But he now had the name she was registered under, and he knew her room number. He'd be able to find out everything he wanted to know. He didn't have to actually see her, didn't have to talk to her; he could safely ignore the weird compulsion he felt to do exactly that.
Looking down the hall, he saw that the big cart laden with food trays was just three rooms down. The door to the room next to Drea's was closed, too, so he moved farther down and leaned against the wall right outside the door, as if a nurse or tech had gone into the room to perform some duty and asked him to wait outside. He kept his gaze on the floor.
The cafeteria lady worked quickly, delivering the food trays to the proper rooms. She pushed the cart toward him, stopping it just past the door to Drea's room. He glanced up, ready to give a quick, polite smile if she looked at him, but she ignored him as if he were so much furniture. People who worked in hospitals saw a lot of people leaning against walls.
She pulled out a tray, which looked as if it held only orange gelatin, fruit juice, coffee, and milk, but any food at all meant Drea was capable of feeding herself, rather than being fed by a tube. The cafeteria worker knocked quickly on the door, then opened it without waiting for an answer.
"Is that real food?" he heard Drea ask, her tone grumpy.
The cafeteria lady laughed. "You've graduated to Jell-O. If your stomach handles that without any upset, maybe tomorrow you can have mashed potatoes. We just bring what your doctor says you can have."
After a brief silence, Drea said, "Orange! I like orange Jell-O."
"Would you like to have two?"
"Can you do that?"
"Sure. Any time you want more, just let us know."
"In that case, yes, I definitely want another Jell-O. I'm starving."
While Drea was talking to the cafeteria lady and concentrating on her food, Simon straightened away from the wall and walked quickly past her door, not turning his head to look at her.
For a moment he was walking blindly, and did not see the young woman who stepped out of a room until he bumped into her. "Sorry," he said automatically, without looking at her, and plowed ahead.
The next thing he knew, he was crushed into the back corner of a crowded elevator and had no memory of getting on it. He, who always knew not only exactly what he was doing but what everyone around him was doing, who even studied a public restroom from a strategic standpoint before entering it, had let himself get so wrapped up in his thoughts he hadn't paid any attention to what he was doing or where he was going.
He exited on the ground floor, but the elevator he'd taken wasn't in the same bank as the one he'd used going up. Instead of coming out close to the emergency room entrance, he was in the main lobby, which boasted a soaring, two-story atrium in which live ficus trees grew.
Numb, his brain sluggish, he walked to the exit until he remembered his rental car was in the parking lot outside the emergency room. He stopped, looked around, but didn't see any signs pointing the way to the ER.
His usually infallible sense of direction told him to take the left corridor, so he did. He wanted to laugh, and he never laughed. Relief fizzled in his blood like champagne, making him giddy. His heart pounded in his chest, the cage of his ribs feeling too tight, as if it were closing in around his heart and lungs, restricting them.
A discreet sign caught his eye and he paused. On an unexplainable impulse he opened the door and stepped in.
As soon as he closed the door behind him he felt the silence, as if the room was soundproof. The unceasing noise and motion of a hospital halted at that doorway, as if he had entered another realm. He stood there a moment, wanting to go but feeling compelled to stay. He wasn't a coward. No matter how ugly reality was, and it was often a real bastard, he'd always dealt with it and in it. Mercy wasn't one of his qualities, with himself or with others. Some people misled themselves about their true nature, but Simon never had. He was what he was because no life, his own or anyone else's, had ever meant anything special to him.
Until now.
Until Drea.
The room was dim, there were sconces on the side walls, and on the front wall a panel of stained glass was backlit, bathing the small room in color. The air was cool and fragrant, the scent coming from a bouquet of fresh flowers sitting on a table in front of the small altar. There were three padded pews, each large enough to hold maybe four people, but he was the only person in there.
He sat down in the middle pew and closed his eyes, letting the silence wash over him and calm him. There was no music. If hymnal music had been piped in, he probably would have left, but there was only the peace and the silence.
Drea was alive. He couldn't yet take in what that meant, hadn't yet been able to accept that the ground beneath his feet had caved in and he was clawing at air. Just for a moment he let himself relax, the softly glowing light of the stained glass painting colors on the inside of his eyelids. The scent of the flowers enticed him to take deeper breaths, drawing the cool air deep into his lungs, easing the constriction in his chest.
Ruthlessness was as much a part of him as his skin. His own character made it impossible for him to shrug off what he'd seen, what he knew. Drea had died. He'd heard her last breath, seen the light leave her eyes. He had felt the difference in her flesh when he touched her, because dead bodies immediately begin cooling. Her soft skin had lost its heat, its vibrancy. On an even deeper level he'd felt her absence, the absence of the person, the spirit, the soul, whatever you wanted to call it. Without that animating spark, the body is different, and no longer that person.
He'd stayed there with her too long to think he'd somehow been mistaken about her death. She hadn't had a pulse, and she hadn't been breathing. By the time the emergency vehicles got there, at least half an hour, maybe longer, had passed. She should have been long past resuscitation; the brain began dying after just four minutes. She would have been completely brain dead, beyond even the most heroic efforts to revive her. The guy in the waiting room had said the medics had been packing up their stuff when she began gasping on her own. Had they even tried to revive her? Add that to the length of time she'd been dead.