Brenda knew that something was not right. Bits of her life were coming at her – flashes of memory. There was no way that she was in Atlanta. She didn't live in Atlanta anymore. No, she'd moved to D.C. She'd been trained – trained damn well – at interrogation. She cracked suspects like her Daddy cracked open pecan shells. Come to think of it – and now she was thinking of it – she didn't even live in D.C. anymore. It had been years since she'd moved across the country to LA to accept the job offered her by Will Pope.
Ah, Will Pope. What a jackass. A very, very bald jackass. She contemplated giggling but something told her that giggling would be a very bad – and very painful idea.
Oh, pain. Oh, fuck, pain. She regretted calling attention to it because now it seemed that everything hurt. Why did everything hurt?
All of the sudden, the bottom seemed to drop out of the world. It was like sitting on the front porch in the south when there's a tornado watch on. At first, the world is quiet. Not a pleasant quiet, an ominous quiet. The air is thick and tastes faintly of iron and rain that hasn't fallen yet. The sky will turn a muddy green and you know that you had best get somewhere safe – haul a mattress down into the storm cellar and hide beneath it until it's over.
This feeling was almost but not entirely exactly like that.
That cool hand left her forehead and the tiniest whisper of a breeze blew her way. It brought with it a very familiar smell. A comforting smell that she couldn't place. Some sort of flower.
A split second later, she heard the tornado sirens go off. Not tornado sirens. No. Not sirens. It was getting increasingly hard to form a thought. She couldn't move her body and there was a burning in her chest. Oh, Lord. Was her heart on fire? No. Not a fire. It wasn't beating. Oh, God! Her heart was not beating! She felt her head tilted roughly back as something cold and sharp was shoved into her mouth. Then, blinding pain. Hard plastic tubing snaked its way down her throat and she wanted so badly to scream.
Somebody was crushing her now. A giant, grinding her bones to make his bread. He was battering her chest so ferociously, she wasn't sure how it was possible that her heart had not been pulverized.
In all of the shifting and jostling and strangers pulling her apart, Brenda's eyes opened the tiniest bit.
This must be what it's like to be lost underwater, she thought. Her lungs burned until air was suddenly and rhythmically pumped into them. She took that moment to look around. Everything was blue and green and rushing about but she couldn't possibly be under water. There were too many people down here with her. As realization hit, her heart would have pounded if only it had been beating. She was surrounded by doctors and her body was burning from the inside out. She knew that if she didn't calm down, the doctors would only have more trouble so she tried to focus on something – anything – other than her quiet heart and burning blood.
Suddenly, the fluorescent lights bounced off of something shiny behind the sea of doctors. Brenda fought to focus on whatever it was before the rapidly approaching darkness caught up with her. The light was bouncing off a pair of black-rimmed glasses, behind which were a pair of well-known olive green eyes.
Sharon.
The instant Brenda thought it, Sharon turned and swept out of the room, her hair streaming behind her. A moment later, the darkness swept in.