Dreams of Shreds and Tatters by Amanda Downum Read Free Book Online

movement of his lips. Never this awful repose.
    What were you hoping for? she asked herself bitterly. A miracle? Of course she was. That she would walk in and he’d wake up, happy as a fairy tale. Pressure swelled in her sinuses, prickling behind her eyes. She knew fairy tales better than that.
    “What happened to him, exactly?” Alex asked. Liz was grateful for his calm detachment. She didn’t think she could speak around the lump in her throat.
    “We don’t know,” Dr. Haddad said. “He and his friend washed up on the shore of Carroll Cove after a storm. It’s a miracle he didn’t die of hypothermia. His oxygen saturation is within normal values and there’s no apparent brain damage. He had a few abrasions, most likely from debris in the water, but nothing to indicate assault.”
    “That’s all?”
    Dr. Haddad’s lips pursed. “His blood alcohol content was pointoh-six. Toxicology also turned up trace amounts of a psychoactive. A dissociative—not one I’ve seen before.”
    Alex’s eyebrow rose. “Could that have caused the coma?”
    “That’s difficult to say.”
    “What’s the official diagnosis, then?”
    “Hypoxic insult secondary to near-drowning.”
    Where are you? The rhythm of Blake’s heart blipped past on the monitor, faint but steady; his chest rose and fell beneath the white sheet. But the hand Liz held might have belonged to a doll.
    “We should be going,” Dr. Haddad said after a moment. “We’ll alert you if there’s any change.”
    “Thank you,” Alex said, touching Liz gently on the shoulder.
    “Could we have a minute alone with him?” she asked.
    The doctor’s smile creased one plump brown cheek, but her eyes were sad. “You can have five. I’ll wait outside.” The door closed softly behind her.
    Liz bit her lip, warmth and pressure leaking out of her eyes. She scrubbed away the glaze of tears one-handed, not letting go of Blake’s fingers. Familiar dark crescents still stained his fingernails, ink or charcoal, and pencil calluses roughened thumb and forefinger. She wondered how long it would take them to fade.
    But they won’t, she told herself fiercely, because he’ll wake up .
    Alex peered into the closet where Blake’s clothes lay neatly folded: sweater, t-shirt, jeans, a pair of boots that hadn’t taken well to water. No answers. No miracles.
    Alex caught her elbow as she turned away from the bed, a steadying pressure. “You can’t blame yourself,” he said softly.
    It did nothing to help the sick, empty feeling in her chest. She didn’t reply, only followed him back to the car.
    She wiped her eyes with a tissue as she tugged on her seatbelt, staring sightlessly through the windshield, trying to find a way out of the Möbius loop of grief and guilt. A minute later she realized they weren’t moving, that Alex had a map open across the steering wheel.
    “What are you doing?” she finally asked.
    His eyebrows rose as he glanced up. “What do you think we’re doing? We’re going to Carroll Cove.”
    T HEY DROVE NORTH and east into the indigo shadow of the mountains, where the city gave way to towering firs and blue drifts of snow. No Trespassing signs warned them away from the narrow road to the cove, but no one challenged them as they turned in. At the end of a long, twisting lane, the trees thinned and Liz saw the water.
    Glaciated hills rose on either side of a narrow cove, thick with fir and hemlock and cedar. A dirt road circled the shore, connecting the few well-spaced cabins that stood by the water’s edge. No cars, no chimney smoke, no sign of habitation. Alex pulled onto the shoulder and killed the ignition; silence rushed in to fill the car, broken only by the engine’s fading ticks.
    Warmth rushed out as Liz opened her door; yellow grass crunched underfoot. The water was a sheet of grey glass, mirroring the silver-clouded sky. Liz imagined the scent of pine and salt, but all she smelled was winter.
    “What are we looking for?” she asked