First Wish Read online

  I did tell him! It’s not my fault if he doesn’t believe…

  He needs to KNOW I was pregnant. He needs to know!

  Okay, Viv. Okay. I’ll try again, just calm down…

  Viv stopped yelling

  —God help me I’m starting to believe she’s really in there—

  and quieted down to a mutter.

  Cursing myself for volunteering for yesterday’s night shift, I knocked on the door. When the guy didn’t respond I waited ten seconds and knocked again.

  A sound came from through the door that very well may have been a beer bottle thrown against a wall. A moment later the door was thrown open and the guy stood there, nostrils flaring, bloodshot eyes wide.

  “I know you and Viv had an argument right before she left here last night,” I blurted out before he could speak.

  The guy’s eyes widened even farther, as if I’d slapped him. “How do you know that?”

  Shit… “She told me.”

  The guy stared at me for a long moment, breathing hard. Then he turned around and went back inside, leaving the door open behind him.

  No way am I going in there, I said to Viv. Because as long as I stayed outside the guy’s name might not be Adrian and the apartment might not look the same as I remembered.

  You have to! You’ve got to tell him. He’s got to believe, to really know.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath—if the voice might go, real or not, I had to try. There was no choice.

  Fighting back a desire to growl out loud, I opened my eyes and stepped across the threshold and into the apartment, which went against every instinct I had—the last place I needed to be was stuck in some grieving man’s apartment, with no one aware I was there. I looked around as soon as I was inside and my heart dropped past my stomach.

  The interior of the apartment was exactly as I remembered it.

  Oh shit… I might’ve been able to convince myself that I hadn’t recognized the guy, that he just looked familiar, but there was no way that I could say the same thing about the apartment. Everything was the same, even the star-shaped hole in the wall.

  Adrian—because of course that was his name—closed the fridge, a fresh beer in his hand. He popped the top, ignoring the foam that ran down the can and dripped on the worn linoleum of the kitchen floor, and plodded to the couch. He sat down in front of the cluttered coffee table and took a long swig.

  “Close the door. It’s fucking cold out there.”

  I could only stare ahead, gazing at the hole in the wall that matched exactly what I’d seen in the dream.

  Exactly… even the same number of points on the star. Five.

  “C’mon, lady. Close the fucking door!”

  Blinking, I reached behind and closed the door—if I wasn’t so distracted I might’ve thought twice about closing myself inside with a man that was clearly on edge.

  Adrian rested his head on the back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. “I thought she was too… out of it, to talk.”

  Tell him! Make him believe so he knows…

  I gulped, still having trouble thinking straight. “Sometimes… right before they go, people are lucid for a minute. It just happens.”

  Adrian continued to stare at the ceiling, the beer forgotten in one hand, his free hand opening and closing. His voice was rough when he spoke. “What did she say?”

  “That she’d had an argument with you, but she loved you anyway. That she wanted you to know she was pregnant.”

  Adrian shook his head, a tear tracking down his cheek to his chest, where it made a little dark circle on his t-shirt. His voice grew louder. “No. No way was she pregnant. We always used protection. Always!” He sat up fast and dropped his beer on the floor, the amber liquid soaking into the carpet immediately.

  NO! Viv screamed. It’s TRUE!

  This is bad, I thought, my muscles tensing. Every instinct I had screamed at me to get out of the apartment right away.

  I was halfway to the door when Adrian’s hand shot toward the clutter on the coffee table and emerged holding a pistol. The tip of the barrel swung immediately in my direction.

  “Stop, lady. Just stop.”

  Eight

  “Please don’t point that at me,” I said as I froze, the words feeling as useless as any I’d ever said up to that point in my life.

  Adrian didn’t seem to hear me, shaking his head violently. “No way. No. She couldn’t have been pregnant.”

  I WAS! I promise. Tell him I promise!

  No way was I about to tell a drunk, gun-waving, grief stricken dude that the soul of his girlfriend trapped in my head promised him it was the truth. “Adrian, please just listen to me for a second. Can you do that?”

  Adrian cocked his head to the side, and the gun dropped until it pointed at the floor. “How do you know my name?”

  “She told me she was pregnant, Adrian. Viv told me. And I promise she was pregnant. Routine bloodwork is done on every trauma patient that comes into the emergency room and when I looked up her results there were elevated levels of human chorionic gonadotropin, or HCG, in her blood. The only way that happens is if a woman is pregnant. There’s no other possibility. None.”

  A confused look came over Adrian’s face. “It couldn’t be mine then. It couldn’t be.” He raised the gun again, gesturing with it as he spoke. “She tell you she was sleeping around? She tell you who it was?”

  You sure it’s his, Viv? I asked. I need you to be honest with me. If the baby was someone else’s now IS NOT the time for you to be secretive about it!

  It’s his, I promise! There was no one else. It was the night we were over at Carrie and Mike’s doing jello shooters. We were both really drunk when we came home and we didn’t use a condom. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the next day.

  “She wasn’t sleeping around, Adrian,” I said, cringing because I was afraid he was going to shoot me accidentally. “She said it was the night you were doing jello shooters at Mike’s.”

