Read Online Once More With Feeling by Emilie Richards - Free Book Online

the
clouds of total oblivion until she forgot the pain that was waiting
for her every time she emerged.
    But even as she perched on the edge of
unconsciousness, she realized that something had changed. The pain
was fierce, but it wasn't growing stronger. The thick clouds were
dispersing, along with her possibility of escape. She felt only
gratitude that the sky was turning an unadulterated blue once
more.
    The bird wasn't a bird at all.
    Elisabeth opened her eyes and peered at
white acoustical tile. For a moment she thought the clouds had
descended, then as her eyes focused, the pattern of tiny holes in
identical squares began to make sense. She was gazing at a ceiling.
And the bird was the tinny sound of a portable radio. A portable
radio blasting hip hop.
    She opened her mouth to protest, and fire
streaked across her face. Her lips felt swollen and cracked. She
tried to run her tongue across them, but her brain refused the
command. She tried again, only to realize that something blocked
her progress.
    "Not the worst job I've ever had." The voice
of a young woman competed with the aggressively rhythmic patter
from the radio. Elisabeth couldn't place the direction of the
sound.
    "She doesn't need a lot of care. Just lies
there. Food goes in, food comes out. I check her vital signs, check
the monitors. Check the action on the daytime dramas when I get too
bored."
    The voice that responded was deep and
masculine. "Then there's been no improvement?"
    "How'd you get up here, anyway? S'not
supposed to be anybody in this room but hospital personnel."
    "I bribed the security guard."
    The woman laughed. "With what, sugarplum?
Your autograph?"
    "Do you think she's going to wake up?"
    "You have to ask the doctors that."
    "I've asked."
    "And you don't like what they say?"
    "They don't say anything worth listening
to."
    "There've been times. . ." The woman paused.
"Sometimes I'm encouraged."
    "Can I see her?"
    "Nah. Something happened and somebody found
you here, I'd be the one in trouble. You'd better get on, now."
    "Look, if I give you my card, will you call
me if something changes?"
    "I don't know . . ."
    "It would mean a lot."
    "You're hard to say no to, you know
that?"
    "I depend on it."
    Elisabeth didn't know where she was or why,
but she knew the man's voice was somehow familiar. The woman's was
not. And the music that was pouring from the radio was something
she'd only heard from the stereo systems of passing cars.
Everything, the room, the woman, the music was alien. Everything
except the man's voice.
    Owen. Even as she pulled Owen's name out of
the clouds, she discarded it. Owen's voice was deeper, and there
was a guttural quality to his "r's," just the faintest husky rumble
that betrayed the fact that he had grown up speaking another
language.
    The voice wasn't Grant's, either. Grant's
was higher, a resonant tenor, and his enunciation, like hers, was
prep school perfect, as if his thoughts were carefully divided into
syllables and spelled out in phonetics.
    She knew other men, although she couldn't
recall their names just now. But the man speaking was not one of
them. Of this she was sure. Still, she knew him somehow. She knew
him.
    Something cool ran down her cheek. It took
her a long time to realize that she was crying.
    The conversation was over now, and someone
was stomping relentlessly. The stomping grew louder and louder.
    "Awake again, huh? I wonder what you're
thinking about when you stare at the ceiling that way. Are you
thinking at all? Or are you still way off in dreamland?"
    Elisabeth tried to turn her head toward the
woman's voice, but she found she was immobilized. Frustration
filled her, and the tears fell harder.
    "Well, look at that."
    A hand brushed the tears away. A soft,
gentle hand. "Honeypot, can you actually hear me this time?"
    Elisabeth tried to answer, but the same
impediment that had stopped her from licking her lips kept her from
speaking.
    "No, don't try to talk." The same soft hand
linked fingers