Penny, propped up in the hospital bed so that she had a clear vision of the end of the bed and the detective standing there with his notepad in hand, did nothing. She didn’t blink, grunt, or otherwise. If they brought the right doctor or nurse in, then she might consider it.
But not while a cop was there.
Two months in a constate state of helplessness being fed through a tube was not what Penny had wanted, but she also hadn’t been given a choice. And since her identity was still a mystery to the hospital workers and the police, they had begun working more and more towards a recovery where she was capable of decent communication.
She understood.
She didn’t always comply.
“Do you understand?” the man asked again.
He’d introduced himself when he first came into the room, but she didn’t care to remember his name when there was a revolving door of officers who came to speak to her, or about her, for that matter. He was just one of many, and not that important. The man was only doing his job, and in a way, help her, but that wasn’t how this would work.
It couldn’t.
Penny was a ghost.
She would always be, now.
God.
She wasn’t even supposed to be—she shouldn’t exist. The agreement to forfeit her life for the ability to kill her mother without interference had been final. Yet, there she was ... very much alive.
Penny couldn’t waste the chance. Not when it might mean keeping a promise she never should have made in the first place. Not when it might mean turning a lie she had told someone else into a truth that she–
“Excuse me a moment,” the cop said, stopping Penny’s thoughts from going any further. She almost wanted to laugh at his politeness in the fact of her—well, her complete lack of response—but she couldn’t. The only thing she could do now was blink, breathe, think, and lay in a damn bed.
And she wasn’t answering questions.
Not a single one.
FOOTSTEPS PULLED PENNY from a restless sleep. Still propped up in the bed, she watched the doctor—the one everyone simply called Carter—approach the side of Penny’s bed. The papers in his hands shuffled a bit before he placed them out of her line of sight. He’d had the nurses remove her feeding tube earlier, explaining it away with the promise of soft food soon to test her swallowing. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience, she had more nerve sensitivity than she’d realized, when they pulled the tube out.
She hoped he wasn’t there to tell her they would be putting it back in.
Other than an occasional check, the nurses and doctors didn’t visit her at night. Especially not after she had been moved from Intensive Care. The police came around less often, but now it was dedicated officers tasked to her case.
Despite weeks upon weeks of drugs that kept her mind hazy and clouded with chemicals, after she had started to come out of the coma, her sleep came and went in strange bursts that never seemed to be enough.
No matter how hard she tried.
It helped once the nurses started opening the shades in the room to allow the natural light of the day to come and go. At least then, Penny actually had a concept of time and night and day.
“Evening,” the man murmured, leaning over her bed to fidget with things she couldn’t see. Not that it mattered—he told her what he was doing. “I’m removing your oxygen and pulse sensors, and then I’m going to turn off the machines. You’re not going to need them shortly, for one thing. But also, because we don’t want anyone running in here and making a scene as you come to.”
Her mind tried to catch up, but being unable to speak and only a blink or two for yes and no ... well, she didn’t have much to work with.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I’m doing this, but that’s not really important. Fact is, he found you ... and things worked to my favor.”
He?
How was this he?
God, she wished she could talk.
“I’m shutting off the IV now,” Carter explained, “and in a few minutes, you’re already going to notice a difference. There was more to your concoction of medications than the nurses realized, but they eventually stopped questioning why I was the one who wanted to ready all your vials.”
A beep sounded before the background noise of the machine stopped altogether.
Then, Carter leaned down and smiled in Penny’s line of vision as he explained, “The paralytic in your IV is going to wear off, and you will be walking in twenty minutes. Not well, mind you, but walking all the same. It’ll be completely out of your system within the hour. However, you don’t have that much time to leave before someone realizes the living Jane Doe in room two-oh-four is miraculously walking, talking, and capable of being questioned by police.”
Penny’s gaze flicked lower to where the doctor played with an item that he flipped between two fingers.
A penny.
The coin danced around his fingers as her stare went back to his face. The doctor sat the penny down in the same general direction that he had put the papers.
“Take everything when you go—you might need it someday,” he told her. “You’ll need extensive and intensive care outside of this hospital, but I can’t help you beyond what I already have. I was told you wouldn’t need much help beyond this, anyway. Apparently, you’re capable of finding your way back to the people who love and need you. Good luck.”
Penny watched the doctor walk away at the same time she was finally able to start feeling the muscles in her throat. She swallowed back the words she wouldn’t be able to say even if she tried, and instead fixed her attention on the clock. She watched every single minute pass. Until the tips of her fingers prickled with what reminded her of bee stings, and she was finally able to flex her toes again.
Twenty minutes wasn’t enough. She stumbled out of the bed. Busted her mouth on the way down, too. She wiped at the blood with a shaky, weak hand as she used her other to grasp on the side of the bed and pull her weight up. Her attempt to be as quiet as possible was pointless when every action was followed by a grunt or a groan.
Eventually, she found what the good doctor had left on the bedside table with the penny. Papers. A contract, actually.
The League, it read at the top. She recognized the seal of the organization, and underneath, her name had been written in her own handwriting on a line just for her.
Except across the white paper was a red stamp—VOID.
She took the contract and the penny. The flaring, agonizing pain in the middle of her chest had Penny clutching at her own body to ease the sharp stabs that came with every step. Still, somehow, she made it out of the room.
And even the hallway.
She followed the signs, found a stairwell, and eventually an exit. Darkness met her on the outside, and cold, fresh air that she pulled into her burning lungs.
She was alive.
Free.
And going home.
23.
Luca
WHEN it was so early in the morning that there was still dew on the grass, Luca didn’t feel so guilty about wishing he wasn’t so fast to say yes about babysitting his nephew while Roz headed to her first prenatal appointment. Pretty soon, he was going to have another niece or nephew and he hadn’t been expecting the news.