  For a moment Adrian looked confused, then his eyes widened and a stricken look came over his face. “Oh shit, man. I forgot all about it. So she… shit, Viv.”

  I’m so sorry, Adrian! Viv said.

  Adrian sat down hard on the couch, his head cradled between his hands, the gun pointed at the ceiling. I thought of bolting, decided I didn’t want to risk being shot in the back. “It was obvious she loved you, Adrian. She just wanted you to know. That was what mattered more than anything to her at the end. That you knew she loved you and that she was excited about being pregnant with your baby.” I was stretching it at that point, but the words felt right.

  Adrian looked up, his hands dropping between his knees. He was breathing hard. “A baby… ”

  I love you, Adrian! Viv said, her voice fading. Thank you, Linh. Thank you…

  Vivian? Viv?

  Nothing.

  Was she gone?

  Vivian! If you can hear me say something. Now!

  Silence.

  Adrian stared blankly at the floor—he’d dropped the gun on the carpet.

  “I’m sorry, Adrian,” I said, feeling sorry for the guy even though he’d pointed a gun at me—it was obvious Vivian had been important to him.

  Adrian didn’t even look up.

  It was time for me to get the hell out of there before he started asking more questions.

  I backed away slowly, keeping an eye on Adrian’s hands, but he didn’t even stir, completely lost in his thoughts, whether they were on Viv, or their baby, or both. As soon as the door was in reach I opened it quickly and stepped outside.

  Running seemed appropriate, so I sprinted to the car, hopped in, and bolted before Adrian could get over his shock and decide that he might feel better if he shot a few rounds at my old Accord, or, perhaps worse, take a few pictures with his cell phone so that he could prove I’d been there. Hopefully he’d never go looking for more answers.

  Vivian? I asked once Bradbury Commons was out of sight and I finally felt l
ike I could breathe again. You there?

  Nothing.

  It was real, though. She was real. You dreamed that apartment with the five-pointed star-shaped hole in the wall, dreamed what Adrian looked like, and they were there. It WAS real…

  Everything that had happened—and everything it meant—swept over me like blast of hot air and my stomach roiled so badly that I whipped the car off the road and into the parking lot of a Geico agency. Before I’d even come to a complete stop, I threw open the door and vomited onto the pavement.

  Once the heaves had worn off, I perched on the side of the driver’s seat, still feeling nauseous, trying to swallow away the acid tang of my half-digested lunch.

  How could it be real? How?

  I had no idea. But it was. It was. I couldn’t wash it away as coincidence. A patient’s voice, or soul, or anime, or whatever the hell you wanted to call it, got stuck in my freaking head and only left once I granted her final wish, like I was some kind of twisted genie in a bottle.

  Need a nap…

  The thought was my own thank god, and it was certainly true. The nausea could be as related to my fatigue as it could to everything else that had happened in the past seventeen hours.

  I wiped my mouth with a coat sleeve, twisted back into the car, and got the hell out of there before some irate employee could come outside and insist I clean up the mess I’d made.

  I made it home without puking again and was asleep on the couch in about two minutes, only barely remembering to set a quick alarm for that evening’s shift.

  Sleep was deep and dreamless and way too brief based on how hard it was for me to rouse enough to shut the alarm off. But then I remembered Viv and sat up with a jolt.

  Vivian? You there?

  Nothing.

  I sighed, my heart slowing. How long would I keep checking to see if she was still there? Ever? Or would it all seem like bad dream in a few weeks, perhaps even my imagination?

  But I didn’t imagine it. It was real. She was real…

  “Feeling better, Davies?” Doctor Smith asked later that evening as I arrived back in the emergency department. He was hunched over a computer, clicking away.

  “Like a million dollars,” I said, aware I sounded more like a buck-fifty in change. “Shouldn’t you be gone already?”

  “Finishing up my charts,” Doctor Smith said without looking at me again. “Trying to get rid of me?”

  I wasn’t in the right state of mind to handle Doctor Smith’s banter after what I’d been through, so I just walked past him to the nearest computer. There would be patients needing attention, and there was no point in putting off the inevitable.

  But what if another one dies on you? What then?

  The problem was I didn’t even know how it had happened. Had it been because I was touching Viv when her heart stopped? Was it just because I was in the room, ready to suck up a soul like some sort of supernatural vacuum cleaner? On the surface that seemed crazy, but it was no more ludicrous than what had already happened.

  I have no clue what’s going on and I’m stuck in a job where I’m around dying people all the time…

  The absurdity of it all was too much to contain, and a crazy snort of laughter exploded out of me as I clicked on the next patient.

  “Something funny, Davies?” Doctor Smith asked.

  If you think getting the dead stuck in your head is funny. Or being insane…

  “Nothing at all, Dicky,” I said, very aware it was the first time I’d called him that—it felt surprisingly good to call him a dick.

  Read ahead for an excerpt of Last Wish, Book 1 of The Linh Davies Series, or you can buy it here now:

  Last Wish on Amazon

  BONUS MATERIAL

  LAST WISH

  Chapter 1

  I assumed my life had already hit bottom on the day that Elizabeth Bauer’s car was T-boned by an early morning drunk. That’s melodramatic, and I was very, very wrong, but I don’t think it’s reaching to say my life could’ve been better.

