A Very Good Man (56 page)

  As the man spoke something – maybe Latin? She couldn't tell exactly, something like that, it sounded like movie gibberish to her, but it clearly meant something to the freaks watching the whole thing, because some of them chanted along. Gwen felt tempted to start a counter chant of “kegger-kegger” just to throw them off.

  This whole thing reminded her a little of some kind of frat house movie for some reason. Some weird hazing. Gwen laughed, sounding slightly panicked, at the thought. Really, no one wanted her in any club enough to go to this length. No one wanted her enough to make a phone call or send a letter, it wasn't her being down on herself, just what was.

  The one with the knife would have to be the oldest college student ever. Maybe it was the Freemasons or something instead? She'd never heard of them doing any human sacrifices, but then they were a secret organization, who knew what they were into behind closed doors? When the old man raised the blade high, just as his voice reached a fever pitch and it felt like he'd plunge the blade into her chest, she spoke what she figured would be her final words.

  “My name's Gwen Farris, bitch. Remember it.” She spoke just loud enough to be heard over his thunderous voice above her. He paused for a second, as if he wanted to ask her a question, a quizzical look on his face. With what looked like a tiny shrug, his hands holding the knife above his head, he quickly brought them both down, hard, thrusting the blade into her chest.

  The pain!

  She couldn't breathe, the sharp burning in her chest so intense she almost passed out. Tasting copper and iron, blood she thought, the world going black around her. As her dying act she tried to gasp out one last thing.

  “Fuck you...”

  Not original, but she hadn't planned out anything ahead of time. Really, they should have warned her if they were expecting a speech, right? It would have to do, because she'd run out of time. Gwen tried to repeat it, but no sound came out. Hopefully the man could read lips.

  She heard something as she lay in the dark, a crashing sound followed by yelling, maybe the police had come? That would be good, the creeps would be caught in the act, so even for killing her, there'd be punishment. Very good. About time something worked in her favor.

  Everything went blank. Not black, because it would have taken some kind of thought to allow that, no, it was just nothing. As things dimmed, she wondered if there would be anything else after. The thought never finished itself.

  When she opened her eyes she felt a sense of shock. After all, when you look down and see a god-damned knife sticking out of your chest, you have a right to assume that you were pretty much finished. Right? It sounded reasonable in her own skull at least.

  She turned her head slowly, the burning sensation in her chest letting her know that she'd indeed been stabbed. That, or it was the most vivid dream ever, but those didn't include pain, did they? No. Gwen seemed to have survived somehow.

  Go figure.

  So much for the “maybe it was a dream” theory.

  The room around her seemed... odd. The light fixtures looked more like oil lamps than normal and hospitals almost always used fluorescents these days anyway, not... whatever these were. She'd been in enough of them over the years to know. These had what looked like a white ball of flame hanging in the center of the glass lamp shades and gave off a small hiss. They were bright, whatever these kinds of lights were called. The light felt a bit cold, a pure white, so at least they gave the room a hospital kind of feeling. Stark and joyless.

  Check.

  The sheets were course woven for a hospital bed, almost like thin canvas, not overly comfortable, but warm enough, not that the room was cold. The bed itself was a wonder. At her feet, a shiny piece of wood, oak she thought, made up the foot board. It looked like real wood as far as Gwen could tell anyway.

  The railings were a soft yellow-orange, so brass, she guessed. She didn't know a lot about really nice furniture, but everything here had the feeling of being handcrafted, rather than being bought at Wal-Mart, which was where her own house had been furnished from.

  There was a company in her area that delivered, so she could shop online.

  She wanted to sit up, maybe get a drink of water, but couldn't take the pain, so just laid there instead, looking. It beat doing nothing, which was the other option.

  Next to her there was what looked like a metal globe, a steel gray color, about six inches across and sitting on a rounded cylindrical wooden stand, that gave off a low rumble of sound, kind of like the purr of a cat, only deeper. It felt like the noise penetrated her very bones, as if the bed vibrated, but it didn't, that feeling came from inside her somehow. The thought made her itch, just a little. It had to be an imaginary thing, so Gwen worked to ignore it. If you were going to bother imagining things, it paid to make them good. Otherwise you just sank into depression.

  After about half an hour, a tall, severe looking woman came in wearing a white nurse's uniform that would have looked perfectly correct, in the early nineteen-twenties, but now seemed like someone playing dress-up for Halloween. The nurse carried a clipboard that held several sheets of paper that looked thick and had a dull gray color. She smiled when she saw that Gwen's eyes were open.

  “Well, hello!” Her voice sounded chipper, even though her smile didn't touch her eyes at all. Still, a better attempt at being polite than most people managed with her, so the woman should get extra credit for that. She marked this on the mental tally she kept of everyone she met.

  Gwen tried to smile, which felt strange to her. The action itself felt... easy and not frozen on the right side of her face like normal at all. It didn't hurt, but then, maybe the drugs they had her on were just that strong? If she could move her face like that, something big had happened. If fifty surgeries couldn't fix her face, it must be nearly gone to allow this kind of movement.

