped up, but I was grateful I was still breathing. Sinclair told me I had a lovely three-inch scar just above my belly button and a piece of metal inside me now. It was something wrapped around my rib to facilitate the fracture’s healing. My biggest challenge was to breathe deeply and often in order to prevent pneumonia from developing. Apparently, that was the worst complication of a ruptured lung.

  Kara stayed with me for the entire time, only leaving for essentials. The doctor came in just as she went to get something to eat. She nodded to him and went on her way. I tensed up in the chair and looked at him warily.

  Sinclair stopped abruptly. He was a balding man in his forties. The gray in the hair he had left was similar in color to the gray in his gray-blue eyes. He was a tall skinny man who looked like running marathons was something he did for fun. “You don’t trust me,” he said astutely.

  I kept my hand on the dagger that was hidden from him between my body and the side of the easy chair I sat in. Then I shook my head slowly. “It’s hard to trust anyone,” I said. My voice was rough from the tube. It felt like I had a bad sore throat, and I didn’t even get ice chips to soothe it.

  Sinclair perched on the side of the bed just close enough to make me a little nervous. “No, I can understand that based on what Zach and Kara have said. I know Kara’s told you about our group.”

  I shook my head again. “She told me when I was half looped.”

  Sinclair nodded. “Okay. We’ve got about twenty people. Our leader, for lack of a better word, is Gideon. I don’t know if you remember him, but he’ll come see you later. We live down at The Redwoods Camp. We’re going to move you down there tomorrow or the next day. I don’t want to make you nervous. Well, more nervous anyway, but we haven’t found the one who hurt you yet. We’re kind of in the open here, and that makes us a little nervous, too.”

  I stared at him. Sinclair seemed a little too at ease, a little too…happy? It seemed weird. It was even weirder than what was usual. “You’re happy,” I stated rather than asked.

  Sinclair appeared a little surprised at the statement. “You’re the first real patient I’ve had for weeks.” He waved his hand around the hospital room. “I practiced in Sacramento. I’m a surgeon, lucky for you, but now I’m a general kind of go-to guy. But hey, I got to do surgery for a change, and it was something kind of neat for me.” He smiled readily. “And don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re doing well. I just hope we don’t have any repeats. Since you burned the sign down, we think that that guy won’t be able to find us.”

  I frowned. I didn’t want to talk about the Burned Man. I had a vivid recollection of the last moment I’d seen him as he walked away, half stumbling, bloody, but altogether too determined. There was something that happened before that moment that came to me like a brick falling on my head. Suddenly, he glanced over his shoulder, and then he craned his neck to look into the distance. As he turned to face me, his face distorted into a mask of heated rage. Then furious indecision boiled over his expression. Despite his makeshift bandage, the blood continued to drip down his good hand, pooling at his feet, and I hoped for him to pass out.

  He hadn’t passed out, but he had known that someone was coming. He had known someone was coming for me. He had known. How long had it been before I made my way to the hospital beside the highway? It had been a long time…an hour maybe to go the two or three miles from the burned sign. An hour before Zach had smoothly stepped off the moving bicycle as if he was stepping from an escalator. There was no way that the other man could have physically seen Zach. There was no bodily way for him to be warned, but he had been all the same.

  The Burned Man knew things. Just like I did. Just like Kara smelled the strong scent of cinnamon before something important happened. Just like Zach had his dreams about me. The startling comprehension made me wince unexpectedly. The doctor’s face twisted with worry. I raised my hand to stop him from coming to me. “I’m all right.”

  And it wasn’t going to matter about the sign being destroyed. The Burned Man was going to know how to find me in his own special manner.

  “Are you in pain?” Sinclair asked. “Do you need something?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “I was just thinking about…him.” I paused, and the moment drew out. Finally, I asked, “Is your group ready for someone like him?”

  It was the doctor’s turn to frown. I’m not sure if he understood what I was asking him. “We’ll protect ourselves,” he said instead of answering directly.

  I shrugged. There was something else I wanted to know, but I didn’t know how I was going to phrase the question. How was I supposed to ask if the doctor had some extra ability that he might not be willing to talk about: Excuse me, doc, but have you got ESP, telekinesis, clairvoyance, or some other as yet indescribable psychic talent? He’d probably check my blood pressure again and give me another shot of morphine.

  Kara stepped into the room again. Dressed in a standard set of scrubs, she appeared quite relaxed and healthy. She looked at us curiously and handed me a juice box with the straw already inserted. “It’s lukewarm, but it’s apple juice.” She tossed one to the doctor who caught it deftly. “And one for the M.D., too.”

  “Thanks,” Sinclair said, inserting the straw with a little flourish.

  My head started to hurt. I don’t know what it was, but it was probably a tension headache. It was becoming increasingly obvious throughout the day that Zach was patently avoiding me, and I didn’t have to write to “Dear Abby” to figure out why. I’d be angry if someone drugged me, too. The really bad part was that I didn’t know how I could explain it to him without sounding like a complete freak. I put the juice down and rubbed my temple with both hands.

  “Headache?” Sinclair asked. I nodded. He got up and put his juice next to mine. “With your permission?” he said affably and waited for me to nod again. He began to rub my temples with his index and middle fingers of both o
f his hands. His fingers were warm and felt as though the warmth was being imparted into me. It didn’t take a minute before the pain began to dissipate. It was gone before I could open my mouth.

  I looked up into his gray-blue eyes with shock. Sinclair shrugged crookedly. “I have a way with the minor pains. I was always trying to heal my pets when I was kid. Then I got to work on my dad’s back. He said I had extraordinary hands. I think that was what got me started in medicine. Right up until my dad died of a heart attack in the nineties, he swore my hands were pure magic. Helped his lumbago every time.”

  Then the young man at the door said, “Yes.” It wasn’t an agreement to what the doctor had said but to what the newcomer was reading in my eyes.

  The redheaded teenager was standing just inside the room, looking at me. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. His eyes were bright sky blue, and a spray of freckles wandered over his nose and cheekbones. He was tall and gangly, nearly a stick with his teenage build. He had a coke in one hand, and he was rubbing the bridge of his nose with the other hand. I looked back at him and vaguely remembered him from the first blurred moments I had woken in the hospital room.

  My head came up and Sinclair stepped back. I said, “You’re Gideon. The leader.”