Chapter 13: The Patient That Woke Up
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The call came at 3:17 a.m.
Not the time for business.
Not the hour for emergencies you survive.
Elara sat upright in bed before the second ring.
Her phone glowed on the nightstand, face down. Unknown number.
She answered anyway.
"This is Elara Blackthorn."
A breath on the line.
Then a voice—female, clinical, rattled at the edges.
> "Mrs. Blackthorn… this is Dr. Laramie from East Point Recovery. You're listed as emergency contact for Celine Quinn."
Elara's stomach dropped. Cold. Sharp.
"What happened?"
"She—" A pause. Shuffling papers. A voice lowered, as if afraid the room might overhear. "She's awake."
Silence.
Not disbelief.
Something colder.
Elara closed her eyes.
"Fully?"
"She's conscious. Responsive. But not… consistent. There's disorientation. Verbal response fluctuates. She's asking for someone."
"Who?"
Another pause.
"She won't say. Just keeps repeating one thing."
"What is it?"
"She keeps saying, 'Not him. Not again. Don't let him touch my eyes.'"
Elara sat frozen.
Her hand tightened around the phone.
"I'll be there in twenty minutes."
She didn't wait for a reply.
Didn't change clothes.
She just stood, slipped on her coat, and left the apartment without a word to Caelum—because some ghosts return without knocking.
And Celine Quinn had just remembered how to scream.
East Point Recovery sat on the edge of the river, where the city thinned out and silence became something manufactured. The security gates opened at Elara's face. The staff didn't ask questions. Her name still carried gravity—and the scars behind it.
The nurse didn't speak as she guided Elara through the pale, humming corridors. Fluorescent light painted everything sterile. Familiar.
Wrong.
They stopped outside room 207.
"She's calm right now," the nurse said, voice barely above a whisper. "But it comes in waves. She's… not who you remember."
Elara nodded once.
Then opened the door.
The room was dim. Just a bedside lamp casting an amber pool across the white sheets.
Celine sat upright.
Awake.
Her hair was longer now, tangled. Her frame thinner. But her face—
Her face was still hers.
And her eyes—those sharp, intelligent, cruelly beautiful eyes—locked on Elara the second she stepped inside.
"El."
Elara's heart stopped.
It wasn't just the voice. It was the tone. Not surprised. Not fragile.
Like she'd only been waiting.
"I'm here," Elara said.
She stepped forward, not knowing whether to sit or kneel or scream. Her hand hovered above her sister's.
Celine tilted her head.
"Did you do it?" she asked softly.
Elara blinked. "Do what?"
"Did you burn it down?"
Elara swallowed hard. "Yes."
Celine smiled—slow, strange.
"Then why," she whispered, "do I still feel the fire in me?"
Her hands trembled under the sheets.
Not with fear.
With something much worse.
Like her body remembered being a weapon.
Even if her mind couldn't name who lit the fuse.
Elara didn't move.
She couldn't.
Celine's words lingered in the air like gunpowder: "Why do I still feel the fire in me?"
It wasn't metaphor.
It wasn't poetic.
It was clinical. Precise. A diagnosis only the patient could feel.
"Celine," Elara said gently, "do you remember the accident?"
Her sister blinked.
The smile vanished.
"I remember them." Her voice was calm. Too calm. "Not the crash. Not the room. Just the injections. And the smell."
Elara's chest tightened. "What smell?"
Celine's eyes flicked up to the corner of the ceiling. As if something watched them from above.
"Copper. Citrus. Like blood pretending to be clean."
Elara sat.
Her voice was steady, but her fingers clenched the edge of the bed.
"Do you know who did it?"
Celine's lips parted. Then closed.
"I knew once," she said. "But it's… frayed. Like a page torn out."
A tremor ran through her hands. She turned them over like she didn't trust them.
"Every time I try to remember, I see a number."
"What number?"
Celine looked straight at her.
"Six. Zero. Five."
Elara froze.
That number wasn't random.
It was the internal security designation for the basement archive at the Blackthorn estate.
The place where Elara found the sealed files.
The place where Celine was never supposed to enter.
"Did they take you there?" Elara whispered.
"I don't remember stairs," Celine murmured. "But I remember going down."
Her voice wavered.
"El… if they erased part of me… what did they leave behind?"
Elara took her hand.
Held it tight.
"I don't know," she said softly.
"But I'm going to find out."
She stayed longer than she was allowed.
The doctors didn't protest. Not when they saw her name. Not when they saw her face. Something about Elara Blackthorn made people step aside now.
But even silence has a curfew.
When she finally left Celine's room, the hallway felt colder. Stretched. Like the lights were just slightly dimmer than when she arrived.
She passed the nurses' station. No one looked up.
Something prickled at her neck.
Not fear.
Not yet.
But memory.
The kind that whispered: You've been watched before.
And when she reached the parking garage, it wasn't the sound of her heels on concrete that made her stop.
It was the lack of any other sound at all.
She turned slowly.
Empty garage.
Then—
A phone rang.
Not hers.
A burner tucked behind the rear wheel of her car.
She picked it up. No number on the screen.
Just: Incoming call.
She answered.
Said nothing.
A voice on the other end broke the silence.
"You should've let her sleep."
The call cut.
No trace.
Elara stood there, holding a phone that didn't belong to her, with a warning that came too late.
Because the patient wasn't the only one who woke up.
The watchers had never left.
And now they knew Celine was back.
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