The room was incredibly white. White sheets. White walls. A white light fixture on the ceiling that shone brilliant white light. Oddly, she found it soothing, the same way she found the smell of bleach calming. The hospital was her place, the place where she was in control. She glanced down at her clipboard and ensured that the patient had everything the doctor had ordered. Room 27 was dealing with gastrointestinal issues she was fairly certain would lead to gall bladder surgery later on that night. She understood they needed an ultrasound and possibly a CT scan, but when it looked like a duck and the patient was screaming and holding his upper right quadrant, it was usually gallstones.

She chuckled as she glanced down at her watch. The night shift usually went by at breakneck pace, and tonight was no different. Big-city emergency rooms were pretty crazy any night, but on a Saturday the hits never stopped coming. She’d already missed her break. Damn it. She pushed through the doors and looked around for Maryanne.

Maryanne would cover for her while she choked down a yogurt. She would skip it but light-headedness was not a good thing for an ER nurse.

She stopped because something was wrong. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to be in Louisiana.

A chill snaked over her skin as she looked across the floor and saw a man entering with a ball cap pulled low on his head.

This was the moment when she would turn and find Maryanne and the man with the ball cap would step inside the room. He would lock the door and then he would pull a gun and fire into her friend’s torso, hitting her in the right lung.

Her feet started to move. No. She wasn’t going that way. She wasn’t going there again.

She screamed but her body kept moving and she knew where this would end.

•   •   •

Lila came awake on a gasp, reaching for the light to prove she was exactly where she was supposed to be. She was in Papillon. She was in her new house, with all the collections of crap she was going to have to go through. It was okay to be here.

It was okay.

Her hands were shaking and she forced herself to take a deep breath.

When would she stop dreaming about it? When would the sight of that man fade from her memory? Sometimes she worried she was doing nothing but marking time to that moment when she could close her eyes and not remember his face.

Three twenty-four a.m. The old-school alarm clock on the bedside table showed the time in red block numbers.

She laid back and wiped away the tears.

Meditation. That’s what her therapist had told her to do. Cleanse her mind. Let it go blank. Think of nothing at all.