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She woke up in the chopper, flat on her back. She saw soldiers, heard the rotors and knew they were in the air. Someone was talking to her, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying and turned loose of conscious thought.
The next time she came to she was in a hospital bed. There was an IV in her arm, and a nurse was standing at the foot writing on her chart.
“Where am I?” Nola asked.
The woman looked up and smiled. “Well, hello there. You’re in Tidewater Municipal Hospital. Can you tell me your name?”
Nola’s head was pounding. Tidewater? That was forty miles south of Queens Crossing.
“Nola Landry.”
The nurse smiled again. “Finally a name to go with that pretty face. You came in as an unidentified rescue. Do you have any family we need to notify?”
It hurt to answer. “No.”
The nurse’s smile slipped a little, but she didn’t waver.
“How do you feel?”
“Sore, confused.” Then she put a hand to her forehead. “But no fever!”
“No fever is right. That broke about noon yesterday,” the nurse said.
And just like that, Nola remembered the killer. “Yesterday? How long have I been here?”
“This is your second day, honey.”
“I need to talk to the police. I witnessed a murder.”
“A murder?”
“Yes, of a whole family.”
The nurse eyed her curiously. “Are you sure? You were out of your head. You don’t think it might have been a hallucination?”
The question made Nola angry. “No! Oh, my God, no! They were my neighbors. Never mind. I’ll call them myself.”
She began pushing back the covers and trying to sit up, but the room was spinning.
“I’m going to be sick,” Nola muttered.
The nurse grabbed a wet washcloth and immediately put it on the back of Nola’s neck, then gently wiped it across her face and forehead, and just like that, the wave of nausea passed.
“I need the police,” Nola mumbled.
The nurse gave her hand a quick pat.
“I’ll call them for you.”
Nola fell back against the pillows, shaking.
“Call now. Promise?”
“I promise,” the nurse said, and hurried out of the room.
CHAPTER TWO
The minute the nurse left, exhaustion took over again and Nola drifted off to sleep. The next time she came to, her heart was pounding because she thought she was falling out of the tree. It took a few moments to reconcile her reality with the dream, and she was still shaking as the door swung inward. It was a nurse with a food tray.