Page 93 of Disturbing the Dead
My shock knocks me back onto the bed, my horror mingling with overwhelming guilt.
All these months of desperately wanting to go home, and now that I am here, all I can think is that I want to go back.
I rub my eyes. It feels strange, as if I’m moving a body that’s not mine. Except it is mine. I look down and see my hands, my arms, and they are as foreign to me as Catriona’s had been six months ago.
I don’t notice the doctor leaving. I’m only dimly aware that the room has gone silent. Then the door bursts open.
“Mallory!”
My mother rushes through, with my dad right behind her. She grabs me in a crushing hug… and I fall against her and start to cry.
The next half hour passes in a blur. I’m in shock, not quite able to believe that I’ve come home. I don’t ask any questions. I just hug my parents and cry on their shoulders and hug them some more.
“I don’t think I’ve gotten this many hugs from you since you were a little girl,” Dad says as I lean against him, inhaling the familiar smell of his aftershave. “I could get used to this again.”
I hug him fiercely, my eyes filling.
“Hey, now.” He takes my chin in his hand and wipes away my tears, and I see his own eyes misting behind his glasses. “You’re okay, sweetheart. Everything is okay.”
I blink past the fog of shock and force my brain to begin working again, processing that I’m in a hospital.
Have I been in a coma for six months?
My fingers reach to touch the bandages at my throat. When I talk, it hurts, meaning I wasn’t strangled six months ago.
“How long—?” My voice rasps, and I try again. “How long have I been out?”
“Since the night before last,” Mom says.
“The night before…?”
“You’d gone for a jog and someone tried to…” Mom’s voice catches. “Tried to…”
“Strangle me,” I whisper. “That was the day before yesterday?”
Mom nods.
It’s been less than forty-eight hours since I left.
“And I’ve been unconscious ever since?” I ask.
Mom and Dad nod in unison.
So Catriona was never in my body. I was attacked and found, and my comatose body was brought to the hospital, and then Mom and Dad arrived—
My head jerks up. “Nan. Is Nan…?” I swallow. “Is she…?” Another harder swallow. “Am I too late?”
Mom’s gaze drops, and I wait for the dreaded answer.
“She doesn’t have much time left,” Dad says gently. “But no, you aren’t too late.”
“I need to see her. Now.”
I’m heading to the hospice. Mom’s driving because we’re in a hurry and Dad’s “left side of the road” driving skills are even worse than my own. Dad had crawled into the backseat of the very tiny rental car, and I was too numb to balk.
My grandmother is alive. I’m not too late to say goodbye, and that is a dream come true except…
Except that it means the past six months have been nothing but a coma dream. Isla, McCreadie, Alice, Simon, Mrs. Wallace… and Gray. All figments of my sleeping brain.