  Fuck.

  Still her estimation of the lady in front of her went up. Her face had sent little kids running in fear and whatever happened can't have made looking at her easier.

  “May I have some water please?” She made a point of being polite to the woman, after all, she'd done the same for her so far.

  Gwen wondered if water would be allowed. Sometimes it wasn't depending on the level of damage. That she could talk heartened her. She remembered the time her jaw had to be wired shut for six months, which turned into eight after a gang of boys had beaten her with sticks while she tried to heal from the corrective surgery. That surgery had been almost enough to let her mouth close under her own power, if she really tried.

  The woman didn't answer in words, simply hurried to a glass pitcher on a table nearby and filled a small tumbler with water, then she turned back to Gwen.

  “We'll have to sit you up to drink it. I'm afraid it might hurt a bit... The radiant coil hasn't had a lot of time to work yet, you'll need to rest here for several more days before you can go home. Let me know when you're ready and I can adjust the bed for you.” The woman put her slightly wrinkled hand on a small handle, one made of more shiny yellow orange metal which, when Gwen said she felt ready, she began to turn slowly, causing the head of the bed to rise a tiny bit at a time, almost invisibly slow.

  It hurt, but not as badly as being stabbed had, so Gwen decided no new damage was being done. Something she'd learned a long time ago, fresh damage always felt worse than the original wound. Anything less and it was just an annoyance.

  Once mainly upright, tilting back only slightly, the nurse carefully gave her a small sip of water. Severe looking or not, the woman seemed good at her job, letting her drink the entire glass a tiny bit at a time without even a hint of impatience. Gwen decided to give her a second hash mark on her mental tally, tentatively at least. Only one person had ever managed to get to four before, but this lady seemed well on her way to taking the record if she kept this up.

  After the woman took the glass away Gwen thanked her. It was the only reward she could give the woman for her good work, after all.

  “It's no bother, dear. Now, I need to get the doctor, and I believe some people from the Constabulary wish to speak with you, as soon as you feel up to it. Let's have the doctor in first though, to make certain you're ready for such things, shall we?” Not waiting for an answer, the woman left the room, her hard shoes making clip-clop noises on the floor.

  Gwen waited, marveling at how odd the room looked. She should have asked what hospital she was at, and if they could contact her parents for her. Even her parents would come and visit her after being stabbed in the chest by some loony cult.

  At least she thought they would.

  It would have to be clear to them that she hadn't done it to herself this time. Her parents could imagine that she'd beaten herself all they wanted, but stabbing herself in the chest would have been past what she could have possibly done, right? They weren't bad people after all, they just didn't want to be saddled with a freak for a daughter. Overall her parents hid it well, she couldn't fault them there. They'd really tried to be good, but it was clear to her that they wanted, and probably deserved, a life free of her problems. Normally she tried to give them that peace, but this was... Unusual, even for Gwen's life.

  A man in a white coat came into the room, blond hair and gray eyes, she thought, she couldn't exactly tell for certain behind the glasses, thick wire rims holding even thicker lenses. He looked cute, in a slightly pale way. Not that Gwen was picky. Any guy not trying to stab her in the chest looked pretty good right now. She might even settle for a flesh wound, or being stabbed in the leg, if the guy could manage to hold his lunch while talking to her.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Vernor. I'm going to have to have a look at your wound, I'm afraid. Nurse Rogers will stay in the room for your comfort of course.” His tone seemed very formal and professional to her, as if she might object to him looking at the stab wound. Like she'd care about him doing his job?

  Realizing that he'd gotten her name wrong, she decided to corrected him gently, trying to stay polite, since he seemed OK so far, having bothered to smile at her when he came in even. Whoever these people were, they had top notch professionalism down in a way few ever mastered.

  “Um, my name's Farris, Gwendolyn Farris?” She kept her voice soft. It sounded funny to her, not unpleasant, far from it. It just didn't sound like her.

  She could tell her words took the doctor by surprise, he checked the paperwork again and looked at her closely, looking back at the picture several times.

  “Are you certain? Your traveler's identification places your name as Katherine Vernor... The picture matches.” He leaned forward and showed her the image on the page he held.

  The woman in the picture had curly brown hair, large light brown eyes, and a creamy, pale complexion. The nose seemed a little big to be an actress maybe... then again maybe not, she looked a lot like the sidekick off of the vampire detective show Gwen liked to watch on Thursdays, but no one with eyes could possibly confuse her with that woman. Most didn't even mistake her for a person.

  She tried for baffled rather than her normal confrontational style, since they hadn't called her ugly, just confused her with someone much better looking, which was a first for her. Maybe she had a lot of damage to her face? She couldn't feel anything, no bandages or sore spots... Maybe they just thought that her normal look – the right side of her face swollen and misshapen, the left side slightly concave and lumpy, jutting out at the bottom of her chin suddenly, nose having been broken several times from different attacks – indicated fresh damage?