The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,2

asked, checking her faculties.

“CeCe,” the girl said wearily. “Cecilia.”

“Do you know where you are?” the nurse pressed.

CeCe looked around her. She saw nurses and doctors scurrying around and heard relentless moans coming from some homeless people on gurneys parked in the hallway.

“Hell,” she answered.

Cecilia looked up at the crucifix posted above the doorway and rethought her response. “The hospital.” She looked at the mud on her secondhand faded Vivian Westwood bodice, double bird claw ring—gunmetal gold pheasant talons gripping her middle and ring finger—leather leggings, and black ankle boots. “What am I doing here?”

“Technically, you drowned,” the nurse said. “You were found facedown in about an inch of water.”

“Oh, my God,” Cecilia cried, shortly before busting out into hysterics.

The nurse held her hand and tried to calm her before discovering that Cecilia wasn’t crying, but instead, laughing uncontrollably. So much so that she couldn’t catch her precious breath, further depleting her of oxygen.

“There’s nothing funny going on here.” Dr. Moss eyed the dirty residue and acrylic tubes emanating from her. “You almost died.”

Of course he was right, but she wasn’t laughing at the staff, just at the pathetic train wreck she’d become. Inhaling a puddle full of street gravy. How low can you get? Literally. Her friend Jim, who killed himself by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge and sucking down thick, murky East River “Chop Suey” water, sure would have gotten a kick out of this. The thought sobered her up enough to replay the evening, to visualize the guy she was making out with on the F train back to Brooklyn from the Bowery and whose name she couldn’t remember, and the gig she wasn’t paid for.

“Emergency contact?” the nurse asked.

Cecilia shook her head no. “Where’s my guitar?” She felt around the gurney like an amputee for a lost limb.

She was naturally beautiful, gifted with deep green almond eyes and sharp features from early childhood. Her dark hair was shoulder-length, carefully unkempt in an edgy style. Tall and lean, with long bones and muscles. She would’ve had an easier time becoming a model, she was often told, and not just the kind recruited at shopping mall kiosks by pretty part-time employees with tans and belly shirts—but the real deal. And fashion was important to her. But she just couldn’t stand the idea of becoming a billboard for someone else’s creativity. It was stressful enough hawking her own. If she was going to be a messenger for anyone, it might as well be herself. Besides, music and her look was what got her out of bed in the early afternoon. It was what she lived for.

“The admission desk will have a record of whatever you were brought in with,” Dr. Moss said. “I’ll check on your guitar when things settle down around here.”

“Do they ever?” she asked. The little smile she got out of him fueled her.

“Thanks,” Cecilia said sincerely, as the doctor left her to contemplate her situation. “You’re a goddamn angel.”

“No, I’m a doctor. I can only fix damaged bodies.”

7 “Doctor! Stat!” the charge nurse ordered, interrupting his attempt at a made-for-TV moralism. Without warning, madness burst through the ER entrance, signaling to Cecilia that it might be a while before she got the GPS on her instrument.

“Holy breast-fed Jesus,” CeCe said, trying to decipher what the bright flashes of light against the wall above her cloth divider could be. It was like nothing they’d ever seen, or heard, before. It was almost as if a lightning storm had made its way into triage. The yelling that accompanied the flashes sounded like a pack of famished beasts picking over bones. It was the blaze of camera flashes and the cursing of paparazzi, all jockeying for position. All trying to get a shot. THE shot.

“Lucy, over here!” one yelled.

“Lucy, one shot of you and your IV bag!” another demanded.

“I can’t see,” Lucy mumbled as she put her vintage blond mink jacket over her head to shield her eyes and shroud her face, before promptly passing out.

“Back the hell up,” a security guard at the visitor desk shouted repeatedly.

Neither Agnes nor Cecilia could make out much except what they could see beneath the hanging curtain and hearing the term “OD” thrown around. Articles of clothing began hitting the floor, first one spiked stiletto and then another, black leggings, a strapless push-up bra, Swarovski headband, vintage Chanel purse, and finally a silk dress that seemed to gently float down like a little black parachute.

“Looks like another recessionista’s charge account came due,”