Sierra Woods - The Resurrectionist

“Oh, man.” I pinched my nose shut. “Just the sound of that stinks.” I released my nose with a giggle, then remembered why we were talking about her. “Do you know how she came to have her powers?” I’d heard stories that were different from mine. People who weren’t murdered, but born with the abilities.

“No.”

“I wonder if you could have inherited something from her.” Could this affinity for raising the dead be passed from one generation to the next? Would Sam develop powers of his own? If he hadn’t already, it was unlikely that they would surface now. Dammit.

“I don’t think so.” Sam maneuvered the car through the desert on the dusty, rutted road with casual ease, his long-limbed body relaxed, yet in control. The jiggling of the vehicle over the ruts was about to shake my liver loose, but he didn’t seem to be bothered by it. “There’s never been any impulse for me to do what you do.”

“You have three sisters, right?” Maybe there was some hope in them. Some traits were passed from female to female.

“Yeah.”

“Any of them?”

“Not to my knowledge. They’d have told me.”

“Oh.” It would have been nice to know that there was someone else I knew well who could have helped me.

“Sorry.” He reached out and patted me on the arm once, then returned his hand to the wheel.

“I’m thinking about Roberto’s case. I don’t know if I have what it’s going to take to bring him back. In all of my other cases, I’ve always had intact bodies. Not as far gone as this one is.” Something in me just knew this was going to be one of the toughest cases I’d ever been involved in, emotionally as well as physically. Admitting that to myself, let alone to Sam, is a big step for me. Admitting vulnerabilities only makes you responsible or gets you a weekly date with a therapist.

“Have you checked with the hospital lately? What’s Filberto’s condition?”

“Same. Brain-dead. Waiting on the court order.” Sometimes it takes hours, sometimes it takes days.

“What happens if you can’t bring Roberto back?” He gave me a glance.

That was a good question. A really good one. And one I didn’t know the answer to. I hated admitting that. In the world of nursing you must know the answers for every question. Saying I don’t know isn’t acceptable. It’s no more acceptable to me now than it was then, but I said it anyway. “I don’t know.”

I just hoped we didn’t have to find out. Thankfully, Sam didn’t give me any meaningless reassurance to make me feel better. It wouldn’t, and he knew it.

Chapter 4

There are days when the past haunts me entirely too much, and this was one of those days. Being around pregnant women unnerves me. I admit it. I should have no problems dealing with the condition of women who are growing new life inside of them, but I do.

It’s what got me killed.

I hate thinking that I’m weak and vulnerable when I’ve worked very hard to be as tough as I can be. Certain things set me off, and seeing a happily pregnant woman on the arm of her police officer husband is what did it today. This is a joyous time for them, but for me, it does nothing except bring back haunting, hideous memories that still have the power to make me shudder.

After they passed with a happy smile and a wave, I closed the door to my office. Usually, I keep the door open unless I’m consulting, but now, I need some privacy to have my nervous breakdown. In an office that sits in the middle of the police station, there is no such thing as privacy. Or quiet.

One by one, I pulled the horizontal blinds and closed off the windows. Was I hiding? Yes. I’d hide until it’s safe for me to step out again. Until then, the memory of my life in the past overwhelms me in sloshes of emotions that build into pounding waves, and I allow it. Crawling onto the small couch against the wall, I tucked my feet beneath me and clutched a pillow to my middle. Closing my eyes, I let the memory, the horror of it, wash over me. I’ve learned that resisting only puts off the inevitable and gives more power to the pain. If I give it the time it needs now, then life will go on much more quickly.

I had been happily, blissfully, ignorantly, pregnant. My husband hadn’t been as thrilled about it as I had been, but I don’t think men can ever have the same connection to a baby as women do. Just the nature of how we’re put together.

Anyway, my husband, Blake, and I had been headed for divorce when we decided to give it one last go. He’d been carrying on with a woman for several months and had tired of her clingy, demanding ways, so he let her go and went back to his wife, who wasn’t so clingy and demanding. Maybe I should have been and things might have been different, but now, we’ll never know.

So, giving it the old college try at reconciliation, the husband and I had a nice dinner with requisite margaritas, enough that I became a little intoxicated. Okay, a lot intoxicated, but I wasn’t driving, so who cares? And we screwed our brains out all night long. We hadn’t done that since we were dating, so we indulged in an all night bang-a-thon.

And I got pregnant. My family was thrilled because I was finally fulfilling my reproductive obligations inherent to any large family that seemed to want to take over the earth, one generation at a time. The playboy-doctor-husband was not thrilled. Although he said he wanted children someday, to him, someday meant years into the future, when he had a more secure practice, blah, blah, blah. What he really meant was never. He wasn’t the fatherly type who could, or would, be there for his child.

In the old days, T&A’s meant tonsils and adenoids. Now it was tits and asses, making them bigger and smaller in that order. There was serious money to be made in elective plastic surgery, and he was going to make his killing now, then retire to an island in the Caribbean and work on skin cancer late in life. Or something equally brilliant.

As my pregnancy progressed and my belly grew, I was happy. Even though the spousal unit couldn’t be bothered to come to checkups and ultrasounds with me, I was content in knowing that I was growing a new life I could love and cherish. One that would love and cherish me, at least until the teenage years, and then it would be all over for a while.

Although my growing abdomen housed a new life, and that was good, it also threw my center of gravity off, and that was bad. I was in an awkward stage at the end of my third trimester when the doorbell rang and without thinking, I opened it. I’d been shopping for baby things and had taken a load into the house and was ready to return for another, so I was right there by the door. An unfamiliar woman stood there, and the smile fell from my face when I noticed the gun in her hand. She grabbed me by the shirt and dragged me out of the house toward my car with an open back door just a few feet away. I tried to struggle, knowing if I got into my car I was dead. It was the middle of the day and my neighbors all worked, so screaming wasn’t going to help. I had to save myself or die trying.

She clobbered me on the head with something that felt like an anvil, and I collapsed onto the backseat. She shoved my legs in, and away she went with me unconscious in the back. I finally roused, but had no idea where we were or for how long I’d been out. My legs were numb from being folded up in such an awkward position. I had to move, but if I did, she’d know I was awake. I eased my weight up slightly so my legs got some circulation, and they screamed in pain as the blood flow returned.

“Dammit, where is this place?” she grumbled aloud. I heard the shuffling of papers, so maybe she was looking at a map. There was no GPS in my car. If she didn’t know where we were, I wasn’t going to find my way out of there either. Panic as well as my position was making me dizzy.