Page 1 of Tormented Dreams

CHAPTER ONE

Grace Miller walked through the swishing automatic doors and looked around the buzzing emergency room, breathing in the sterility with something akin to trepidation.

A wall of noise greeted her—groans and wails, the occasional scream and the inevitable sobbing. She might have felt at home with the sounds if she'd been at a kink club, rather than a hospital.

Along with it came a haze of antiseptic odour that only partially disguised the more pungent smells, the metallic taint of blood and acrid stench of vomit.

Grace blew out an uneasy breath. Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea after all… except she'd considered all the other options—several times—and hadn't managed to come up with a better one.

Perhaps she should just leave it.

She flexed her shoulders and felt the zing of pain arrow down her spine and the slow, sticky ooze of blood and pus as the fabricof her shirt unstuck itself from the festering wounds on her back and opened them up yet again.

Somebody jostled her from behind, making her flinch and forcing Grace to take a couple of hasty steps forward while they cursed her for standing in the way—more sick and injured people, desperately seeking urgent medical attention.

Sighing in resignation, Grace steeled herself and mentally pulled up her big girl panties. She was a respected human rights lawyer, for goodness sake, accustomed to prosecuting sleaze ball felons who thought they could take unfair advantage of anybody weaker or more disadvantaged than themselves. She was perfectly at home haranguing the counsel who was trying to get them off. She could surely manage to deal with this and still keep her dignity intact.

Of course, maybe that was the problem. The knowledge that a lawyer such as herself should be seeking medical attention—long overdue medical attention—for an injury like this in the first place.

They don't know what you do for a living, Grace told herself, decisively, as she made her way, grudgingly, toward a harried looking woman at the uninviting reception desk.

You're just anotherordinary, unexceptional patient who they'll deal with and dismiss before moving on to someone else. They won't even remember your details. They'll be too busy seeing the next person on the never-ending list of patients they see day in and day out.

And that was what Grace was banking on. The fact that the ER would be too busy to do anything more than patch her up and send her on her way without so much as a backwards glance.

It would be several tedious hours before she was seen. Her condition wasn't critical after all. But then Grace had known that would be the trade-off for utilising a system where she could try to remain more anonymous. That was why she had come in today, on her day off, when there were no other demands on her time.

She found an empty, rather sticky looking seat between the cold, drab wall and a mean looking, inebriated muscle-head who was bleeding profusely from a cut above a rapidly blackening eye.

Grace sat gingerly, and resolutely dug out her laptop. She made a valiant attempt at concentrating on some work until her name was finally called, saving her from the foul breath and the sour reek of body odour of the increasingly bolshie drunk.

A tired looking nurse pulled the drab, phlegm green curtain around the cubicle she had been ushered into and made a quick scan of the forms Grace had filled in with as little detail as she could possibly get away with.

"Okay, open wounds to back and shoulders, possibly going septic," she read from the sheet in front of her. "Why didn't you just take this to your GP?" she asked with vaguely concealed irritation, which caused Grace a moment of guilt. She knew these people were busy.

"Because I couldn't get an appointment," she replied coolly but civilly.

The nurse harrumphed under her breath but didn't argue. Heck, everyone was busy. It wasn't as if the emergency room had a monopoly on that.

"Right, well, strip down to the waist then, and let's take a look," she said briskly, and Grace busied herself removing her suit jacket and unbuttoning the blouse underneath.

The nurse's manner softened slightly as she caught the grimaces Grace was trying to conceal as she struggled to get out of the shirt.

"Here, let me help you with that," she offered, hurrying around behind.

"Looks like the fabric has stuck to the wound." She was matter of fact in her assessment, for which Grace was grateful, but then, in A&E, she probably saw plenty of this on a daily basis and far worse besides.

Together, they managed to peel the garment away with the least amount of damage, and the nurse bustled around grabbing up gauze, saline solution, antiseptic wipes and a medical pan, before snapping on a pair of sterile gloves.

Grace held her breath, anticipating the worst as the woman went to work. She was swift but surprisingly gentle, and Grace was just about to relax and consider the worst behind her when the very question she had dreaded all along was finally asked.

She thought she'd managed to avoid the interrogation, but, no, it appeared her luck had run out.

"How did you say you got these wounds?" the nurse queried with a frown and lips that were pursed in tight compression.

Grace sucked in a quiet, bracing breath. "I didn't," she replied, aiming for nonchalant, non-committal. She wasn't certain she pulled it off.

"Hmm…" was all the nurse said. She didn't call her out on the evasiveness, but Grace was damn sure she hadn't overlooked it.

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