Murder in Montmartre

Thursday night

LAURE TRIED TO SCREAM. Only garbled sounds came from her mouth. The green walls looked different, they’d moved her.

“Nurse, the patient’s agitated. Monitor the EKG. Now!”

A white-coated doctor stood over her, his prominent nose and plastic-coated badge catching the light from the blinking machines. “Laure, take it easy. Don’t struggle. Do you feel this?”

A pinprick. Cold.

She shook her head. Thought she shook her head. Only her thumb and index finger moved. She concentrated.

“Blink, Laure,” he said. “Once for yes, two times for no. Can you do that?”

Laure blinked twice.

“What’s that? You’re trying to say you didn’t feel it?”

She blinked two times again. Felt her eyes bulging from her head. Couldn’t he see her fingers moving on the white sheet. Look, she wanted to scream, my fingers. The doctor leaned forward, his stethoscope swinging over her chest under the white sheets.

Do it. Touch it. Show him.

But her hand didn’t respond. Her eyes followed the path where her fingers would go; she could almost feel how smooth the steel disk would feel. How cold to her touch. But like a stalled engine, trying to kick over, coughing, choking, sputtering to a stop, the rest of her didn’t cooperate.

“Give her two milligrams of Valium,” the doctor said. “We’ve got to control the tremors or the tubes will pop out.”

Look at my eyes . . . my eyes! She blinked twice in rapid succession. No more drugs, no more slowing my mind and words. She had to communicate. To tell them.

Find Aimée.

“Doctor, she’s trying to tell you something,” said the nurse. “That dose will knock her out.”

“Just do it, nurse.”

Laure pinched his stethoscope so hard it popped off his neck.