vision sharpened like powerful binoculars abruptly coming into focus, hurting her eyeballs and searing a jumble of confusing images into her unprepared brain. She glanced to her left and saw snow falling lightly outside the window, collecting briefly on the glass before melting away. More confusion clouded her mind. She tried to speak but a hoarse croak came out instead.
The man in charge – Dr Aloysius Spinks, according to his nametag, a large African-American with a shiny bald head – poured her a glass of water from the plastic pitcher on the bedside table and held it up to her lips. Dana drank in deeply before coughing again.
‘The little boy,’ Dana managed finally, forcing out the words even though it hurt like hell to talk. ‘Did the little boy make it?’
Spinks frowned and motioned to a nurse. The woman left the room in a scuffling of feet before Spinks looked back at Dana. ‘What little boy, Agent Whitestone?’
‘From the plane,’ Dana said. Tears of frustration pooled in her eyes. Her skull throbbed like it had never throbbed before. A powerful storm of nausea boiled away deep inside her gut and threatened to explode from her gullet in a disgusting rainbow of projectile-vomit. ‘The little boy who was sitting directly in front of me. I was sitting in seat 32b. The little boy was sitting right in front of me with his mother. Did he survive the crash?’
Spinks lifted his right arm and adjusted the wire-framed glasses on his face. As he did so, ripples of sinew danced just beneath the surface of his skin like minnows darting through a shallow pond, letting Dana know that the good doctor had most likely played football in college. Probably linebacker. ‘I don’t know, Agent Whitestone,’ Spinks admitted, shaking his head slightly. ‘Most of the passengers made it, but a few perished in the crash. Six, I believe, didn’t make it. One child died. What was the little boy’s name? I’ll have someone look into it right away.’
The accusing look that had flashed across the little boy’s blood-sprinkled face in Dana’s horrific nightmare bolted back into her mind. Now because of you I have to die in that plane crash.
Dana wretched hard, nearly throwing up again. Her temples ached as though powerful drills were boring through the bone on either side of her head.
Spinks held up the glass to her lips again and Dana finished off the remaining water. It helped. ‘Bradley Taylor Thomas,’ Dana whispered, swallowing back the acrid mixture of blood and bile she tasted in her mouth and remembering how the little boy’s mother had used his full name while admonishing him to not talk to strangers. ‘His name is Bradley Thomas Taylor. Four years old. Blonde hair. Blue eyes.’
Spinks waved to an orderly standing near the doorway. ‘Get on it right away. Check back with me as soon as you find out anything.’
‘Yes, sir.’
When the orderly had left the room, Dana’s scrambled brain finally started working again. Her heart flipped over inside her chest as the stunning realisation hit her with all the subtlety of an aluminum baseball bat slamming into a plate-glass window. She’d boarded the plane out in Los Angeles on 12 May. It had been sunny outside then, bright, warm. The snow falling outside her window now indicated that a substantial chunk of time had passed since that day and this one. Not even Cleveland’s weather was that bad.
More nausea boiled in her stomach. ‘How long have I been out of it?’ she asked weakly. ‘What’s today’s date?’
Spinks lifted a medical chart from Dana’s bedside table and flipped it open. A sympathetic look flooded into his warm brown eyes. ‘The date is 16 November,’ he said. ‘You were in a coma for twenty-four weeks. You sustained massive head trauma in the plane crash. Your skull was fractured. You were life-flighted to Fairview General Hospital ten minutes after they fished you out of the water and we immediately performed a series of life-saving surgical procedures on you, including a craniectomy, a craniotomy and a cranioplasty. Basically that means we relieved the pressure inside your skull caused by the bleeding and inserted temporary metal plates while your bone healed. The good news is that you’ll make a full recovery, Agent Whitestone. As a matter of fact, you’re almost there already. It’s quite remarkable, really.’
Somehow, Dana wasn’t surprised by the news. What in the hell was there for her to be surprised about here? All things considered, serious thought should