No. This was a new siren. An ambulance, probably, or a fire engine. Someone coming to help her, not to slash and kill. Of course. Of course.
Calmness returned, and with it a drowsiness she could no longer resist. She felt no fear, none at all.
Her last thought before losing consciousness was that she would never be afraid again.
19
Drifting. She was drifting. Weightless, bodiless, free. No pain, no fear. Around her, blackness and shades of gray. From somewhere, from everywhere, a rushing-air sound, a conch-shell hiss, monotonous and soothing.
The hum reminded her of the ocean. Slow rolling waves. Sheets of bubbly foam tickling a white shore. Sea birds like chips of broken glass, pieces of the sky. Far down the beach, laughing people. She watched them, saddened by their distance, wishing she could join the crowd. She didn’t dare. She was safer alone. Always alone. Alone and afraid.
No, wait. That was wrong. That was the old Wendy. Something had changed her, shocked her out of hiding, made her come alive. The Gryphon. Yes. Fear was behind her, and all because of the Gryphon.
Her eyes fluttered open. The ocean and the people were gone. She lay in an unfamiliar bed, her left cheek resting on a starched pillowcase.
Without lifting her head, she took in her surroundings. Beige carpet, yellow walls. In a two-dollar frame, a painting of a farmhouse with a red barn. A long wooden bureau. A doorway to what must be the bathroom, and, near it, a closed door.
Behind the door, the squeak of rubber-soled shoes on tile. A hallway. A nurse walking past. A hospital. She was in a hospital room. Of course she was. She knew it even before she rolled her head languidly to the right and saw the bed beside her, unoccupied, its white privacy curtain hanging open.
On the other side of the empty bed, there was a window. Although the shade was drawn, enough pale pinkish daylight filtered through to wash the room clean of darkness. The light was the color of dawn, of promise. Was it springtime yet? No, still March. Spring would come soon, though. Wendy smiled.
For what seemed like a long time she lay motionless, staring at the corkboard ceiling panels. There had to be a call buzzer within reach; she could summon a nurse if she liked. She chose not to. She wanted to think. Wanted to reconstruct what had happened to her and figure out how she’d wound up here.
She remembered watching the police car explode on the mountainside. Then she’d stumbled back to the Camaro and collapsed into the driver’s seat, feeling suddenly weak. After that, a stretch of darkness. Her next memory was of lying with eyes closed in the back of a moving vehicle, her body draped in the soft heaviness of a blanket. The blanket was good because she was terribly cold, shivering. Her skin felt damp, clammy, almost slimy. Like sushi. She wondered if only a Californian would think of that.
Sounds of activity swirled around her as she was wheeled on a gurney into a room smelling of disinfectant and ringing with voices. The voices seemed gratingly loud. She wanted to open her eyes, but found she couldn’t.
Snatches of hurried conversation faded in and out like a weak radio signal.
“Respiration twenty-two.”
“Pulse eighty. Strong and regular.”
Static thrummed in her ears. She went away somewhere. When she came back, hands were crawling like spiders over her fingertips, her lips.
“No cyanosis.”
Pressure on her wrist.
“Distended veins prominent.”
A python squeeze on her left arm.
“Blood pressure one-twenty over sixty.”
“It was one-fourteen over forty-eight in the wagon…”
The static rose to a roar, drowning out the voices, then receded.
“Vasoconstrictor indicated?”
“No, she should be all right, now that she’s supine. Give me another BP reading.”
The rubber python coiled around her arm again. “One twenty-two over sixty-four.”
“Better all the time. You’re going to make it, honey.”
Of course I’ll make it, Wendy answered voicelessly. I knew that. I can’t die now. Not after what I’ve been through. It wouldn’t be fair.
The voices went on, but the static was rising once more, the signal dissolving in the ether. She thought of Pioneer, of Voyager, those robot spacecraft sent out to explore the solar system, and how they’d glided ever farther from the sun, finally losing radio contact with Earth’s voice and spinning on into the void among the stars, that great and silent darkness. She slept.
And awoke in this bed, in this room, in the first light of day.
Well, she thought with a smile, the doctor was right, and so was I. I made it. I survived. Everything is going to be fine now. Everything.
Except…
She went cold.
“Jeffrey,” she whispered.
She’d forgotten about him. No, not forgotten. She’d pushed the memory out of her mind, not wanting to face it, not wanting to feel the pain.
She asked herself if she’d been in love with Jeffrey. She wanted to answer yes, but she knew the truth. He’d been someone to go to dinner with, someone who broke up the lonely routine of her days, someone who liked to talk and who’d found a lady willing to listen. That was all.
Then she remembered the concern he’d shown for her last night. The way he’d hugged her when she cried…
He might have loved me, she thought. He really might have.
And I got him killed.
She flinched from the thought. It wasn’t right to hold herself responsible. After all, she’d nearly died too.
But suppose she hadn’t telephoned Jeffrey from the police station last night. Suppose she’d decided to stay in a motel. Perhaps the Gryphon wouldn’t have been able to track her down at all. And even if the Gryphon had found her, even if he’d killed her, Jeffrey would still be alive.
His death was her fault. Indirectly and unintentionally, yes, sure, of course; but her fault nonetheless.
Her fault… and her guilt.
The dawn light flaring around the edges of the window shade didn’t look quite so bright anymore. And springtime no longer seemed so close.
A creak of hinges drew her attention to the door. A nurse was looking in.
“You’re awake,” the nurse said with a pleasant smile. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired. But okay.” She was surprised at the hoarse rasp of her own voice, the dryness of her mouth.
“Well, you’ve been through a lot. Everyone on the staff is talking about you. You’re a regular celebrity.” The nurse stepped lightly to the bed and attached a blood-pressure cuff to Wendy’s arm, then pumped it up and took a reading. “Looking good.”
“What happened to me exactly?”
“You went into shock.” She consulted the clipboard in her hand. “Neurogenic shock brought on by a syncopal episode. In English, a syncopal episode is a fainting spell. Normally if you faint, you fall over. Since you were sitting in a car, you stayed upright. The blood pooled in your legs, and not enough was getting to your heart.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“Luckily the paramedics got there fast.” The nurse listened to Wendy’s heart with a stethoscope, then nodded as if pleased. “They pulled you out of the car and put you on a stretcher. Once you were laid horizontal, no more problems.”
“Why did I sleep so long?”
The nurse briefly checked the beds of Wendy’s fingernails and the veins of her wrists. “Well, I’d say you were flat exhausted, for one thing. But you didn’t sleep straight through. You had a bad dream, and it woke you up.”
“I did?”
“You’ve forgotten that, huh? Well, there’s only so much a person can take. Must have been a doozy of a dream, the way you were yelling.”
“Screaming, you mean? I was screaming?”
“Were you ever.” The nurse crossed to the window and raised the shade, inviting in the slanting sun rays, the fragile salmon light. “Anyway, we gave you a shot of Valium, and you slept just fine after that.”