Chapter 3

The smell hits me first. Salt and rot. Wet wood. Old smoke. When I open my eyes, I’m standing in a narrow hallway with warped floorboards that groan under my bare feet. A strip of gray daylight leaks in under a door at the far end, flickering like a heartbeat. This isn’t the truck. I look down. I’m in a thin white T‑shirt and sleep shorts, no shoes, no jacket. Goosebumps race up my legs. “Where are we?” I whisper. “You’ve been here,” a man’s voice answers from behind me. “You just keep pretending you haven’t.” I spin. He’s leaning against the cracked wall like he belongs to it. The same man. Tall. Dark T‑shirt, jeans, damp hair pushed back like he’s just come in from the rain. His face is a blur around the edges, like I’m not allowed to focus too long, but his eyes—those I feel more than see. Dark, tired, fixed on me like I’m the only thing in the room that matters. My chest aches. “You moved us,” I say. “This isn’t the highway.” He pushes off the wall and walks past me, shoulder brushing mine. Electricity zips down my arm. He smells like rain and gasoline and something warm I can’t name. “The road gets boring,” he says. “Come on.” He doesn’t look back to see if I follow. I do. The hallway opens into a small room with low ceilings and peeling blue paint. Light spills in from a big window, but the glass is so dirty it turns everything green. I hear waves, muted, like they’re trapped under the floor. An old sofa sags against the wall. A rusted space heater. A crooked bookshelf. And across from the window, a dresser with a tall, freestanding mirror. The mirror is cracked from top to bottom. I walk toward it like it’s pulling me. “Careful,” he says quietly. “You cut yourself on that once.” “I don’t remember that,” I answer, but my voice sounds thin. He stops beside me, close enough that the heat of his arm seeps through my T‑shirt. Together we face the mirror. For a second, all I see is a warped, doubled version of myself. Hair tangled. Eyes ringed in purple. There’s a dark smear along my jaw I don’t recognize. I reach up. My fingers come away red. “Blood,” I breathe. His hand closes around my wrist before I can freak out. His grip is firm, grounding. “Not from tonight,” he says. “From before.” “Before what?” My throat is dry. His reflection looks at mine. We don’t meet each other’s eyes, only our own. “Before you decided I was better off erased.” Something cracks deeper than the glass. “I didn’t decide anything,” I snap, twisting my wrist. “I was in a car accident. I lost time. That’s not a choice, that’s—” “Convenient?” he offers softly. “For them. For you.” Anger flares hot and sharp. “Who the hell are they? You keep saying that like—” He cuts me off by turning my wrist over. In the mirror, my palm is pale, the crescent marks from my nails still raw. He brushes his thumb along them, and the sting spikes, real and bright. “You did this in the truck,” he says. “You did it again when you woke up. Pain is how your body tries to remember. You won’t let it.” I yank my hand back. “Stop talking like you know me better than I do.” His gaze finally meets mine in the fractured glass, and something inside me tilts. There’s history in his eyes. Grief. Fury. A tenderness so deep it feels like a lie. “Em,” he says, voice low. “I know you better than anyone. I’m the one you left to die, remember?” The room seems to inhale. I shake my head. “No. No, I— I don’t—” He steps behind me. I feel him at my back, his chest against my shoulder blades, his breath hot on my neck. My knees almost give out. He lifts his hand and points at the mirror. “Look.” The cracked glass ripples. For a heartbeat, it’s not my reflection. It’s a photograph, faded and washed out. Three figures shoulder to shoulder, arms slung around each other. A woman with my hair. A boy with his blurred face. Another shape I can’t make out. My stomach rolls. “What is that?” I whisper. “Our mess,” he says. “Our beginning. Our end.” The image shivers and disappears. It’s me again. Just me. Pale, shaking, smeared with blood that doesn’t exist. I spin around. “Tell me your name.” His jaw tightens. “You know it.” “I don’t. I don’t know you. I don’t know this house. I don’t know what you want from me except to scare the shit out of me every night.” His eyes flash. For the first time, he looks truly angry. “What I want,” he says, “is for you to stop pretending you’re innocent. To stop letting them convince you you’re crazy instead of culpable.” The words slam into me. “I am not—” My voice breaks. “I was a kid. My mom died. My boyfriend disappeared. I’ve done the best I can. I—” His hand comes up, fingers brushing my throat, the underside of my jaw. Not choking. Just there. Holding me in place. “You watched me bleed,” he murmurs. “Like this.” Suddenly we’re not in the house. We’re back on wet asphalt, the world sideways and screaming. Red lights strobe across his face. Rain needles my skin. He’s on the ground, his T‑shirt soaked dark at the chest. My hands are on the wound, slippery, useless. “Em,” he gasps, grabbing my wrist. “Don’t let go.” “I’m not,” I choke out. “I’m not, I swear—” But the sirens