Beyond Reach by Karin Slaughter Page B

find a stethoscope, review the drugs that had been administered, run some fluids, do some blood work. Was there brain damage, some kind of shock from the explosion? Had Lena fallen? Hit her head? Had she lost consciousness? Smoke inhalation was deadly, claiming more victims than fire alone. Secondary infections, fluid in the lungs, tissue damage—all sorts of possibilities were flashing through Sara’s mind, and she’d realized that without warning, she was thinking like a doctor again. For the first time in months, she felt useful.
    Then Lena had stopped her at the door to the bathroom, holding up her hand so that Sara would get the message that she needed privacy. Then, just before shutting the door, Lena had turned to Sara. “I’m so sorry,” she’d said, her apology seeming so genuine that Sara could not believe this was the same woman who had been almost hysterical with fear and hatred five minutes earlier. “I’m so, so sorry.”
    “It’s all right,” Sara had assured her, smiling, letting Lena know that she was no longer alone in this. “We can talk about it later, okay? We’ll get Jeffrey in here and we’ll all figure out what to do.”
    Lena had nodded, probably not trusting her voice.
    “I’ll wait out here for you.”
    And Sara
had
waited, standing outside the door, grinning like a fool, thinking about how much she was going to
help
Lena. Meanwhile, Lena was probably bolting down the stairs, laughing at how easy Sara had made her escape.
    Now, sitting at the plastic table in the dreary motel room, Sara felt her face redden with humiliation.
    “Stupid,” she said, standing up before the chair sucked out what little life was left in her.
    Cathy was right. Sara needed to do something. She picked up the Comet and the odd-smelling sponge she’d bought at the convenience store and headed toward the bathroom. For some reason, the sink was outside the door, a long counter that was burned at the edges where people had rested their cigarettes while they—what?—brushed their teeth?
    It didn’t bear thinking about.
    Sara sprinkled some Comet into the sink and started scrubbing, trying not to take any more chrome off the plastic drain in the process. She put some muscle into it, cutting through years of grime as if her life depended on it.
    Pride before the fall,
she thought. All those years of being the teacher’s pet—the best student in the class, the highest grades, the best accolades, and the brightest future—for what? Emory University had accepted her before she graduated from high school. The medical college had practically rolled out the red carpet, offering enough financial aid for her father to easily make up the difference. Thousands of people a year applied for the limited number of residencies at Grady Hospital. Sara hadn’t even had a fallback. She knew she was going to get into the program. She was so damn sure of her own abilities, her own intelligence, that she had never in her life thought she would not succeed at anything she set her mind to.
    Except for stopping a one-hundred-ten-pound college dropout from escaping the Elawah County Medical Center.
    “Stupid,” Sara repeated. She gave up on the sink and went into the bathroom. She started on the toilet, using the scrub brush mounted on the wall to clean the bowl, trying not to wonder what had turned the bristles dark gray. As she got down on her knees beside the bathtub, Sara remembered her mother showing her years ago how to clean a bathroom—how much cleaner to use, how to gently scrub the porcelain with a sponge.
    Sara sat back on her heels, thinking that one day, maybe soon, she would show her own child how to clean the tub or vacuum the living room. Jeffrey would have to explain how to sort laundry because Sara was forever pulling pink-streaked, formerly white socks out of the dryer. She could take the kid to the grocery store, at least. Jeffrey thought a frozen dinner was a well-balanced meal, which might explain why his