Page 10 of Scythe & Sparrow
I shake my head.
“Where did you crash?”
Panic twists through my veins, a burst of adrenaline that has nowhere to go. I swallow it down and try to stay still. “A side road. Not sure which one. I’m not really familiar with the area.”
“Did anyone see your crash?” he asks, glancing at me as he prods around the incision. He probably thinks he’s being stoic and unreadable, but I don’t miss the way his eyes narrow a fraction.
“Nope, don’t think so.”
“What about—”
“Dr. Kane,” a second doctor says, cutting short his next words as she enters the room, a nurse drifting in her wake with a cart of supplies. “I thought you weren’t due in until Thursday. This is a nice surprise.”
“Dr. Chopra,” he says with a deferential nod. I swear I catch a fleeting blush on his cheekbones when he turns to face her. A spark seems to catch in her eye, a little light behind her glasses. I guess I’m not the only one who noticed the hint of color in his face. “I thought I’d pick up an extra shift.”
“How’s our patient?”
“Getting there,” he says. He gestures to my leg as Dr. Chopra joins him to look down at my incision. Everything is still swollen, not that I want to look too closely. They chatter about blood values and medications as Dr. Chopra picks up the tablet and reviews my file. Dr. Kane presses a final time around the incision before he seems to almost reluctantly admit to Dr. Chopra that “everything seems stable.”
“Excellent,” she says, reading through the notes before she passes the tablet back to him. “In that case, I think we canprobably discharge you tomorrow afternoon, Rose. Nurse Naomi here can help you with a bath now and put a fresh dressing on that incision.”
With a brief smile, she departs, and Dr. Kane shifts on his feet as though he’s a metal fleck unable to resist her magnetic pull as she strides toward the door. His gaze bounces between me and the nurse, and then finally settles on me. “I’m not in tomorrow,” he says, and I don’t know how to respond, the silence lingering a little longer than it should. “I hope you feel better soon.”
“Thank you. For everything. Truly.”
With a curt nod in reply and a final beat of delay, he turns and strides away. Naomi and I watch the door, and I half expect him to come back in and say whatever seemed to be weighing on his mind those final moments before he left. But he doesn’t reappear.
Naomi turns my way with a brittle smile, shifting a lock of dark curly hair behind her ear. “Let’s get you up,” she says, and raises the head of my mattress. There’s a stretched silence as she helps me to sit up, a tense pause as though she’s not ready to help me down from the bed.
“Everything okay?” I ask. Her hand is trembling around mine.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure …?”
Her attention darts toward the door and back to me. Her eyes are so dark they’re nearly black, but in them I can see every shade of fear and pain I’ve come to know in women who ask for my help. I know what she’s about to say when she leans closer and whispers, “I saw you at the circus. You’re the tarot reader, aren’t you?”
I nod.
“The Sparrow.” It’s a reverential prayer. The sound of hope that I’ve come to know. A secret kinship, bonded by suffering that transcends blood.
I remember her face now, the woman who was approaching my tent with a rolled twenty-dollar bill in her hand. A spike of chemical impulse hits my veins. Everything sharpens: the details of the room. The sounds of staff who pass in the corridor. The smell of antiseptic and industrial cleaner. The spark in Naomi’s eyes when I reach for the deck on my side table.
I shuffle my cards.
“If we’ve got a minute, maybe I can give you a quick reading before the bath.” I know the card I’m looking for by feel, by the fray at the edges, by the crease at one corner. I flip it over. “Ace of Cups,” I say. “It represents following your inner voice. What does it tell you? What do you want?”
The hope brightens in Naomi’s eyes, and my heart responds with a quickened beat.
“To take flight,” she says.
I smile. And though Naomi’s spirit might be bruised, it’s not broken. I can see it in the way she smiles back.
I draw the next card. Maybe it’s not what you’d expect. It’s not Death. It’s not the Knight of Swords. Not harbingers of chaos. I draw the Star. Hope on the horizon. Because in killing, there can be living. There can be rebirth.
Naomi shares her secrets in whispered notes. Stories of a man. One who demeans her. Belittles her. One who threatens her and harms her and controls her. One she can’t break away from, not on her own. She asks me for help. And my heart swells until it aches.Because I know this is something I can give, even if it takes a little time.
My thumb caresses the tattoo at my wrist.
