Chapter 13: One Number

I woke to a monitor beeping and the smell of floor cleaner.

The Bureau clinic had one bed with a window, and I was in it.

Tiernan sat in a plastic chair with his sleeves rolled up, still in last night's shirt.

"You didn't go home," I said.

"No."

"How long was I out?"

"Nine hours. Your heart started on the first try, and the doctor says that shouldn't have happened."

The doctor came in behind him with a clipboard and looked at me over his glasses.

"Your heart stopped for most of a minute," he said. "It won't do that twice and come back. I won't tell you more than that."

"What about the number?" I said.

He glanced at the window glass, where my face hung in the morning light, and then at his clipboard.

"I treat charts, Miss Fairclough. I don't see numbers on girls." He left and shut the door.

I looked at the glass again.

Over my reflected head, thin and white, it said 43.

"It's mine," I said. "It's Cora's. It's the same one."

Tiernan took a worn brown folder from the floor and set it on my blanket.

The tab said 3-7-1.

"My sister's Return file," he said. "I've read the last page a hundred times, and I never understood the line in the margin."

He opened it and turned it toward me.

The handwriting was a clerk's, small and slanted.

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