Charlaine Harris: An Ice cold Grave

"We'll do that," Tolliver said.

She left without further advice, and I grabbed my suitcase. It would take me less than ten minutes to be out of there.

Tolliver got up, too, and began sticking his razor and shaving cream into his valet kit. "Why are you so anxious to go?" he asked. "I think you need to sleep."

"It was so bad, what I saw," I said. I paused in my packing, a folded sweater in my hands. "The last thing in the world I want to do is get sucked into this investigation. I'll get the atlas. We better decide which way we want to go."

Though I was still a little unsteady on my feet, I grabbed our keys off the top of the TV. While Tolliver checked the stock in our ice chest, I stepped out into the dark to open the car. I shut the door behind me. The night was cold and silent. There were lots of lights on in Doraville, including the one right above my head, but that still didn't amount to much. I pulled on my heavy jacket while I looked up at the sky. Though the night was cloudy, I could see the distant glitter of a scattering of stars. I like to look at them, especially when my job gets me down. They're vast and cold and far away; my problems are insignificant compared to their brilliance.

Sometime soon, it would snow. I could almost smell it coming in the air.

I shook off the spell of the night sky, and thought about my more immediate concerns. I clicked the car's keyless entry pad and stepped off the little sidewalk that ran outside our door. Something moved in my peripheral vision and I began to turn my head.

A crushing blow struck my arm just below my elbow. The pain was immediate and intense. I shouted, wordless with alarm, and pressed the panic button on the keypad. The horn began to blare, though in the next instant the keys fell from my numb fingers. I tried to turn to face the danger, trying to throw my hands up to protect myself. The left arm would not obey. I could only make out a man clad in black with a knit hood over his head, and a second blow was already arcing toward the side of my head. Though I launched myself sideways to avoid the full force of the impact, I thought my head would fly off my shoulders when the shovel grazed my skull. I started down to the sidewalk. The last thing I remember is trying to throw my hands out to break my fall, but only one of them answered my command.

"SHE'LL be okay, right?" I heard Tolliver's voice, but it was louder and sharper than usual. "Harper, Harper, talk to me!"

"She's going to come around in a minute," said a calm voice. Older man.

"It's cold out here," Tolliver shouted. "Get her into the ambulance."

Oh, shit, we couldn't afford that. Or at least, we shouldn't spend our money this way. "No," I said, but it didn't come out coherently.

"Yes," he said. He'd understood me; God bless Tolliver. What if I were by myself in this world? What if he decided…Oh, Jesus, my head hurt. Was that blood on my hand?

"Who hit me?" I asked, and Tolliver said, "Someone hit you? I thought you fainted! Someone hit her! Call the police."

"Okay, buddy, they'll meet us at the hospital," said the calm voice again.

My arm hurt worse than anything I'd ever felt. But then, just about every part of my body hurt. I wanted someone to knock me out. This was awful.

"Ready?" asked a new voice.

"One, two, three," said the calm one, and I was on a gurney and choking on a shriek at the pain of being moved.

"That shouldn't have hurt so much," New Voice said. New Voice was a woman. "Does she have another injury? Besides the head?"

"Arm," I tried to say.

"Maybe you shouldn't move her," my brother said.

"We've already moved her," Calm Voice pointed out.

"Is she all right?" asked still another voice. That was a really stupid question, in my opinion.

Then they rolled me to the ambulance; I opened my eyes again, just a crack, to see the flashing red lights. I had another pang of dismay about the money this was going to cost; but then when they slid me in, I had no pangs about anything for a while.

I fluttered up to awareness in the hospital. I saw a man leaning over me, a man with clipped gray hair and gleaming wire-rimmed glasses. His face looked serious but benevolent. Exactly the way a doctor ought to look. I hoped he was a doctor.

"Do you understand me?" he said. "Can you count my fingers?"

That was two questions. I tried to nod to show I could understand him. That was a big mistake. What fingers?

The next thing I knew, I was in a dim warm room, and I had the impression I was wrapped in swaddling clothes. No room at the inn? I opened my eyes. I appeared to be in a bed, and very snugly wrapped in white cotton blankets. There was a light on over my bed, but it was on low, and there was a hush that told me the night was in its small hours, its weak hours…probably about three a.m. There was an orange recliner by the bed, and it was as stretched out as it could get. Tolliver was asleep on it, wrapped in another hospital blanket. There was blood on his shirt. Mine?

I was very thirsty.

A nurse padded in, took my pulse, checked my temperature. She smiled when she saw I was awake and looking at her, but she didn't speak until her tasks were complete.

"Can I get you anything?" she asked in a low voice.

"Water," I said, hopefully.

She held a straw to my lips and I took a tug or two on the cup of water. I hadn't realized how dry my mouth was until it filled with the refreshing coldness. I was on an IV. I needed to pee.

"I need to go to the bathroom," I whispered.

"Okay. You can get up, if I help you. We'll take it real slow," she said.

She let down the side of the bed, and I began to swing upright. That was a real bad idea, and I held still as my head swam. She put an arm around me. Very slowly, I finished straightening. While her arm continued to support me, she spared a hand to lower the bed. I slid off slowly and carefully until my bare feet touched the chilly linoleum, and we shuffled over to the bathroom, rolling the IV along. Getting down on the toilet was tricky, but the relief that followed made the trip worthwhile.

The nurse was right outside the partially open door, and I heard her talking to Tolliver. I was sorry he'd been wakened, but when I was on my journey back to the bed, I couldn't help but feel glad I was looking into his face.

I thanked the nurse, who was the reddish brown of an old penny. "You push the button if you need me," she said.

After she left, Tolliver got up to stand by my bedside. He hugged me with as much care as though I were stamped "Fragile." He kissed my cheek.

"I thought you'd fallen," he said. "I had no idea anyone had hit you. I didn't hear a thing. I thought you'd had—like maybe a flashback, from the crime scene. Or your leg had given way, or something else from the lightning."

Being struck by lightning is definitely an event that keeps on giving. The year before, out of the blue, I'd had an episode of tinnitus that had finally cleared up; and the only thing I'd ever been able to attribute it to was the lightning strike when I was fifteen. So it wasn't surprising that Tolliver had blamed my old catastrophe when he'd found me on the ground.

"Did you see him?" he asked, and there was guilt in his voice, which was absurd.

"Yes," I said, and I wasn't happy with the weakness of my voice. "But not clearly. He was wearing dark clothes and one of those knitted hoods. He came up out of the darkness. He hit me on the shoulder first. And before I could get out of the way, he hit me in the head." I knew it was lucky I'd been dodging. The blow hadn't landed squarely.

"You have a hairline fracture in your ulna," Tolliver said. "You know, one of the bones in your lower arm. And you have a concussion. Not a severe concussion. They had to take some stitches in your scalp, so they had to shave a little of your hair. I swear it doesn't show much," he said when he saw the look on my face.