Page 11 of Thrall
What did he say?
She didn’t need to ask, exactly. She could guess, just from that message, what David had said.
He came to the party alone.
The world went gray. Lucy took a breath, and she could have sworn she felt the mechanics of it. Felt the fragile tissue of her own lungs fluttering.
Thank you for letting me know.
For the rest of the ride, she didn’t look at her phone again.
A nurse called Lucy’s name within fifteen minutes, and she drifted to the back, still clutching Mila’s cardigan. She hoped Mila wasn’t cold back at Quincey. Then again, maybe all that muscle kept her warm.
“Hop right up here, honey.” The nurse was distracted, but efficient, strapping a blood pressure cuff and oxygen monitor into place before Lucy was fully settled. “What seems to be the problem?”
Good fucking question. And if Mila had to report an assault to the university—Lucy’s brain balked at the wordassault, but determinedly continued the thought—the nurse probably did, too. So for a lack of a good answer, Lucy went for a simple one. “I went to a party last night,” she said. “And I didn’t drink anything but seltzer, but I woke up feeling really, really sick. I think I took something without realizing it.”
The nurse’s expression barely twitched at that. “Did you leave your drink unattended? Maybe pick up a cup that might not have been yours?” When Lucy shook her head, the nurse said, “Then you’re sure it was straight seltzer? Some of those boozy drinks don’t have the clearest labels.”
“It was definitely seltzer,” Lucy said. She didn’t remember much. But she remembered the generic label from the local store. “And I opened it myself.”
Once again, the nurse didn’t seem fazed. It wasn’t the same easy calm that Mila projected, but she operated like she already understood the situation. Even though Lucy wasn’t entirely sure that she did.
“Well,” she said cheerfully, “let’s check you out just in case.”
It was harder to sit still than she expected. The sights and sounds of an exam room should have been intimately familiar to her by then: She’d fallen asleep so many nights with the smell of antiseptic still in her nose. Maybe she’d gotten out of practice since her grandfather died. Or maybe she just wasn’t used to being the patient.
She wasn’t squeamish, at least. She’d done enough caretaking for each of her grandparents that squeamishness had fallen by the wayside a long time ago. But it was surprisingly difficult to tolerate the feel of any touch, any external pressure at all. Maybe it was the mounting pressure of the bruise, which had started to ache.
The nurse took her oxygen—“Normal”—and her temperature—“97.5, a little chilly, but everyone’s baseline is different.” Lucy checked the wall clock at least twice as the nurse pumped the blood pressure cuff along her arm. She didn’t object, just gritted her teeth and waited.
And finally, the nurse did something Lucy both expected and hoped she wouldn’t do. She started paying attention.
“Eighty over fifty,” she said.
Lucy watched the nurse’s mouth, a rapidly thinning line. “That’s bad?”
“It’s…a little low.” Another pause. Another thinning of her lips. “What did you say your other symptoms were?”
Lucy repeated them. The nurse nodded through her litany, her forehead crinkling above her brows. As much as Lucy had wanted her full attention just a few minutes ago, it was hard to feel particularly grateful for it now.
Finally, the nurse said, “Tell you what. I’m going to take a little blood for some labs. And then I suggest you go back to your dorm and get some real rest. If you need to sit out the first day of classes, I’ll write you a note.”
Lucy nodded, automatically extending her arm and shutting her eyes. Needles usually weren’t a problem for her, either. And maybe the sick coil of nausea running through her had nothing to do with the needle, but even so, she didn’t really want to look at it.
As the nurse gently pulled her skin taut, wrapping the latex tourniquet just above her elbow, Lucy let her thoughts flood with whatever was in reach, whatever could distract her from what the nurse was doing. Natalie’s neon-pink lipstick in the dark. Mila, holding Lucy’s cell phone. A broad back in a dimly lit kitchen, the blurred face turned toward the sink.
It was surreal how vivid the memory was. The blackness that would follow just a few moments later was so absolute. But this, she remembered: a whorl at the back of his sandy-blond hair. The creased edges of his shirt. A hand a shade paler than her own. When she stepped next to him, she could remember how his shoulder felt, inches from hers. Not warmth. Just presence.
The needle touched her skin. And maybe it was her nerves, but even with her eyes closed, Lucy felt the blood draw as if in slow motion. The pressure, then the puncture. The queasy shift of fluid in her veins.
But it wasn’t that feeling that sharpened her nausea to a point.
It was the smell.
Lucy trembled as she suppressed a gag.
“Hold still,” the nurse murmured.