are getting louder. Someone’s shouting my name. My mother is sobbing. There’s smoke, the sharp, oily stink of gasoline. “I can’t—” “You did,” he says. The world jerks. The house slams back into place. I’m on my knees on the warped floorboards, hands pressing down on his chest. Blood seeps warm between my fingers, sticky, hot. He coughs, red bubbling at his lips. “You left me,” he rasps. “You always leave. Then you wake up and pretend it was just a dream.” “I’m here,” I say wildly. “I’m here right now, I’m not leaving—” “Until you do.” His hand finds mine, clamps around it. His grip is ice‑cold now. “Wake up, Em,” he whispers. “Let’s see what you do this time.” The word hits me like a slap. Wake. The room drops away. I jerk upright in my bed with a strangled sound, hands spasming. My heart hammers against my ribs like it’s trying to break out. For a second I can’t see, can’t breathe. Then my bedroom bleeds into focus. Cheap blinds. Cracked ceiling. The red numbers of my alarm clock screaming 4:12 a.m. My palms are burning. I fumble for the lamp, knock it over, curse. My hands are slick. My stomach pitches. When I finally get the light on, I stare. My fingers are stained dark. Not bright red—brown, tacky. My brain scrambles for rational explanations. Nosebleed. Old scab. Something I touched. I look closer. It’s just…nothing. Dry skin, maybe. A smear of rust from the metal frame I must have grabbed. Under the yellow lamp it looked worse. My vision is still shaking from the dream. “Get a grip,” I mutter, shoving off the covers. The floor is cold. My legs are jelly. I stumble to the bathroom and flip on the light. My reflection looks like it crawled out of a grave—hollow eyes, tangled hair, the ghost of a red smear along my jaw, exactly where it was in the mirror. For a second, I can’t move. “It’s just in your head,” I tell the girl in the mirror. “Just PTSD. Sleep deprivation. Whatever label they gave you.” Her mouth doesn’t move. I lunge for the sink, scrub my hands until the skin goes pink, then raw. I scrub my jaw. Nothing comes off. Of course it doesn’t. There was nothing there to begin with. The nausea doesn’t go away. By the time my shift starts, I’m running on coffee and adrenaline. The ER is already buzzing—monitors beeping, phones ringing, voices overlapping. Noise is good. Noise is safe. Noise leaves no room for whispers. “Morning,” Mia says, falling into step beside me as I tie my hair back. “You look like ten kinds of death.” “Thanks,” I mutter. “You’re radiant as always.” She snorts. “You sleep at all?” “Define sleep.” She studies me, expression shifting from amused to concerned. “You want my extra melatonin gummies? They taste like trash but they’ll knock you on your ass.” “I can’t be groggy on shift.” “You’re already groggy on shift.” Before I can snap back, the ambulance bay doors slam open. Paramedics rush in a gurney. Young male, maybe early twenties, soaked in rainwater and blood. Chest wound. The sheet under him is crimson. My vision tunnels. “GSW to the chest,” one of the medics barks. “Found in a parking lot, no ID, unresponsive en route. BP crashing.” My feet move on autopilot. Gloves. Gown. Position at the side of the bed. I can do this in my sleep—apparently I already do. We cut away his shirt. The wound gapes, ugly, center‑mass. Exactly where my hands pressed in the dream. My palms start to sweat inside the gloves. “Emily?” Noah’s voice cuts through the noise. Calm. Controlled. “You with us?” He appears at the foot of the bed, mask around his neck, hair damp from the mist outside. His eyes flick to me, sharp, assessing. I force my brain to focus. “Yeah. What do you need?” “Pressure there,” he says, nodding at the wound. “Hard. Don’t let up.” I press down. Blood wells up around my fingers, warm, sticky. My stomach flips. The room sways. For a second, it’s not the ER. It’s the warped floor of the old house. It’s wet asphalt. It’s— “Em,” Noah says quietly, close to my ear now. “Breathe.” My head jerks up. He never calls me that. Not like that. His hand closes around my wrist, steadying the angle of my pressure. Firm. Familiar. The exact way the man in the dream grabbed me. My heart spikes. “Don’t let go,” Noah says. The words slam into me. Same cadence. Same quiet urgency. I freeze. Heat floods my face, my chest, shame and terror and something I don’t have a name for. I look at him, really look, and for half a second his features blur—jawline softening, eyes darkening, the edges of his face going indistinct like the man in the house. I blink hard. It’s Noah again. Of course it’s Noah. “Stay with me, Emily,” he says, voice low. “Right here. This patient needs you.” I realize my hands have gone slack. “Shit.” I bear down harder. The patient moans faintly, then goes quiet. The monitor screeches. “V‑fib,” someone calls. “Charge to two hundred,” Noah orders. His eyes flick to me again, a flash of anger or worry—I can’t tell. “You good?” “I’m fine,” I lie. We work. Compressions. Shocks. Meds. The rhythm of it drags me forward, out of the fog. Eventually, mercifully, we get a pulse. They wheel him off toward the OR. My gloves are