Chapter 2 - The Diagnosis in the SteamScarcely a minute after I stepped away toward the antechamber, a loud, violent splash echoed off the damp stone walls behind me.
“Oh, my God!”
A sharp gasp pierced the air. I spun around just in time to see her jerk violently awake, flailing so hard she nearly slipped beneath the scalding mineral water. Clutching my heavy charcoal robe tightly around her neck with one bruised hand, she stared at me with wide, terrified eyes.
“I’m sorry!” she blurted out, her voice breathless and trembling. “My friend won this resort stay in a local union raffle, and she dragged me along. I thought this was the main public bathhouse! The iron gate outside was unlocked, there were repair tarps draped everywhere, and I must have taken the wrong path down the ravine!”
I folded my arms across my chest, studying her through the haze. “You were unconscious in heated mineral water for nearly three hours.”
Her face, already pale, drained of what little color remained. She swallowed hard.
“Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?” I pressed, stepping closer.
“Yes,” she whispered, her chin lifting slightly despite her fear. “Dehydration. Severe blood-pressure drop. Potential heatstroke and cardiac stress.”
I narrowed my eyes, scanning her face. There was no hesitation in her medical terminology. “You know medicine.”
“I was a nursing student.”
The phrasing hit me like a physical blow. The past tense hung heavily in the air between us. “Was?”
Her expression hardened instantly, shutting down like a steel vault sliding into place. The vulnerability vanished, replaced by a cold, defensive shell. “My mother fell down our basement stairs. I had to leave school to take care of her full-time.”
She said it without a shred of self-pity or theatrical emotion, rattling it off like she was reading someone else's clinical chart. It was the tone of a person who had buried their own ambitions under mountains of obligation and quiet suffering.
She climbed out of the steaming pool, the heavy wool robe dragging slightly against the wet tiles, and walked past me toward the exit where Ruth had left the dry clothes.
Then, abruptly, she stopped.
Her eyes dropped downward, locking onto my hands.
Without consciously realizing I was doing it, my fingers had curled inward, my left hand tightly gripping my right wrist to anchor the involuntary, rhythmic twitching that had plagued me since the crash.
She stared at my hand. Then her gaze lifted, meeting my eyes with unsettling clarity.
“That tremor isn't coming from your hand,” she said softly.
The entire cavernous courtyard went dead silent, save for the steady drip of mineral water echoing off the rocks.
Vince snapped his head toward her, his hand twitching back toward his radio, clearly ready to muzzle her for insolence.
May you like
I slowly turned to face her, the blood roaring in my ears, every defensive instinct in my body screaming at me to shut her down.
“What did you just say?” I demanded.
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