Eye Contact Read online

  By

  EYE CONTACT

  Copyright © 2018 by Stacey Grice

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by Caitlin at Editing by C. Marie

  Cover image photograph by Kristina Maor

  Cover model: Jenny Harper

  Cover designed by Murphy Rae Hopkins at Indie Solutions by Murphy Rae

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Vaughn

  1995

  It’s got to be at least ninety five degrees out here, I thought as the beads of sweat across my forehead started to become full enough to drip down my face. My mind raced as I walked home from school. Two miles or so in the hottest time of day was a small price to pay.

  Ms. Hattie’s not going to be happy when Mr. Leake calls to tell her I was missing from his fifth period class. Screw him. He can call her if he wants. Whatever punishment she’ll dole out can’t possibly be as bad as dealing with Stephan and his punk friends.

  They had been itching to pound my face in for days.

  How was I supposed to know that bench in the courtyard was off limits?

  When I was pushed in the hallway earlier, knocking my books out of my hands and scattering my folders and papers all over the halls for everyone to step on, I knew who had done it before even looking up. When the reflection of light gleaming off of the pocket knife peeking out caught my eye, I knew I was done for.

  Of course they’d pick on me. I was the new kid and only in sixth grade. I hadn’t even been there for three weeks yet and already I’d found trouble.

  I swear, I just can’t win.

  I thought I’d finally gotten out of hell. I had known my previous foster parents were creepy. They never did anything but smack me, curse, yell, occasionally spit at me—the usual bullshit—but when I was taken away a few weeks ago and placed in Ms. Hattie’s care, I didn’t argue. I ended up overhearing that the husband had been caught “inappropriately touching” one of the girls or some such crap. What a slime ball. She was only like six years old.

  Ms. Hattie seemed kind, and my new foster brother, though a little older than me, had been pretty cool so far. I should’ve told him about Stephan, but I didn’t want him to think I was a wuss. I should’ve just let the idiot cheat off my paper.

  In woodshop the previous week, I’d noticed him trying to look over at my quiz paper for answers and quickly covered my sheet, shielding it from his view. After later learning that it was his second year in eighth grade after not passing the year before, I regretted trying him like that. He was bigger than me with a nasty face that always looked like he was gritting his teeth. Now he’d found a new weakling to pick on. A few days later, I got pushed and cussed at for talking to a cute cheerleader named Molly in my gym class. I learned I wasn’t allowed to talk to her when all three of them cornered me in the boy’s bathroom and threw my backpack into the urinal after one of them pissed in it.

  Maybe I need to show him I’m not a pushover. Maybe I need to knock his ass out and prove I’m not one to get messed with, prove I can hold my own.

  No. I need to just bide my time. Stay safe and don’t rock the boat. I have a lot to figure out in this new school and this new house before making waves.

  This is definitely a nicer neighborhood than my last one, I thought as I looked around, admiring the Leave-It-To-Beaver style, a stark contrast with just the month before when I had to walk home from the bus stop in the ghetto while making sure I didn’t give the wrong look to the dealers on the corner as I passed them. In Ms. Hattie’s neighborhood, everyone had a nice yard and a garage for two cars.

  I never even saw them, never heard a thing. One second I was looking forward and thanking my lucky stars for the pretty neighborhood then WHACK. It felt like a two-by-four had just been swung across my back. I fell to the ground, squirming and gasping to try to catch my breath, and a shadowed figure came into my vision, the glare from the sun up above making it impossible to see who it was. Then he spoke.

  “I don’t know who you think you are, maggot, but you messed with the wrong guy.”

  Stephan pulled me up off the ground by my shirt and spit in my face before the first punch struck my jaw. Almost immediately, I couldn’t see anything. Fists rained down onto my face, jaw, and nose, plowing into my stomach until I couldn’t stand up anymore. Then the kicks came, the voices of the two friends who followed him around like puppies taunting and egging him on in the background. I faintly heard laughing, felt more spit hit my cheek, and thought it was over, but then he topped it off with more pain by reaching down to grab my head with both of his hands and slamming it back down into the concrete.

  Everything went black for a moment—I really didn’t know how long—and then I heard her. A girl was talking to me with a calm singsong voice, muddled and far away, but I could feel her touch like she was right there next to me.

  “Don’t move anything. I saw them hitting you and they slammed your head down pretty hard,” she said with a breathy voice. I tried to get control of my breathing but couldn’t inhale without coughing, which made my head feel like it was going to explode.

  “I called 911. They’re coming to help you. Do you live here? Close to here? What’s your name?”