  The call came in at nearly six in the morning, close to the end of my twelve-hour shift, but not close enough that I could duck and run. Not when Dicky Smith was the only attending. He was obnoxious—and certainly deserved the name—but you didn’t get to choose who you worked under. You just had to shut up and deal.

  Three weeks before I’m out of here and now this… Residency graduation was close and most of the time I loved my job, but I could almost see myself walking down the street without looking back, leaving the approaching ambulances behind and giving up on the whole damn thing. Forget the new job in rural New Mexico, forget emergency medicine, forget it all. If I had known what was about to happen I would have.

  The department had been quiet and calm for the past couple of hours. Nurses, techs, janitors, volunteers, everyone moved at the lackadaisical pace that meant the night had been blessedly slow, their shoulders relaxed, their fatigue softened by smiles as they waited to punch out and meet at the nearest pancake house before they went home, drew their blackout curtains, and crashed, another night in one of the craziest job atmospheres in the world survived.

  But that call was the kick that knocked the top off the anthill.

  I walked through a swirling mass of people toward the ambulance bay, hitting the switch on my way by that would keep the doors open. There was no need to check on the preparations behind me. I would only get in the way, and everyone knew their job.

  The street behind the emergency department was deserted, and although the hum of morning rush hour traffic filled the air there was no sound of sirens yet. The sky was cloudless, and despite the early hour it was going to be another hot July day in Washington, the air so humid it made my throat feel tight.

  “You take the kid, Davies,” a grating voice said, my surname only as usual—perhaps Linh was too Asian for him. “You could use the practice.”

  Richard Smith stepped up beside me, already lighting a cigarette. He was a pack-a-day guy, a habit not as unusual in the medical profession as you might think. Anytime somebody called him out on it he would just say that you had to die from something, so why not something you loved? I disliked him, but after witnessing so many deaths over the years I could see the logic in that.

  He was a tall man, and—I hate to say it—striking. Dressed only in scrubs, his wavy brown hair just covered the tops of his ears and the nape of his neck, framing a face that made me think of a Roman emperor, all noble brow and hatchet nose. His blue eyes were intimidating, and he never seemed to blink. His shoulders were wide, his waist as trim as a man half his age. It was a shame he could be such an ass.

  “There’s two?” I asked. That I needed the practice was likely only a provocation, but while I wasn’t adverse to picking a fight with Dicky there wasn’t enough time.

  “Three,” Dicky said as he exhaled acrid blue smoke through his nostrils like a snorting bull. He gestured with the hand that held the cigarette. “Kid, her father, and the douche who hit them. Said douche is pretty much fine of course. He won’t need much. The other two sound like roadkill. EMS had to open the car up like a can of tuna.”

  Anyone who hasn’t worked around the dead and the dying might be offended by his tone, much less his words, but I had lost that luxury years before. People get used to anything if they’re around it long enough, even horrible things, and human nature compels many of us to joke about the horrors we can’t control. I can’t give you any statistics, but I’m pretty sure the kind of people that crack jokes in the face of death are over-represented among emergency department workers—either it’s the personality type drawn to the profession or the ones who can’t joke tend to get weeded out of the job before they take root. Either way, we all have to watch our tongues when we’re around normal people.

  “You wanna paper, rock, scissors for the dad?” I asked, aware it was futile, but unable to stop myself. “I’m sure the trauma surgeon will be down here any minute now to take the kid off your hands.”

  Dicky
snorted and took a long drag on his cigarette. The sound of the ambulance sirens had grown irritating. “Too late, Davies. I know you wouldn’t want to leave here feeling like you hadn’t learned everything you could.” He flicked the half-burnt cigarette down the sidewalk that stretched toward the street. The first ambulance rounded the corner just as the butt rolled to a stop, a thin curl of smoke rising from its tip.

  Two ambulances roared into the bay, one in front of the other, sirens off already but their emergency lights still dancing across the roof and the walls. Rear doors swung open before they had even come to a complete stop and the medics jumped out, pulling the gurneys after them.

  I stood there long enough to see which ambulance carried the kid, then started moving as Dicky stepped toward the other gurney. I can remember what it felt like the first time I was the only doc to meet a trauma. Sheer terror doesn’t adequately describe it. There was sweat on my palms and the tight, dizzying feeling of the blood draining too rapidly from my head as I tried to recall what I was supposed to do first, second, third, at all. But as I met the gurney bearing Elizabeth Bauer training took over and deliberate thought faded.

  “What do we have, DeSean?” I asked as I fell in beside the gurney which the medic had started toward the doors at a rapid walk. A second medic I didn’t know was using a bag valve mask to keep her oxygenated.

  “Not good, doc,” DeSean said. He was a veteran, one of my favorites. The man should have been a doctor but said he could never stand the thought of being cooped up in a hospital. “Some old rich guy Mercedes, no airbags. Right lateral head contusions. Right chest trauma. Abdomen distended and rigid. Right femur is snapped and her arm is like a jigsaw puzzle. We had to sedate the father on scene because even he could tell it was bad.”