Chapter 2- Blood on the Marble

LARA'S POV

The first thing I noticed was that I couldn't move my arms.

I thought I was still on the driveway. I thought if I turned my head I would see the gate and the stone and my phone on the ground beside me. But the ceiling above me was white and flat and there was a mechanical beeping somewhere to my left and the smell was wrong. It was sharp and chemical and nothing like home.

I tried to sit up and the restraints pulled tight against my wrists. I looked down at my arms. There were leather straps across both wrists, fastened to the bed rails. There was a tube taped to the inside of my left arm connected to a bag of something clear hanging above me. I pulled against the straps once, then again harder, and they did not give at all.

I said, "Hello?" My voice came out rough and low, like I hadn't used it in a long time.

A nurse came in. She was carrying a clipboard and she walked to the monitors on my left side and started writing something down without looking at me. She was not unfriendly exactly. She just moved like I was part of the room and not a person in it.

"Where am I?" I asked. "How long have I been here?"

"Metropolitan General," she said, still writing. "Two days. You were brought in by private ambulance."

I looked at the restraints again. "Why am I strapped down?"

"You were agitated when they brought you in," she said. She flipped to the next page on her clipboard. "You had emergency surgery yesterday morning. You're in the recovery ward."

I felt something go cold in my chest. "What surgery? I didn't agree to any surgery."

She looked up at me for the first time. "Your husband signed the authorisation forms. He's your legal next of kin. Everything was done correctly." She said it the way people say things when they've already decided the conversation is over.

"I want to speak to a doctor," I said. "I want to know what they did to me."

"The attending will come by this afternoon." She made one more note and walked out.

I lay there looking at the ceiling. I tried to think clearly but my head was slow and my mouth was dry and the restraints were making my wrists ache. Andre had signed forms while I was unconscious. He had authorised a surgery on my body while I was lying somewhere unable to say no. I pulled against the straps again and then stopped because it wasn't helping and I needed to think instead of just pulling.

I was still working through it when I heard his footsteps in the corridor.

I recognised the sound before he appeared in the doorway. I had lived with that particular rhythm for ten years. Andre walked into my room like he was walking into a meeting he had already won. He was wearing a dark jacket and his hair was neat and he was smiling at me in the way he smiled at people when he was about to say something he had prepared.

"You look better than I expected," he said. He pulled the chair from the corner and sat down beside the bed.

"What did they take?" I asked. I kept my voice even.

He looked at the monitors for a moment like he was reading them. Then he said, "A portion of your liver. About two thirds. Tasha's son needed a transplant. You were a match." He said it the same way he might explain a change in dinner plans.

I didn't say anything. I was looking at his face, trying to find something there. Some hesitation, some sign that this was difficult to say out loud.

"Dylan is doing well," he said. "The surgery was successful."

"You cut out part of my liver," I said. "While I was unconscious. For her child."

"You were already unconscious when they brought you in," he said. "The timing was convenient."

I heard myself make a sound that was not quite a laugh. "Convenient."

Andre leaned back in the chair and crossed one leg over the other. "Honestly, Lara, I'm a little surprised you made it through. You were in poor shape when they found you." He stood up and straightened his jacket. "Get some rest. I'll check on you in a few days."

He walked out. A few seconds later I heard him whistling something in the corridor. It got quieter as he moved away and then it was gone.

I turned my head toward the window. There was a rectangle of grey sky outside. I looked at it for a while and I breathed carefully the way you do when you are trying to keep something from happening. My wrists were bleeding a little where I had pulled against the straps. I could feel the specific kind of pain that comes from a large incision when you have been still for too long and then moved. I lay there and added it all up and when I was done I turned my head away from the window.

On the far side of the room, on the small table beside the second bed that was currently empty, was a stack of papers and a clipboard. Underneath the clipboard, partially covered, was a mobile phone. It was not mine. Someone had left it there and forgotten it or put it there in a hurry. The table was not far. It was about as far as my arm could reach if the restraint had any slack at all.

I pulled my left arm toward me slowly. There was a small amount of give in the strap, maybe two or three centimetres. I turned sideways as much as I could and stretched toward the table. My fingers brushed the edge of the papers. I got my fingertips under the clipboard and pulled it toward me and it came off the table and hit the floor and the phone slid out from under it and stopped at the table's edge.

I stretched further. My shoulder pulled and the incision pulled and I ignored both of them. My fingers reached the phone and I got it into my palm and pulled it back to me.

I had seen the number on my phone screen right before I lost consciousness at the gate. I had looked at it for a few seconds thinking I should probably answer it. I had looked at it long enough that it had stayed with me.

I dialled it now.

It rang twice.

The voice that answered was a man's voice, low and measured, but with something underneath it that sounded like controlled anger. "Lara." He said my name like he had been waiting. "I have been trying to reach you for four days. Are you all right? Where are you?"

"Metropolitan General," I said quietly. "Recovery ward. I don't have much time." I told him what I knew, quickly, in order. The restraints, the surgery, the authorisation forms.

He was quiet for a moment after I finished. "I know," he said. "I have been tracking this since Tuesday. Listen to me carefully. Your father left you things that Andre has never been able to find. I have been protecting them for six years. When you are ready, everything comes to you. All of it." He paused. "But right now I need you to focus on getting out of that room."

I heard footsteps in the corridor outside.

"Someone's coming," I said.

"Hide the phone. Don't call from this number again. I'll find another way to reach you." He stopped, and then said one more thing before I ended the call: "I already moved on the first piece. When you're ready, Lara, everything is yours."

I pushed the phone under my pillow and lay back and put my arm flat against the bed rail exactly as it had been. The nurse came back in carrying a fresh clipboard. She walked to my bed and held out a set of papers without saying anything.

"What is this?" I asked.

"Copy of your surgical notes," she said. "Standard procedure." She set them on the blanket and went back to the monitors.

I picked up the papers and flipped to the second page.

At the bottom was a short paragraph under a heading that said Doctor's Notes.

I read the first line and sat up straight. I read it again. My hand went to my stomach without me telling it to.