Chasing Chaos: A Novel (27 page)

Go for a ride in this novelette…

Nice Wheels

Barbara,
a medical resident, lost her husband when his plane was shot down by enemy fire
in Afghanistan. She wonders if she will ever love again, feel warm again. She
freezes out Chris, a fellow resident at the hospital who also has a difficult
past. But Chris isn’t easily deterred. As a second loss tears at Barbara’s
heart, will Chris be the one to break down the barrier?

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Nice Wheels
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Entanglement

a novel

KATIE ROSE GUEST
PRYAL

One

Los Angeles, December 1999

From
her hospital bed, Greta considers the single flickering fluorescent tube behind
the translucent ceiling panel. She imagines the electricity coursing through,
the mercury atoms generating invisible ultraviolet light. Phosphorescence. Even
though she can’t see the mercury, she knows it is there, and knowing gives her
comfort. At least the elements are still behaving as they should.

Nothing
else is. Everything she could count on has been smashed.

Everyone
she’s counted on has betrayed her.

But
she won’t cry any more. She did that for a while tonight, but the nurses took
turns watching her through the narrow glass of her door, curious and prying. So
she stopped crying. She couldn’t bear them.

The
ICU bustles. The wall clock indicates that the hour is three o’clock, and the
darkness outside her window indicates that the time is antemeridian. Next to
her, a morphine-derivative drip beeps every sixty seconds. She supposes the
doctors selected this particular class of painkiller because it doesn’t have
blood thinning properties. Properties that would be deadly given the bruising
on her brain.

Her
father would be happy. She can hear him now: Never sacrifice your genius for a
little pain.

She
blinks once to clear her vision, to refocus.

She
knows she probably won’t die of her head injury, although she had trouble
maintaining consciousness when she first awoke twenty-four hours ago.

A
concussion
, the
doctor said.
You’re out of the dark, but this is going to hurt like hell
.

She
appreciated his honesty. It seemed to be in short supply in her life.

The
hospital reminds Greta of her daily vigils at her dying mother’s bedside when
she was in high school. She glances at the empty chair next to the bed,
grateful no one sits there out of obligation or duty. Marcellus, her landlord,
who came with her to the hospital, left soon after the doctors whisked her into
radiology. Even Daphne and Timmy have left, sent away by Greta after she woke.

She
couldn’t stand to see their guilty faces.

~~~~

Timmy
arrived first, waiting for her when she opened her eyes, his face covered in
love and pain.

“Greta,”
he said. “What happened? Who did this?”

She
didn’t tell him. She wasn’t sure why. She knew who attacked her. After all, she
spoke with the man before turning her back on him, before he struck her.

But
something in the tone of Timmy’s voice made Greta hold back. He looked guilty
for some reason, as though he’d been the one holding the weapon.

And
her instincts were indeed right. He did feel guilty. Although Greta didn’t
believe in sixth senses or ESP, she knew that humans—like any animals—could
perceive unconsciously more than they could perceive consciously, and that
these unconscious perceptions could add up to a split-second conclusion. And
the conclusion she drew when she saw Timmy was that he’d done something to hurt
her.

Had
he ever.

Daphne
arrived later, after Greta had sent Timmy away. Daphne, supremely perceptive,
knew she was in trouble before Greta had said anything at all. Daphne also knew
there was nothing she could do to earn Greta’s forgiveness.

Greta
had always had a hard time forgiving people.

“I’ll
go now,” Daphne said.

Greta
nodded in assent.

“I’ll
love you forever, Greta.” Daphne’s voice broke. “You are my family.”

Greta
turned away. Daphne was her family, too. And now she knew what family meant to
Daphne.

~~~~

Greta
shuts her eyes and tries to place the events of the past thirty hours in
chronological order. Without this deliberate effort, the faces and places merge
and swirl, and causation gets lost in the muck of it. It’s really important to
her that the causes are clear. As clear as the effects.

The
effects: lying in a hospital bed in the ICU with a dislocated shoulder, a
concussion covered by a sutured scalp, and a large hematoma on her face.

The
causes: That’s what she’s trying to work out. She’s always believed that with
enough application of concentration, she could solve even the most complicated
equations.

She
admits to herself that this time she might be stumped.

She
thinks of Timmy once more, of the pain on his face while he sat in that plastic
chair.

She
thinks of Daphne sitting by her side, reaching out for Greta’s I.V.-splintered
hand while Greta turned away.

Greta
wonders if the rest of her might splinter as well, into shards of energy, into
the particles that compose her body, until there’s nothing left of her on those
white sheets.

She’d
be free.

She
clamps a lid on her wonderings and reaches for her cell phone. She needs a
strategy, not a reverie. She needs to make sure she’ll be safe: from the police
officer sitting outside her door. From Daphne and Timmy. And from the man who
might still want to hurt her.

She
presses the telephone buttons with one hand. She listens for the ring and then
the voice.

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Entanglement
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