"Josephine!" The word was slightly slurred, but not beyond understanding. Mary's stroke had robbed the left side of her face of mobility, but thankfully had left her capable of some speech. "Oh, thank God, you're here."
She lurched forward, pulling out of the nurses' grip with surprising ease, and staggered toward her. Sam caught her, wrapping her arms around the frail body. She felt the shuddering of terror through the other woman's limbs, the steel of muscle underneath it.
Mary might be old, she might be frail, but there was a lot of strength left yet in the old girl's body.
"It's all right, Mary. I'm here; no one will get you now."
The old woman shuddered. "I saw him, you know. I wasn't imagining it. I saw him."
"Shhhh. It's okay. You're safe." She stroked Mary's back with one hand, and felt the terror begin to leave the older woman's body.
"He'll be back. Now that they know I'm here, he'll be back."
"No, he won't. My partner's out there right now, hunting him down. He'll catch him. That's what he does."
Mary pulled back a little. "I know. I was talking to him."
She frowned. "You were talking to Gabriel?"
"I don't know a Gabriel. I meant Joshua. Where is he? I want to talk to him again." Her voice was petulant, like that of a child deprived of a toy. And in many ways Mary was a child.
Much of her mind had gone, lost in memories of the past.
But did that mean she was lost now, or had she really seen Joshua? And if it wasn't Joshua who had scared her—and her words seemed to indicate it wasn't—then who or what had?
"Maybe he'll come by later."
She glanced up at the dark haired nurse, who shook her head and said, "There were no visitors today."
So, imagination. But that didn't mean she couldn't get something useful, as long as she didn't push the old girl too far.
She motioned toward the sofa. "Mary, why don't you come and sit down on the sofa?"
"Oh, all right. As long as they don't stick me, again. They're always sticking me with things."
The second nurse came back into the room with a medical trolley at that precise moment, and Sam couldn't help smiling.
"You don't want to be sick when Joshua visits again, do you?"
She helped the elderly woman onto the sofa and knelt down in front of her. "How about you talk to me about his visit while the nurses make sure the other man didn't hurt you."
The old woman's smile broke lose at the mention of Joshua.
"He was such a bonny child. You both were."
"When was he here, Mary?"
"Today, like I said. Just before that other man appeared."
She shuddered. "Never did like the look of that one. He was nasty."
"How did Joshua get here? He never checked in with the nurses."
The old woman snorted. "Well, he wouldn't, would he? He hates medical types. Far easier to fly in through an open window and avoid all the fuss."
"So he came as a bird?"
"Yeah." Mary smiled. "You both had to be electronically chipped so you didn't fly beyond the compound restrictions."