The Last Girl: A gripping psychological thriller with a killer twist Page 14

“They’re last but not least.”

  “Dead people don’t matter.”

  “We don’t know they’re dead.”

  “They will be.”

  “The dead matter.”

  “Why, Floyd?”

  “Because they remind us we’re alive. Because their loved ones need closure.”

  “Shit, Floyd.”

  “If I were younger, and even though it’s not my job, I’d have flown over there and hit the water with all the divers,” Floyd said.

  “Fuck you, Floyd. You’re an arrogant prick. We should be investigating this crash, not saving bodies. Fuck you.”

  Dixon hung up.

  Floyd didn’t flinch. He’d been in the field and knew the stress and fear and their consequences.

  He put the cell phone away and stared out the window, hands laced behind his back. “Dixon could be right, August,” he said. “It scares the shit out of me. I don’t think I can forgive myself if the last passengers turn up dead and divers die for nothing.”

  Of course, August didn’t respond. He pretended to be talking to her, knowing he was talking to himself. Maybe it was time he resigned. He was an unstable man who shouldn’t carry such responsibilities. A man craving the resurrection of his loved one should not have been granted the honor of deciding the fate of other people’s loved ones.

  “Please,” he said, not knowing whom he was talking to. Was it August? Himself? God? The universe? “Please grant my men the honor to save at least one last girl.”

  62

  I sit on the edge of the bed with one of the weird metallic instruments from the operating table. This one looks like it can kill. It strongly resembles a shard of glass. I can see my reflection in it, and I have to grip it carefully, so I don’t get cut. I tap my foot impatiently, sure of the feelings I am experiencing. Whoever enters through the blue door first to check on me is an unlucky son of a bitch.

  No more Mrs. Nice Girl. I need to take things into my own hands. Where is that girl who attacked Ashlyn and was ready to twist her arm to get information?

  Staring at my wristband, I make an effort to connect the dots. So my name is June West? The low-life scumbags knew my name all along. It’s impossible to build a story behind that fact, but why else would they write my last name as West? Not that I recognize my last name, but I can’t think of any different conclusions.

  I wonder how much of this was planned in advance.

  Also, what does it mean: ready?

  I can only think of Meredith’s words: The horrible things they will do to you…

  I could keep thinking forever and still not find the right answers. It’s time to get moving.

  I hear someone punching the numbers in the pad outside. I hear a click. In she comes. Another nurse. She is a little older than Ashlyn. She plasters that fake Dr. Suffolk smile on her face and asks me if I ate.

  I can’t hear her, only watch her mouth moving. My senses are blurred with thoughts of revenge and self-protection. I don’t want her poisonous words to seep through my brain and make me end up doubting myself. I don’t know what’s going on here, but there are a bunch of Nazis on this island who will eventually burn me in the Furnace for reasons beyond me.

  The nurse stoops to pick up something from the floor. In a flash, I stand up and wrap my arms around her neck and almost stick the instrument into her neck.

  She wriggles under my grip and utters a muffled scream. I slap her on the mouth then scratch her with the instrument. It’s a sharp motherfucker. Like a twisted razor. Blood drips out, but not much.

  I. Don’t. Give. A. Fuck.

  “Don’t scream,” I whisper in her ear. “Just tell me where I am. What does this wristband mean?”

  Stiffening, she grits her teeth, as if locking the words inside.

  “I will kill you.”

  She grunts incomprehensible vowels.

  “I knew you wouldn’t tell me.” I kick her in the back. She falls to her knees. I pull her hair hard, yanking her neck back before she utters another scream. It amazes me how fast I unbind her long hair and stuff it in her mouth to silence her. I’m watching myself become the girl I think I have always been. Someone I was so scared to meet, not knowing she was my savior all along.

  The nurse chokes. I feel nothing. No empathy. No worries she could die in my hands. I slap her violently on the face.

  “Where the fuck is my daughter?”