  I could barely keep my eyes open anymore. Everything was fadi
ng in and out and the room was swirling, but I wasn’t in a room—I was outside. I couldn’t focus on anything.

  “Look at me. Please try to open your eyes,” she pleaded.

  I looked up and saw the prettiest girl I had ever seen hunched over me. Her wispy blonde hair was blowing around her face and her eyes were light…maybe some shade of blue, bluish with little specs of… I closed my eyes just for a second; the light was too bright.

  “No, please keep your eyes open. You can’t pass out.”

  I tried my hardest to keep them open, not wanting to disappoint her. She looked like a kid, maybe even younger than me. The harder I tried, the heavier my lids got, and things were fading to black again.

  “Keep eye contact with me. Just keep looking right here,” she urged, bringing her face closer to mine. The sun was completely behind her head and I could see her better. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. “Keep eye contact.” She lightly touched the side of my head, her fingers slightly in my hair to keep me still. “Keep looking. Keep eye contact. They’re almost here. I can hear the sirens.”

  Her breath smelled like chocolate chip cookies and her skin was like a porcelain doll. She had to be an angel, which meant I was dying. Those jerks had beaten me to death—actual death. I’m going to be in so much trouble.

  “Keep eye contact. That’s good. Just keep looking right at me.” Ms. Hattie was going to kill me if they hadn’t already. The sirens were loud and growing louder the closer they got. I tried to focus on her face. I watched her lips moving. “Keep eye contact. Keep eye contact.” She kept saying it over and over, almost like she was trying to remind herself as much as me. Her eyes were mesmerizing, even with as much pain as I was in. I was staring up at her, maintaining eye contact just as she instructed, then suddenly she was gone.

  Where did she go?

  I felt hands on me and heard male voices, grown-up voices, and then I heard her again. I couldn’t see her anymore but I could hear her.

  “Three boys…hit him with a baseball bat…punched his face…kicked him over and over…ran away…bleeding…passed out…tried to keep him awake…I don’t know his name…”

  It’s Vaughn. My name is Vaughn.

  I wanted to tell her. I wanted to know her name too, but the words wouldn’t come out. The men put a mask on my face, covering my mouth and nose, and rolled my body onto my right side, the sharp pain in my ribs igniting a fire in my chest. They rolled me back over onto some sort of board, and then they lifted me up and carried me away…away from her, away from my angel.

  Chapter 1

  Andie

  Present day

  “Dr. Fine?”

  I heard the words faintly, coming from far away, my mind hazy inside a head that felt as if it weighed fifty pounds. I heard it again—“Dr. Fine!”—closer this time, accompanied by knocking. Loud thumping knocks pervaded the closet-sized room.

  “Yeah?” I replied, groggy and annoyed.

  The voice on the other side of the door, female and shrill, replied with an urgency in her words: “We need you now. We’ve been paging you.”

  I squeezed my eyes tightly closed before rolling onto my side and fumbling for my pager on the bedside table. Sure enough, the light was blinking. A wave of panic swept through my body and I jolted to an upright position.

  “Come in,” I shouted to the girl pounding on the other side of the call room door. It swung open and familiar ceil blue scrubs came into view with a young nurse filling them.

  “Thank God,” she said, clearly relieved.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We’ve got an MVA coming in, SUV versus motorcycle, EMS is en route, two-minute ETA. Bowers needs you in the bay now,” she replied with little space in between her words and pinched brows. The onslaught of acronyms rattled around in my brain, all making perfect sense.

  “I’m up,” I declared with a sleepy drone to my voice, swinging my feet to the side of the bed and rubbing my eyes, willing them to open and focus. The young nurse left me to get up, and the door barely clicked closed before I was up and jogging toward the emergency room trauma bay.

  It was a Sunday around two o’clock in the morning, hour twenty-one of a twenty-four-hour shift from hell, and the onslaught of emergency room and trauma patients from Saturday night had taken a toll. I’d barely had a moment to sit down, much less sleep, but duty called, and this one sounded potentially serious. Tightening my frazzled hair into a messy topknot, I rounded the corner just in time to see the blinding red lights of the ambulance pulling into the driveway of the ER. Dr. Lance Bowers, a colleague of mine who was also on call, stood to the side expectantly and looked at me with concern when I slowed my brisk walk to stand next to him.

  “You look like shit, Fine,” he scoffed.

  I didn’t dignify his insult with a response, hoping to prevent further conversation. He was smug on a normal day, so I didn’t want to encourage him. He had been working all night as well and knew the hell we had endured thus far. As the gurney rolled down the hall toward us with rescue personnel surrounding it, resuscitating the patient as they moved, the metallic smell of blood wafted into my nose. “What have we got?”