sticky. My scrubs are splattered. My lungs burn. In the relative quiet that follows, my legs try to fold. I catch myself on a counter. My hands won’t stop shaking. “Hey.” Noah appears at my side, close enough that I can see the faint white line of an old scar on his wrist, just below his watchband. A thin, pale curve. Exactly where the dream man’s fingers dug into mine on the road. My stomach drops. “You almost lost it in there,” he says softly. “I didn’t,” I snap, too fast. “I’m fine.” He studies me, his eyes searching my face like he’s looking for something specific. I have the sudden, insane urge to ask him if he remembers bleeding out on wet pavement. If he’s ever stood in a rotting beach house that doesn’t exist. Instead I swallow and say, “Long night.” He hesitates. Then, “You ever going to tell me what’s really going on?” The question lands like a dare. For a second, I almost say it. I almost blurt, I dream about a man who knows you. I wake up with bruises I can’t explain. I think I watched you die and left you there. But his expression is too careful. Too clinical. The distance in his eyes slices me open. “No,” I say. “Because there’s nothing.” “Right.” He nods once, that hard little professional nod. “Well, if ‘nothing’ almost gets you or a patient killed again, I’ll have to pull you from the floor.” It stings more than it should. “You’d love that.” His jaw tightens. “You think I enjoy watching you fall apart?” “I think you enjoy being right,” I shoot back. “About whatever you’ve already decided I am.” Something flickers across his face—hurt, maybe, or guilt—but then he shuts it down. “Get some water,” he says, stepping back. “And change your scrubs. You’re scaring the families.” He walks away before I can answer. The rest of the shift blurs. I move through it on autopilot, like I’m watching someone else wear my body. By the time I clock out, the sky is a flat sheet of gray. Rain spits against my face as I step outside. The air smells like the hallway of that house. Damp wood. Salt. I wrap my coat tighter and head home. In my apartment, the silence roars. I kick off my shoes, drop my bag, and go straight to my notebook. The one I swore I wouldn’t keep adding to. I flip to a clean page. Who are you? I write. What is that house? What did I do? My hand pauses. The pen hovers. Why do you feel like— I stop. Like home. I slam the notebook shut before I can finish it, heart hammering. This is insane. He is a nightmare. A symptom. Not a person I can…miss. My phone buzzes on the table. Mia: u alive? I type back: define alive. Mia: girl. drinks after shift tomorrow. no excuses. I send a thumbs‑up I don’t mean, then drag myself to the shower. Hot water pounds my skin, but I can’t wash off the feeling of his hands over mine. Noah’s in the trauma bay. The dream man’s in the truck. In the house. On the floor, bleeding. Don’t let go. I curl my fingers into fists against the tile. When I finally collapse into bed, I tell myself I’m too exhausted to dream. That my brain will just…shut down. Black out. Instead, the second my eyes close, I’m back on that cracked blue floor, kneeling in a sticky pool that soaks through my jeans. The old house groans around us. Wind rattles the window. Somewhere, waves slam into rock. He’s lying on his back now, breathing ragged, T‑shirt ripped open. The wound in his chest is worse. I can see bone. “No,” I say. “No, this already happened.” He laughs, low and rough. “We’ve barely started.” I press my hands to the wound. Blood seeps between my fingers. “Why are you making me watch this?” I whisper. “I can’t change it. I don’t even know if you’re real.” His hand shoots up, grabs my wrist. The same scarred curve as Noah’s, only deeper, angrier. He pulls me down until my face is inches from his. His eyes lock on mine, burning. “You really think this is about me?” he says. “About whether I’m real?” My breath stutters. “Isn’t it?” He shakes his head, a tiny, painful movement. “This is about you,” he says. “About what you did. About what they did with it. You want proof I’m not just in your head?” I nod, unable to look away. “Tomorrow,” he whispers. “You’re going to see me bleed again. In your world. Same place. Same way. And this time, you won’t be able to pretend you didn’t know it was coming.” My stomach drops. “What does that mean?” He smiles, slow and broken, blood on his teeth. “You’ll see.” The floor lurches. The walls warp. The mirror in the other room shatters with a deafening crack. I wake up with a scream lodged in my throat, my sheets twisted around my legs, my T‑shirt damp with sweat. My phone is buzzing on the nightstand. An unknown number flashes on the screen. I fumble it up to my ear. “Hello?” A man’s voice, low and steady and horribly familiar, slides through the speaker. “Em,” he says. “It’s starting again. You might want to be on shift for this one.” Static crackles. The line goes dead. On my lock screen, a new notification pops up—breaking news. A push alert. Multi‑car pileup on I‑5. Multiple critical injuries. The thumbnail photo is a stretch of rain‑slick highway. And a smashed, twisted guardrail I know by heart.