  Her eyes widen, but she puts so much effort into locking her secrets inside.

  “Don’t test my patience.”

  She still doesn’t talk. I hit her hard on the head with a tray from the table. She falls to her side, unresponsive. It seems too easy, but she isn’t moving.

  The thought of having killed her doesn’t stop me from emptying her pockets. No ID. No personal belongings. Nothing but a magnetic card and a syringe ready for use. Maybe it’s some sort of a sedative.

  Tucking the syringe and the card away, I go back to the door and slowly open it. I crane my neck out the gap and check the corridor outside.

  Empty.

  Is this place deserted or what?

  I take a deep breath and step outside, pulling the door behind me. This is when I realize I am still in my gown. I forgot to wear the nurse’s clothes like I did with Ashlyn. What’s done is done. I need to find out what this place is.

  Barefoot, I take cautious steps, brushing my shoulder against the wall next to me. I can always find a storage room or something to hide in.

  To my surprise, I glimpse lights coming from other rooms all along the corridor. Faint yellow lights. Which means the doors aren’t locked like mine. I wonder if there are patients in these rooms, but everything is dead silent in here.

  I deliberately try to slow my breathing, so I don’t panic. My aim is to reach the closest room and peek inside. I tiptoe forward, glancing back occasionally, and finally hear something. I was right. I was always right. I hear a baby’s cries. Real cries. Not figments of my imagination. This time they are so real that they cut through my soul.

  63

  Mercy Medical Center, New York

  Trying to kill the boredom of silence, Floyd rifled through his wife’s handbag. It’s a heavy bag that no one had bothered to empty or look into. He’d brought it from their house some time ago when doctors suggested the proximity of her belongings might bring back memories. The same old bullshit.

  The bag contained August’s favorite books. She’d always been an avid reader. In her last days before succumbing to her coma, she had insisted he bring her some of them. All paperbacks, with dog-eared pages and fading covers. August didn’t like e-books.

  He tried to remember that one book she really liked but couldn’t. The one she’d been crazy about, so much that she’d travelled to meet the author. Remembering names had been a struggle for him lately.

  Floyd wasn’t much of a reader himself. Never fictional books. He only read manuals and reports, usually concerning his work. Most books were crap, written by men who knew little, if any, about real-life complications.

  August devoured fiction. Romance, fantasy, thrillers, you name it.

  Now, standing before piles of books he had shelved on the window pane, he still didn’t understand the purpose of fiction. He thought he never would. What was the point of deluding oneself and escaping into a world that wasn’t real? To him, such books were filled with incorrect information, impossible circumstances, and mythological heroes that wouldn’t last half a second in the real world.

  He ran his hand over the books and closed his eyes, then pulled one up to his nose and inhaled its scent. August loved her books getting older. She read some of them twice, and thrice, and loved them even more.

  Floyd didn’t care. He wasn’t inhaling the books, not really. He was inhaling his wife’s scent. Traces of her scent, of her mind, of her passion, of what made the woman she’d become. She had touched these books a thousand times. She hugged them while falling asleep. Sometimes cried all over the pages. He loved this.


  “You should read to her.”

  “Excuse me?” Floyd turned, looking at the nurse standing by the door.

  “Dr. Hope says reading books to a coma patient is one of the best things to help their mind stay alert,” the nurse said.

  Nurses loved Dr. Jessica Hope. Floyd had always been skeptical about her last name being Hope. He wondered if it’d been made up to manipulate patients into recovery.

  “She said reading books to your wife might be better than holding hands,” the nurse said.

  “Read to her?” Floyd glanced at the book in his hand. “Will that help August?”

  “Of course. It’ll keep her mind working and alive.” The nurse picked up August’s medical chart from the edge of the bed. “I’m surprised Dr. Hope never told you about it.”

  “Maybe because she knows my opinion on such things.”

  “Meaning?” The nurse read the chart.

  “I don’t believe in pseudoscience.”

