Page 1 of Widow

Prologue

Seven Months Ago

Beep. Beep. Beep.

I groaned with my ham sandwich poised at my lips as my pager went off. I pulled it off my waistband and read the small screen that only displayed numbers. I sighed and looked longingly at my sandwich before quickly rewrapping it and putting it back in the break room refrigerator.

A priority one page to trauma room three meant my dinner would have to wait. It wasn't the first time a rendezvous with a ham sandwich had been interrupted, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.

I hightailed it down the stairs and grabbed a pair of blue gloves out of the dispenser. I snapped them on before pushing the doors to the trauma room open with my hip.

The room was a flurry of motion, and I stopped short as I approached the exam room table they had just moved a woman onto. It was controlled chaos, and I was about to become its leader.

"What do we have?"

"Adult female. Age unknown. Found burned in an abandoned mall parking lot trying to drag herself to get help." One of the nurses filled me in as I stepped forward.

The two EMTs backed away from the table, pulling their gurney with them. One of them turned to me. "Partial and full-thickness burns over eighty percent of her body." He shook his head and looked back at the woman. "I don't know how she managed to crawl or how she's still alive."

The woman had been crawling? She should have been dead on arrival, or at least unconscious. I took in the sight in front of me and stopped myself from cringing.

This was definitely one of those 'oh fuck' moments that doctors don't like to admit we have. But we do. All. The. Time. We are human.

White gauze covered most of her burned body. It was a miracle that her chest moved up and down with her breaths.Our hospital had a state-of-the-art burn center, but even I had never seen so much damage to a living, breathing person before.

Who had burned her? Why had they burned her? Was it an accident?

Her vitals were delivered to me rapid fire. They were almost non-existent. Yet she was whimpering on the gurney like she was suffering from a mere broken bone.

I wasn't the only one in shock over the woman in front of us. The people in the room raised their eyebrows at me in a silent question of how to proceed.

"Call upstairs," I ordered as the nurse hooked her up to our machines. She was flat-lining now, but was moving and mumbling.

Her mouth was opening and closing like she was saying words. I moved farther forward and leaned in. The smell made bile churn in my gut. I was glad I hadn't had a chance to eat my dinner, or it would have made a surprise reappearance.

"Ma'am, what's your name? Can you tell us what happened?" The EMTs couldn't get the information out of her in transit. She was Jane Doe.

More noises that sounded an awful lot like words came out of her mouth.

"Ma'am, can you repeat that?"

Her fingers reached out to grab my arm. They were severely burned and looked foreign on her body, twisted and mangled from whatever hellfire had consumed her.

"Ma'am, we can't understand you."

I leaned even closer, hoping I could understand what she was trying to tell me.

I shouldn't have.

In a movement that was faster than humanly possible, and certainly quicker than she should have been able to move given her injuries, she reached out and pulled me closer, her teeth sinking into the side of my neck.

She was fast, like a viper.

I immediately stumbled back, taking off my gloves, and grabbed a piece of gauze to hold over the wound.

A lot of thoughts go through your head when a patient attacks you. Are they mentally ill? Should I attack back to prevent injury to myself? Are they reacting because of the situation?

It might have been a quick bite, but it was a painful one.

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