Read Online The God Particle by Richard Cox - Free Book Online

descent.
    “What’s in that?” he asks her in German.
    “Painkillers and antibiotics.”
    “Have I been getting this since I arrived?”
    She bustles around him, not really making eye contact, and for a moment he wonders if his German was unclear. Or if she is afraid of him for some reason.
    “The Russian woman visited you a couple of days after you were brought here,” the nurse finally says. “She left something in your clothes.”
    “Where are they? My clothes?”
    The nurse pads across the tile floor and opens a narrow closet door. She reaches into his overcoat. Steve knows what she has before he sees it.
    The ring box.
    “Is the ring inside?”
    “It is,” the nurse admits. “This Russian, she must have liked you very much. If I saved six months’ pay, I could not afford this ring, and I think the Russian would have to work much longer.”
    The nurse puts the ring box away and closes the closet door.
    “If it were me,” she adds, “I would find this woman and thank her.”
    Steve watches her leave and a moment later tumbles into unconsciousness.
    6
    He wakes, cold and alone. The hospital room seems brighter than it should, as if someone has deliberately turned up the lights. He looks around for his parents, for Janine, but appears to be alone. Except he is not alone. The unseen presence is here, the field, emerging from nowhere, thrumming as it did during his coma.
    Fear gathers in the tips of his fingers, the ends of his toes. Adrenaline-laced blood surges through him. Burns through him.
    Something is in the room with him. Something or someone.
    She moves out of the shadows, shadows cloudy like the Zurich sky, and she is still wearing the red dress. Her dark hair is full and gorgeous, her eyes more beautiful than he remembers. She climbs onto the bed and straddles him, knees on either side of his hips. Leans forward to kiss him.
    “Anna?”
    “Hello, Steve Keeley.”
    “What are you doing here?”
    “I came to see you. I am very sorry for what happened. I think I will stay with you for a while.”
    “But how did you get past the nurses? I don’t think I’m supposed to have visitors. And my parents . . . Janine. . . .”
    “They wait for you outside.”
    “Thank you for bringing the ring back, Anna. You could easily have kept it and sold it. You wouldn’t have to . . . you could have found a different job.”
    “I did find a new job,” Anna says.
    “You did? What is it?”
    She places her index finger over her mouth. “He said sometimes it is a crime to break the silence.”
    “What? Who?”
    Steve waits for Anna to answer, but instead she disappears, evaporating before his eyes. In her place the presence returns, gradually, like an electric charge, something sensed but unseen, felt but not heard. The room seems to dissolve around him. To white it dissolves, the pure white field where the presence lives. Where his fear lives. Where death lives. All around him the presence grows stronger, sweeping, thrumming, screaming all around him, inside of him, overpowering stimuli that he cannot hear or see or detect with any of his senses.
    Fear consumes him. He wills himself to wake up. This is only a dream. Wills himself to wake up.
    7
    “Steve.”
    He opens his eyes. Janine stands before him. Her eyes are bloodshot, teary.
    “Janine.”
    “Oh, Steve, I’m so sorry. So sorry. I know you remember. I know that’s why you were at that place, that sex place. This is all my fault. You almost died and it’s all my fault.”
    She puts a hand over her mouth. Her body shakes. Steve considers reaching for her, considers touching her, but he doesn’t.
    “You hurt me,” he says.
    “I know.”
    “Who is he?”
    “Nobody. He’s nobody, Steve. It was just a stupid thing. I was out with Christina and saw this guy I used to work with. All of us were drinking and I didn’t realize how drunk I was and then we just ended up back at his place. It was such a stupid mistake.”
    He lies there, staring at