  “Ah, I understand. Of course, we don’t really know what’s going on with most coma patients. I’m just telling you what studies suggest.”

  Floyd wondered if a nurse was qualified to discuss a sensitive subject like that, but he couldn’t help but ask. He’d do anything for August. A deal with the devil would do. He didn’t mind. “What did these studies find?”

  “That keeping a coma patient’s mind busy is the most important thing to keep them alive, and hope for recovery,” she said. “The trick is to shock the brain into alertness, like an adrenalin shot we stab drug overdose patients with, or the patient’s probability of going into the rabbit hole of their own mind increases.”

  “Rabbit hole of the mind?”

  “She’ll be dreaming and making up stories in her mind. Nonsensical stories that will give her purpose in the beginning but drive her mad in the end.”

  “What happens to a coma patient if they get mad?”

  “I didn’t quite mean mad. What I meant is that the mind is a mystery. Sometimes it works in our favor. Sometimes it’s our greatest enemy.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  She put the chart back and smiled at him. “I’m only suggesting you read to her, Mr. Floyd. It will increase the chances she wakes up.”

  “You talk as if waking up from a coma is the usual.”

  “Not at all. To be honest, the odds are always slim. But it happens—happened—before. Why would we give up hope?”

  Floyd’s eyes shifted toward the TV set on mute. The nurse’s words rang in the back of his head: Why would we give up on hope?

  How was he so determined to save the last three passengers from the plane crash, but not believe in his wife’s recovery?

  “I have seen it with my own eyes,” the nurse continued. “I have seen patients blink an eye or wiggle a toe after hours of someone reading to them.”

  “You did?”

  “I know you don’t believe me, but…”

  “No.” Floyd waved a hand. “I don’t necessarily think it’s pseudoscience. I will begin reading to her.”

  “Excellent.” The nurse’s smile broadened.

  “One more thing, please?” Floyd said.

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like to meet with Dr. Hope and learn more about the reading thing.”

  “Of course. She is in an operation right now. Once she’s done, I’ll let her know.” The nurse nodded. “Have a nice day, Mr. Floyd.”

  Floyd waved then glanced at his mobile phone. No word from Dixon, which meant he hadn’t found the three passengers yet. A good opportunity to start reading to August. First, Floyd had to remember which book was her favorite. He wanted to read the closest words to her heart.

  If he could only remember the title.

  64

  The cries are near. Lovely baby. A newborn? I spot two nurses carrying an infant in the distance. I crouch and hide in the shadow of a bed on wheels left empty in the corridor. The nurse with the baby in her hands looks happy talking to the other nurse. I can’t see any more, though, so I wait until they disappear into another corridor.

  I tiptoe toward the nearest open room. There is the constant low drone of a machine thrumming through the walls. Also, the muffled voices of patients and nurses everywhere. Suddenly I realize this place isn’t as empty as I thought, but I can’t make out any words.

  Stopping before the first door, I slowly stretch my neck forward and peek inside. It’s a copy of mine. Same walls, windows, and big bed in the middle. Except there is another woman inside. She has cocoa-colored skin. She’s lying on the bed and breathing cautiously, as if a doctor instructed her to do so. Some sort of training, I assume. Not sure why I know this.

  The woman is wearing a gown like mine. There is one more important thing about her: she is pregnant. Probably in her last months.

  Gripping my razor harder, I’m not sure what to do. The woman looks alone in the room, but will she shout or push an emergency button if I approach her? Is she a friend or foe?

  This place still baffles me. A woman giving birth on an island where they burn women to death?

  Shit, I wasted time thinking and didn’t catch the woman noticing me. I freeze in place and show her my razor in case she is about to scream or call for help.

  She doesn’t. Her bulging eyes remind me of a rabbit’s. A scared rabbit.

  She raises a forefinger to her mouth and says, “Shhh.”

  So she doesn’t mind my venturing through the corridors? All she asks is that I don’t say a word.

