Blink Once by Cylin Busby Page B

lift my arms so to have someone else do it was good. Her hands were soft and warm and she was holding me, guiding my arm. “That’s it, perfect, keep your arm straight now, don’t bend at the elbow, nice and straight. See? You just straightened it yourself, nice job!” I had sent a signal to my arm to be straight, like she said, but I wasn’t sure if it got there. Guess it did. “Other arm now,” she said, moving over to my other side and lifting that arm. “And out now,” she said, extending my arm toward the wall. “Controlled movements, as much as you can.” She leaned in and talked really loud, close to my ear. The problem is not my hearing, I wanted to tell her. The problem is everything else.
    As she moved my limbs around, the dream came back to me. Allie’s room, Nurse Norris and the guy. What did it mean? Why did I keep dreaming about this guy? Then I had a horrifying realization: What if I was seeing the future? What if I banged my head so badly in the accidentthat now I could see what was about to happen? I remembered a TV movie where that happened to someone. He was hit by lightning and got psychic powers. Did that mean that Nurse Norris or Allie was going to be attacked by this guy? What color hair did the girl have in the other dream, the one where he was hurting that girl? I couldn’t remember, couldn’t focus on anything in the dream but him.
    The therapist pulled the bed up into a sitting position really slowly. “We don’t want you to get light-headed.” When I was almost sitting up straight, I did feel a little queasy. Weird what will happen if you lie down for a few weeks.
    “We’ll stay like this for a couple of minutes. This is part of your therapy. I know that sounds funny, but it’s going to take you some practice to get used to sitting up again.” She raised the bed a little higher, so that I was sitting straight up. I realized this wasn’t the bed I was in before. Sometime in the night, or early this morning, they had moved me into a different bed, one without the straps.
    “And there you go. You’re going to stay just like this for about ten minutes. I’m going to get your chair now, and we’re going for a walk, okay?” She kept talking really loud like I was a little kid. I blinked yes at her and she left to get the chair.
    She hadn’t been gone a few moments when Olivia opened the accordion wall between our rooms. “
Pssssst,
isyour lady friend gone?” She giggled, then stopped suddenly. “Geez, you’re sitting up? Seriously?” She walked into the room, taking a quick look around and pulling her IV stand in behind her when she saw the coast was clear. “New bed, too? So, who is this miracle worker and what exactly did she do to you, huh?” She plopped into the chair and pulled it over. “Tell me everything!” She put her hand under her chin like she was really waiting for me to tell her something entertaining. I had missed her yesterday. It was just nice to see her face.
    “Blink once if physical therapy is as boring as it sounds,” she said, pulling her knees up under her robe and curling into the chair.
    I blinked once. “More boring than a sponge bath?”
    I blinked once, then twice. Undecided. I sort of liked the sponge bath.
    “We have a lot of catching up to do, mister. I’m dying to hear what your doctor said, good news?” she whispered.
    Shit, did that mean she hadn’t heard everything the doctor and my parents had said in the hallway yesterday? I had been counting on her filling in the blanks for me.
    “I was trying my best to ‘accidentally’ go down the hall when the specialist was here, but I couldn’t manage it. Believe it or not, my mom showed up yesterday, right when they took you for your MRI. She wanted to hang out forever; she’s going on a cruise so she’ll be gone for two weeks.”Olivia shrugged. “Bad timing, I missed the whole thing. So fill me in, good news? Blink once.”
    I blinked once, because I did consider it good news.