eighty-one

In Ward 2B, Ellen’s IV dripped, the catheter drained, and Zoe hummed to herself. She sat erect in a chair next to the bed. A vase filled with the irises stood nearby, filling the room with their sickly acrid odor.

Zoe picked up the antique silver hand mirror that went with Ellen’s hairbrush. “This is a beautiful set. Not my style, but beautiful.”

Danny approached and stood at the end of the bed. Zoe’s beauty appeared illuminated, as if someone had touched her up with glow-in-the-dark colors. Her appearance distracted him from a vacancy he now caught deep within her gaze.

“I’ll prove it to you.” She set the mirror aside. “Right now.”

“I don’t want you to prove anything.”

“I know you’re skeptical. You don’t believe I can heal, but I’ll show you.” Zoe opened her sunny yellow purse and pulled out a sheath with a rubberized grip. She slid the stainless steel safety sheath off to reveal a filleting knife. Thin, delicate, and razor sharp.

Every molecule in Danny’s body went on alert. In the corridor, footsteps strode past and then silence surrounded them except for Ellen’s equipment. The heart monitor beeped at periodic intervals and the fan on the oxygen monitor whirred to life.

Zoe held up the knife. “My dad’s, from his fishing days. I kept it all these years.” She lifted her shoulders with a puzzled expression. “I’m not sure why. A souvenir, I suppose. A reminder.”

Danny gripped the rail at the foot of the bed to steady himself. “A reminder of what?”

She dropped the knife onto the bed, next to Ellen’s hand, and burrowed into her purse. The blade glinting within inches of Ellen’s skin made Danny’s skin crawl. He edged toward Zoe. His hand left a sweaty gleam on the bed rail.

Zoe answered while coating her lips with pale pink gloss. “A reminder of the good times. Sometimes Dad took me along on his fishing trips. Just the two of us. I wasn’t bored even though all we did was sit in a boat all day long.”

“You carry the knife with you because—?”

“Habit. Self-protection.” She stored the lip gloss away and smiled up at him. “I like having a bit of him nearby. It’s silly, I know.”

“Not so silly.”

“I think he found it in my unmentionables drawer, but he didn’t say anything. Maybe he doesn’t remember.”

Danny edged around the end of the bed. Zoe picked up the knife again, considering it and then Danny. “Hear me out.” She pointed Danny toward another chair parked in the corner of the room. “And please sit over there.”

Danny sat down on the edge of the chair, calculating how quickly he could reach her. An ambulance siren pierced the eerie silence that settled over Danny. His vision shrank to a pinhole aimed at the knife.

“The funny thing is that it’s because of those fishing trips that I discovered my ability.” Zoe set the knife down near Ellen’s hand again. “I don’t call myself a ‘healer.’ That smacks of crystal balls and incense.”

She gazed at him with violet eyes made darker by the fluorescent lighting in the room. She was so earnest in her convictions, so sincere. Danny needed to keep her talking. He’d stood here before, in this place, where his job put Ellen in danger. His inability to protect her had landed her here, but she wasn’t going to die today. Not like this.

He cleared his throat. “How did you discover your ability?”

“It was those fish, those poor gulping fish. Bass, I think. My dad would hit them hard against the boat to kill them.” She crinkled her nose in a dainty grimace. “On one trip, one of the fish slipped under my feet, and I decided to throw it back in before Dad could stop me. Only, his mouth was mangled from the hook. That poor mangled fish mouth. I was a baby about it, cradling the fish, wiping the blood away. Dad told me that it was more humane to put it out of its misery. I held my hand over it—protecting it, I think—and when I looked down, the mouth was no longer ripped.” She smiled. “It’s the truth, so help me. I tossed the fish back. I was over the moon.”

“Did Nathan see what you did?”

“Oh no. I kept it to myself for a while, because I couldn’t believe it. I needed to practice before I showed Dad.” An expression of disappointment flitted across her face. Danny suspected Nathan hadn’t reacted well to the pronouncement when it did arrive. “None of that matters now. The past is the past. I need to make it up to my dad somehow. That’s where you come in.” She twitched at the knife, sliding it on the bed cover.

It took every ounce of Danny’s will not to lunge at her. Her behavior was all about Nathan, he reminded himself. Keep her talking about her father. He forced himself not to look at Ellen, so still, so oblivious, so in need of a healer. Helpless, as Zoe herself had noted the day before. He gripped himself from within, a tightening of control, and set the spiral notebook on the floor. Zoe was too caught up in her drama to notice the notebook.

“I’m not sure what you need to make up to Nathan,” Danny said. “You’re a good daughter. I can see that.”

Zoe brightened. “You think?”

“As you said, the past is the past. You have much to offer.”

