ejected from the car like me.”
“They searched the forest and the road.”
“He can’t be gone.” I’d yet to explore my feelings for him. To truly ponder if he was real and honest when he said he saw my flaws as marks of pride. I hadn’t decided if I would forgive him for using me. I definitely wanted more sex with him. More of the passion that brought me to life.
“I’m sorry,” Winnie said. “I didn’t even know you were friends with him.”
Now wasn’t the time to explain how we’d become more in that last moment. It surprised me she didn’t ask about Darryl. A man I’d misjudged. A guy who had used me. I just couldn’t see to what purpose. “Darryl was here.”
“What the hell did that twat waffle want?”
“He came to tell me Kane was dead.” I didn’t repeat the other crazy stuff.
“What a douchebag.”
It seemed as good a time as ever to say, “I dumped Darryl at that party.”
“I know. I called him to let him know you were in the hospital, and he had the nerve to ask me out!”
“Turns out he wasn’t who I thought.”
My daughter grabbed my hand. “Happens to the best of us.”
Winnie didn’t get to stay long because once the nurses realized I was awake, they came flying in on rubber-soled shoes and smock tops to flock me.
I was their miracle patient, and it wasn’t long before I wanted to escape their clutches. They, however, insisted on running a battery of tests. I let them take some blood and my blood pressure, even my temperature, but I drew the line at anything else until I had a shower.
Once I was naked I got the most shocking surprise of all. I blinked and rubbed my eyes. Then I rubbed myself like I was an oil lamp with a genie inside.
Not only did I not have a single broken bone or bruise, my healing had gone deeper.
I’d given myself a makeover. A magical tummy tuck and boob job along with a replenishing boost to my skin that had dealt with the dry skin.
I groped myself. Squeezed my boobs. They were mine. I palmed my flat tummy.
Flat.
Fuck.
Seriously. Fuck.
The cellulite on my thighs? Gone.
Surreal. I kept patting my body in the hospital bathroom, feeling the flesh and coming to grips with the fact it was mine, if slightly modified. I think I would have been freaked out more if I’d not noticed the imperfections left behind. The spell had not turned back the arms of time. The silvery lines, marking my pregnancies, remained as grooves in my skin. The crow’s feet by my eyes—with the thicker lashes—gave me character. I looked like a woman in her forties who’d taken care of herself.
With the most awesome flat belly. I couldn’t stop staring down, noticing the bush. Lush and thick. Wait a second. I could see it. No sagging flesh in the way.
Could a spell have done all this? Or could it be that autophagy, a process where body would process excess skin and fat to survive, was the root cause? After all, I’d been asleep for a month.
It made me wonder, was I on a machine that whole time? How did they feed me? So many questions about what happened while I slept.
But the biggest one of all?
Had I healed myself inside my mind? It seemed farfetched, but then again, what I knew of magic wouldn’t even fill a tiny cup.
The only person who might know was gone.
What had happened to me? Why couldn’t I remember the symbol? If I could heal…I could…
I frowned. Healing the world would kill me. So how would I pick and choose? What if I saved a bad person? What if I didn’t save the good?
How could I decide?
Despite the doctors wanting to run even more tests on me to see if they could decipher my miracle of healing, I fled. For one, the food totally sucked. A person could only eat so much sugar free Jell-O. Two, I’d already had six people sneak in to ask me to heal a friend or relative. And three, I was pretty sure one of my nurses was possessed. By a good-looking ghost, but still, possessed. I saw it shimmering inside her, not always fitting within her body.
Want to bet if I mentioned it, the doctors would keep me and analyze me a little further?
No thanks. I checked myself out under the supervision of my kids, who tucked me into the front seat of Winnie’s car.