My lips are unbelievably chapped.
Beep.
Without warning, the nightmare floods back in violent, vivid color. Flashing lights and blood and screams create a chaotic painting against the back of my eyelids. Agony follows, and grief, too.
The accident.
Something terrible happened. I—I didn’t stop it. I could have—God, I should have—but I didn’t. What have I done?
It strikes again—that cold, wretched feeling that sours my gut. Guilt. I could’ve done something, opened my mouth and changed the sequence of events that catapulted me into this dark place. I could’ve changed everything. I held the future in the palm of my hand. But I didn’t act, didn’t try hard enough.
This is my fault.
Beep.
The annoying bleat morphs from something intrusive and foreign into something familiar. A machine I’ve heard before, when my first husband, Jake, slipped and cartwheeled down our spiral staircase. He landed on the bottom, arms and legs broken in awkward angles, like a demented starfish. His head hit the tile hard and oozed blood from the crack in his skull all over our Grecian tile. An ambulance rushed him to St. Mary’s Medical Center. He was dead on arrival, much like Andrew, my second husband, who swallowed a bullet the following year. I found him in our office, his brains staining the back of an Italian leather chair I’d given him for Christmas.
Beep.
I know that noise. I’m in the hospital. The knowledge only increases the adrenaline surging hot through me.
“Open those curtains, would you?” someone says from beside me.
I’m here! I can hear you! I want to scream. But I can’t. My lips might as well be stapled shut.
“There, that’s better,” the nurse says after another shrill chirp from the machine. “She’s still really pale, though.”
“Do you think her color is off because of blood loss?” someone answers from the other side of me. This voice is softer. Sweeter. “Or lack of sunlight from being stuck indoors? Look at those nails—she’s definitely not the outdoorsy type. Maybe she’s always this pasty white.”
Pasty? My complexion has never been ashen before. Have I truly lost that much blood? My pulse races at the thought.
Beep…beep…beep.
Something tugs on my arm. I only vaguely remember the feeling from when I was eighteen and put under for my nose job. It’s an IV. They’re upping my medication.
How long have I been here? It could be a couple of hours after my fortieth birthday party, or a month later. In this state, I wouldn’t know. It feels as if I’ve been sleeping my entire life. Consciousness slips away as blobs of inky darkness threaten to pull me under. My thoughts knock together clumsily like shapes in a kaleidoscope, changing and smearing until time and dream and reality are inconsequential. Is my husband here too? Tucked away in the room next door in the same situation? Too many questions swirl through my brain at once and I can’t make sense of any of them.
“You know,” the nastier of the two says, “she kind of looks like that woman.”
“Which one?”
“The woman all over the news,” she says, the IV jerking in my vein. “The one who killed her husband, married another guy right after, and then killed him, too. I think it’s her.”
Beep.
“Oh, I’d almost forgotten about her,” the louder one says. “They say she pushed one down the stairs and shot the other one while he was working in his office.” She’s beside me now. The side of my bed slumps as if she’s leaning over to get a closer look at me. “Yeah, she kind of does look like her, doesn’t she? What where they calling her?”
“The Black Widow.”
“That’s right.
“Hard to tell what she looks like with those bandages on her face.”
Oh, for the love of all that is holy, please don’t let my face be covered with scars. I wouldn’t want to live if I’ve become disfigured.
“Did you hear if the other woman made it?” the louder one asks. “The one they