"My life closed twice before its close--
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me.
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of Heaven
And all we need of Hell."
Sophie Neveu looked up from her book of poetry. For a bare moment, she had been transported elsewhere; good poetry could do that. Even so, she had sought something calming, something comforting... and had found something that was anything but what she had sought.
"Emily Dickinson, my dear," she murmured to herself, closing the book and slipping it into her black cloth purse. "I think we both need to lighten up."
It was a difficult thing to do. She swept the London emergency room with her eyes, looking over each person with feigned interest. Patient, nurse, a fleeting glimpse of a doctor... Sophie sighed and turned her gaze to the black and white checkered floor. She could look until the sun came up, but she knew she wouldn't see the man who had been rushed in over an hour before.
And if the surgeons weren't careful, she never would.
Blinking, Sophie rubbed her eyes, which stung from both fatigue and the slight trace of iodine in the air. She had never been fond of hospitals, and the anxiety that she had tried to repress with reading came flooding back. It left her uneasy, and more tired than she had even been before. Still, there were questions that needed to be asked, and to be answered... there was only one man who could give her those answers, the same man who was in surgery at that very moment.
The albino, Silas.
For a brief span of time, he had been thought dead. What a waste that would have been, she thought dimly. Murderer or no, was there anyone else...accessable...who knew the inside workings of the Opus Dei like Silas? Was there anyone else who could soothe her curiosity about the last moments of the curator's life, the Bishop and the Teacher, the method behind the madness...?
As if he will tell you anything? Even if, by some miracle, he survived, her mind bitterly complained.
"You never know," Sophie said quietly, then flushed a bit when a man in line for the nurse raised an eyebrow in her direction.
Robert thinks you're insane, the little voice pipped up again. Sophie let out a long, drawn out sigh, and stood up to stretch the kinks out of her back. A glance at the clock told her that another hour was nearing it's close. She had read all of the magazines, the entire book she bought at the hospital gift shop, and hadn't heard a word from Robert Langdon for over two hours now. The look he'd given her when she'd scrambled for a ride to the emergency room had been withering at best, even though he'd promised to call her as soon as he could.
"Curiosity is going to kill you," he warned. "All of this isn't over yet, and you're not safe until it is."
"Then I may never be safe," she had replied.
"...Be careful," he said after a moment, closing the door behind her with a slam as she hopped into the back of a taxi. "I'll call."
But he never had, and all attempts to contact him resulted in being redirected to the drone of voice mail. Perhaps it had been her mother who had once said that her lust for answers, analysis and adventure would wreck her life. Sophie was beginning to suspect they had been right.
Suddenly, she snapped back into the present at the sound of footsteps walking in her direction. Lifting her head, she pushed a lock of her maple hair from her face, hoping she didn't look as zombified as she felt. It was a nurse, short with curly red hair and deep blue eyes; her age was only betrayed by the faint crinkles at the edge of her mouth, lines that may have indicated a good sense of humor. At the moment, her forehead was wrinkled with was either concern or disturbed nervousness.
Knowing the patient, she leaned towards the latter.
"The...patient... is out of surgery, Miss Neveu," the nurse replied shortly, eyes darting around the room as if expecting the gates of Hell to open somewhere. Yes, it was definately the latter.
"And?"
"... It was a success."
Sophie felt the ice in her chest melt away. "If it's not too much trouble, could you take me to see him? Or point the way," she added, seeing revulsion cross the woman's face. Superstition still lived in the city of London.
The nurse's mouth turned up in a bright smile. "Down the hall and third room to the left. I suspect the police will want him after you're done."
"Indeed," Sophie muttered under her breath, turning on her heel after returning the smile.
There was some hope, then. As dangerous or futile as it could turn out to be, there was some hope that her questions could be answered. She tried to form them in her mind as she walked, the clicking of her heels echoing faintly in the long and deserted hallway. But as she approached the room, 305, apprehension filled her mind until only one half-formed question remained.
Why...
