Page 5 of Bite of Passage
No, no, no, no.It can’t be over.
Gemma clicked back to the home screen.The next episode must happen now.
There was no next episode available.
“Where is it?Come on.Work!”She jabbed the play icon on her computer.
One episode appeared on the main menu—the one she’d just watched.
There’d been four episodes on this DVD before she played the first.
She mashed the TV remote on and off.No more episodes appeared.She clicked everything possible on her computer, which she’d hooked up to the TV in order to play the DVD.Ejecting the disc and putting it back in didn’t make more episodes appear.
“What’s happening?”She manually took out the disc, wiped the back with her shirt as if the cloth had magical cleaning powers, and put it back into the player.
Still only one episode remained as an option to play.
She pressed play to re-watch episode one.
Her phone buzzed on the side table.She glanced over at it but didn’t pick it up.No reason to risk it being the surgical resident jerk.He often texted her after hours asking her if she’d changed her mind about going on a date.
It buzzed again.Ugh.
The first message was from the resident.
I’m sorry I got angry today.Call me.Let’s talk about the sexual tension between us.
Seriously?His ego knew no bounds.
She would report him for sexual harassment on Monday.
The second message was work.The sweet seventy-six-year-old man who’d been in a car accident was asking for her.The man had confided to her that his family consisted of an estranged son who lived in Kentucky.There wasn’t anyone in the San Francisco area to pick him up at the hospital or help him cope with daily life while healing from a broken leg and hand.She’d arranged to have him stay overnight for monitoring so he wouldn’t be alone tonight.
With a click on her computer, she paused the replay to call the hospital and asked to be put through to his bedside phone.When he answered she said, “Hi, Charles.It’s Gemma, the nurse who helped you earlier.I’m not on shift any more but wanted to make sure you’re doing okay.”
“Will you be my nurse tomorrow?”
“I actually …” She wasn’t scheduled to work.“I’ll come by to check on you.We’ll see if we can get you home and organize you some help.Remember, I promised to show you how to shop for groceries online to have them delivered?”Her supervisor was going to kill her.She’d promised she wouldn’t get involved this much in helping a patient again.Last time she ended up doing an all-nighter to stay with a patient post-surgery who had no other family, she was dead on her feet for her shift the next day.
After she ended the call, she texted Val:
Need to talk to you about the episode of the show.NOW.
Waiting for a reply, she busied herself putting away clean dishes from the dishwasher.
She picked up her phone and dropped it back on the counter in frustration.Val wasn’t good at checking messages, but she needed her to reply now.
Impatient, she tried calling, but it sent her straight to voicemail.“Call me, Val.I have to talk with you about the DVD.It’s not working right.That thing you said about magic… well, I’m starting to believe.”
She flopped back on her sofa and stared at the one-episode option on the home screen.Finally, she clicked to start it again.
During the entire episode she barely breathed or moved, waiting to see if he would notice her again.He did—in the exact same spot, and in the exact same way, as last time.She tried speaking to him again, but he didn’t react to her new words.Instead, he stuck to the script of the first viewing.It played like a rerun of a recorded live event.
The second watch confirmed he’ddefinitelystared into the camera and addressed her.Her!She would swear he’d whispered her name, too, even if on the rewatch it sounded garbled and could be argued to be a curse word or something else.
Maybe it’d all been in her head, even though it seemed real.Val’s spell might still be messing with her.
Did he meet Petra in the garden?What happened next?