  When I am about to take a step closer, she points at the corridor and shakes her head. She doesn’t want me to enter.

  Call me paranoid, but I stare into her eyes for a moment to assess if she is fooling me like the rest. I don’t think she is. How do I know? She projects fear in her eyes. I bet she has been whisked away into this awful place, not knowing what is really going on.

  “I need to ask you something,” I mouth.

  She grits her teeth but says nothing. All she does is point to the right side of the corridor.

  “Okay.” I nod, not sure what is waiting there for me. “Okay.”

  Further into the hall, I wonder if I should have insisted on talking, but what if she’d called for help then? She was kind enough to not expose me, but maybe she wouldn’t have been as kind if I’d risked her child’s safety.

  I stop by the next room. There is another woman. She is also pregnant. This one is pale white and reminds me of Ashlyn. She shushes me, just the same.

  I can’t stand this. I can’t stand being so confused.

  The pale woman points at the corridor. This one is really scared, tears in her eyes.

  I feel apprehensive as I see more pregnant women in each room I stop at, almost not giving a shit about the sound of my flapping feet anymore, or if I get caught. What the hell is going on here?

  The women keep directing me further and further away until I see my destination: an entrance to another section, labeled Operations.

  I hear the two nurses coming back. I duck as I see them cross the hall in the distance. They’re laughing casually and don’t head in my direction.

  Once they disappear, I stare at the operating room. This is where the women wanted me to go. Cautiously, I push the door, enough to glimpse inside. There is so much to see, but the closest is my obstacle to entering. Another nurse. I realize I have to disable her and claim her identity.

  The ease with which I wrap my hands around the nurse and choke her until she faints disturbs me. It disturbs me even more when I realize I’m also capable of doing it without making much noise. Have I done this before?

  It doesn’t take me much time. It’s almost effortless. I lock the door from inside and start undressing the poor girl. I don the nurse’s outfit, tucking the magnetic card and syringe in a pocket. I have a feeling I will be using them.

  I pull her to a metal cabinet full of bandages and stuff her inside, bending her body in strange ways. I ball up my hospital gown and throw it i
n as well. I can’t pull off the wristband, so I hide it under my sleeve.

  I peek through the keyhole. Outside, a nurse walks by with a crying baby in her arms. Time to go out and face whatever awaits me. I put on my poker face and open the door, following the nurse with the baby.

  Not many nurses are in this corridor, which is broad enough to handle two hospital beds side by side. The air conditioning here is almost freezing.

  The nurse turns right into a smaller corridor. I follow her. A nurse walking in the opposite direction greets me. I nod, realizing I’d better pick up one of those surgical masks, like the one she is wearing, from a nearby basket.

  I do. It makes my mission even easier. I only have to fake the look in my eyes, which most people aren’t good at reading anyway.

  The nurse enters a room. I slow down and pretend to keep walking ahead. From the corner of my eye, I glimpse her swiping a magnetic card through a slot in the wall, waiting for a door to slide open, and then passing through. I make sure none of the other nurses are around, then turn and enter the room, now empty.

  I lock the door to the room behind me, then pull out the magnetic card. A green light shimmers on the wall, and a hologram of a digital pad appears on the wall above it.

  I guess the card isn’t enough. Now I am stuck again.

  It occurs to me to use 1001 for the passcode, but it seems unlikely. What happens if it’s wrong and a warning sounds all over the place?

  I take a step back and scan the room. Maybe it holds the answer to the passcode. I don’t need to look long, because something on the wall to my right catches my eyes.

  A chart.

  It takes me some time to understand what it really is. At first, I see the baby names. Hundreds of baby names are assigned to different years. Popular names, it says in one column. Someone here is interested in popular baby names by year, starting from 1945. I don’t know why, but the back of my neck heats up.

  I near the chart on the wall, almost forgetting all about the door I want to enter. The names are endless. The chart becomes much more complicated when I focus on the details. One part interests me the most, though.