Page 80 of Forbidden Dark Vows

“You just got in?” The nurse has kind eyes, huge and brown, and smooth dark skin. “Does she know you’re coming?”

“I left a message when I called earlier.”

Celia’s eyes widen momentarily, her chest rising and falling with the effort of trying to control her temper.

The nurse inclines her head towards Ruby’s door. “Five minutes. I’ll be back to throw you out myself if you’re still here.” She waits for Celia to move before heading back to the nurse’s station.

I enter Ruby’s room.

Her hair is fanned across the pillow, her eyes are closed, her skin pale and still clammy. I approach the bed, holding my breath so as not to wake her and incur the wrath of the nurse who was kind enough to let me in. Ruby’s hands are resting on top of the covers, and I smother them with mine, flinching when I feel how cold they are.

She looks peaceful—must be the sedatives they’ve given her. Still my Ruby despite the pale skin and the dark circles under her eyes.

“It’s okay, I’m here now,” I whisper. “I’m not going anywhere without you, I promise.”

I kiss her forehead, rest my head beside her on the pillow for five minutes and then let myself out without making a sound, telling myself that she’ll know I was here.

27

RUBY

I’min a building that’s like a maze. White walls. White floors. Everything is white, even the doors. I think I must be in the hospital, but there are no signs on the doors or the walls, and I’ve not even seen any staff. No one to show me the way, not that I can remember where I’m going or why I’m here.

“Help!” I call out, my voice swallowed by the whiteness all around me. “Where am I?”

It hurts my eyes, this dazzling whiteness, like I’ve been staring at the sun for too long. Where has all the color gone? I peer down at my clothes, and I realize with a jolt, that I’m wearing a white all-in-one, my legs blending in with my surroundings so that it looks as if I’m hovering in midair.

I turn left and start running. There are no footsteps following me around; I can’t even hear myself breathing. It’s disorienting, the relentless white silence.

At the end of the corridor, I turn left again. The doors are all the same, nameless, closed, silent. It doesn’t matter which wayI turn, I’m alone. I stop, holding my side, a sharp stinging pain brewing behind my hip.

“Help!” I cry out again.

Tears flow down my cheeks, but when I raise my fingers to my face, they come away dry. Then lava-hot pain inside my gut sends me crashing sideways into the wall, and I sink to the floor, gasping, clutching my belly as if I can push it back where it came from.

I roll onto my knees, retching onto the floor, only nothing comes out.

I don’t know how long I stay like this, but when it passes, I can hear a voice somewhere in the distance. So faint, I strain to find it above the thump-thump of my heartbeat.

“It’s okay, Ruby…”

The voice whispers my name, calling to me, showing me the way because now I know what I was searching for. Home.

“Where are you?” I close my eyes, listen harder. “Come back. Don’t leave me.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you, I promise…”

I follow the whispers, trusting my ears rather than my eyes. Down one empty corridor and then another, clinging to the sound like a lifeline.

I turn a blind corner, and the world turns multicolor again, comes to life, like a color-by-numbers painting slowly being filled in. I close my eyes, squeezing them shut, adjusting to this new reality.

Voices.

Whispers still, but now there’s more than one.

Doctors? I vaguely recall being in a hospital. A bed with cellular covers. Monitors beeping in that steady rhythm the way they do. The sterile tang of antiseptic and bleach and … something else.

What is it? Sickness? Worse?

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