“I know,” she said with a plaintive tone. “I do, I really do, but how can I be a good daughter if he’s locked away? You don’t understand.” She twitched at the filleting knife again. An inch closer to Ellen’s hand. “I need your help to be the daughter I want to be. I’ll prove to you that I can heal, and then you’ll see why you should help me. Because I’ll help you with Ellen.”

She picked up the knife, cradling it. The knife blade caught the light and winked silver back at Danny, mocking him.

He spoke louder than usual, blurting the first topic that came into his head. “Tell me about Nathan.”

Zoe straightened with a look of mild curiosity. “What do you mean?”

“Let’s begin with his scar and his PTSD—are they related?”

“PTSD?” She considered the word with furrowed brow. “I thought PTSD came from fighting in war zones.”

“Ah, but what is a war zone? A home can be a war zone. Anywhere can be a war zone. How did he get the scar?”

“At home,” Zoe said. “But—after all these years—his odd behavior—is it because of that?”

The knife landed in her lap as her grip loosened. Danny braced himself to leap.

“It could be,” Danny said. “I have no way of knowing, that’s why I asked. Chronic PTSD is a serious condition. I suspect that for Nathan it went unmonitored for too long. Stress and change can trigger episodes, too.”

Zoe stuck her legs out, turning her feet around in circles. “You mean me coming here. But this is the point I’m trying to make. I need to make it up to him, be a better daughter.”

“Do you think there’s a connection between your arrival and his worsening symptoms?”

“My feet hurt.” She set her feet on the ground. “I wish I could say there was no connection.”

“What happened to Nathan at home?”

“You’ve guessed, haven’t you?” She turned toward him, sitting sideways on the chair with one knee drawn up against the seat back. “I tried to help him. In fact, I did help him.”

“You mean with your healing talent?”

“It was working. It was.” She gazed at him with such appeal, insistent and a little desperate. “Please help me. All I want is my dad. I’ll show you, I will.”

She sprang out of her chair and onto the bed. Danny knocked over his chair in his frenzy to reach her. Zoe straddled Ellen and held the knife against her neck.

“Stop,” he said. “I’ll do everything in my power to get Nathan released. I don’t need proof that you can heal.”

She shook her head. “I see how you look. You don’t believe me. I need to prove that I can heal Ellen.”

Every nerve in Danny’s body exploded, but he couldn’t move—he didn’t dare move—as Zoe shifted the knife in her right hand. Her index finger rested along the top of the knife. She raised her arm and without looking at Danny sliced two inches of skin on Ellen’s neck. Not deep, and not right over the carotid, but close enough. Ellen didn’t twitch, not so much as a hitch in her breathing.

Danny’s heart broke for her all over again. She truly wasn’t there anymore. He gripped the edge of the closest machine as much in anguish as in terror.

“Zoe, stop.” Danny heard the begging, pathetic tone in his voice. All his Garda authority had left him. He faced Zoe as himself. “I’ll help you. I will.”

Zoe rested the knife against her thigh. A thin line of blood dripped down Ellen’s neck.

“You have my word,” Danny said. “I don’t need proof. I’ll help you get Nathan released.”

One of Ellen’s monitors blared with a series of loud beeps. Zoe jerked, startled, and the knife dropped to the floor. Danny dived toward the bed and grabbed her, slinging her off Ellen.

A nurse ran in. “What’s going on in here?”

Danny found his voice again. “Garda business. Please check my wife.”

The monitor fell silent. The nurse perused one of the machines. “She’s breathing fine now. Her oxygen levels are back to normal.” She frowned at them and turned back to the door.

The knife sat on the floor on the other side of the bed, and the nurse hadn’t noticed the blood on Ellen’s neck. Danny grimaced. One of those who only had eyes for the equipment.

As soon as the nurse left, Danny shoved Zoe against the wall, pulled up a chair, and forced her to sit. “Don’t move,” Danny said.

She nodded, subdued. Danny grabbed the safety sheath off the floor and stored the knife in his pocket.

“I’m sorry,” Zoe said. “I wasn’t going to hurt her. Let me heal the cut now.”

Danny pulled up the second chair and sat facing her. His body tingled with adrenalin. “You already did hurt her. You understand that, don’t you?”

“I just want my dad,” she said.

“I know you do.” Danny picked up her purse off the floor. “Come with me now.”

She bit her lip, puzzled, when he cautioned her, telling her that she had a right to silence.

“I didn’t hurt Ellen,” she said. “I can still heal her cut.”

That guileless expression, her perfect young skin and clear eyes. Life hadn’t imprinted itself on her face yet. Danny believed her sincerity. She wasn’t a Sid Gibson, a studied manipulator. She was like the butterfly pin on her blouse—a beautiful creature, but fleeting. Doomed. Unlike Nathan, she didn’t understand how cracked she was.

“Maybe so,” he said. “Maybe you can heal the cut—and Ellen—but you didn’t heal Annie Belden, did you? More like the opposite.”