  “Thirty-five-year-old male, struck by an SUV while riding his motorcycle, thrown from the bike and landed in an embankment on the highway.” As the paramedic recited vitals and details pertinent to the man’s condition, I sprang into action, shining a pen light into one eye at a time to check the reaction of his pupils. The weirdest feeling came over me as I looked into his eyes, like…have I…do I know this guy? “Blunt force trauma to the head, chest, and abdomen with systemic hypotension after two liters of normal saline, pulse is thready and he’s tachy at one forty,” the paramedic continued as I worked, shaking off the weird familiarity, assessing him from head to toe, soaking in every detail my photographic memory could absorb amidst all the chaos surrounding me. “Initial GCS at the scene was eleven but he decompensated en route and had intermittent loss of consciousness,” the EMT explained. I knew that wasn’t great, but it could have been worse.

  “I’m getting eight,” Dr. Bowers shouted. “Was he wearing a helmet?”

  “He was, but there was visible damage to it,” he responded.

  As additional IV lines were placed by the nurses and his remaining clothing was cut off, I combed over his body, palpating his abdomen, pausing at his left upper quadrant. Dr. Bowers was just giving orders for a stat CT scan of the head when I finally spoke.

  “It’s going to have to wait. He needs to get into the OR,” I declared. “He’s bleeding internally.” My facial expression felt flat, my movements calm and deliberate, the tone in my voice level and steadfast. It was never productive to panic, and sounding frantic only put everyone else into a panicked state. “Get an X-ray and trauma panel and hang two units of O-neg. He needs to be cross-matched for six more units.”

  Bowers scoffed dismissively. “His BP is too stable for that. We need to assess this brain injury first,” he said with ridicule in his mocking voice.

  “It won’t be for long,” I retorted, unaffected by his arrogance. “He’s bleeding into his abdomen from somewhere. I suspect a laceration to his spleen or small bowel.”

  “No disrespect, Fine, but you’re tired and I’m insisting we go to CT,” he announced just as the sharp dinging of the telemetry monitor began chiming loudly over the noisy activity of the trauma bay.

  “I’m not going to argue with you about this. There’s not enough time,” I declared.

  “His pressure is crashing,” one of the nurses yelled. “Sixty-eight over thirty.”

  “V-fib!” the ER nurse shouted.

  Dr. Bowers audibly cursed in defeat and instructed them to start CPR.

  Shock pad stickers were placed on his chest as one nurse immediately climbed onto the stretcher to perform chest compressions. With no less than nine people encircling the bed, all of them doing something different to save the patient’s life, the noise level was deafening. Respi
ratory called for a pause in the compressions to place a tube down his throat, and the entire room stilled. His heart rhythm was analyzed by the defibrillator, and a nurse reiterated that he was in V-fib.

  “Everybody clear the field,” Dr. Bowers ordered. “I’m clear, you’re clear…deliver shock.” With a push of a button, two hundred joules of focused electricity were delivered to the pads, jolting the patient, but there was no change in the heart rhythm displayed on the monitor. “Resume compressions! Push one milligram of epi now,” Dr. Bowers instructed. “And where’s the damn blood?”

  Emergency staff bustled and worked on the patient like a well-oiled machine, the code running for three or four more minutes until their efforts were rewarded by the piercing of a rhythmic beeping sound. The collective feeling of relief on their faces when the heartbeat presented back on the monitor was palpable.

  “He’s hypotensive. Start him on pressers and get ultrasound in here,” Bowers ordered.

  With the ultrasound already on standby, the wand was quickly applied to the abdominal cavity. Within seconds of visualization, he barked out the plan.

  I was already jogging out of the room toward the operating room to scrub in when I heard Bowers shout, “Let’s get him into the OR now. He’s not stable enough for a CT.”

  Chapter 2

  Andie

  I could hear the rattle of the wheels as the stretcher approached. Voices were getting louder and the beeping of the heart monitor pulsing the sounds of sinus tachycardia resonated. We were open and counted for an exploratory laparotomy, ready to discover just what kind of train wreck was lurking inside this man’s abdomen and causing all the internal bleeding. I suspected it was the spleen, maybe the pancreas, even possibly the small bowel, though the latter was not as likely. I hoped it was the spleen. I’d done seventeen splenectomies with one hundred percent success rate—nine during my surgical residency, four during my trauma fellowship, and five since. I knew the procedure like the back of my hand. It was the unknown that made me anxious. I pictured the last patient I’d had on the table, abdomen wide open and retractors in place, revealing to me all of the internal organs. Like a picture perfectly displayed in my head, I could see everything in its place and recited the steps in my mind.