Murder in the Bastille

Tuesday, 1:00 A.M.

A MONOTONOUS BEEPING SLOWLY penetrated Aimée’s consciousness, layer by layer. It was as though her head was stuffed with cotton and her mouth full of dry gauze. Her head felt fat, smashed, swollen. Constant aching, jarring, and then a distant thudding.

Voices boomed over a static-laced loudspeaker and something wet rubbed Aimée’s cheek. She swatted it.

“We’ve stabilized the bleeding in your brain, mademoiselle,” a voice said.

“What do you mean?” At least that’s what she meant to say, but her words slurred. She couldn’t focus. Everything seemed steamy and gray, blanketed by fog.

“Good thing your friend brought you in. Any longer and you wouldn’t have made it.”

“But where am I?”

“L’hôpital Saint Antoine. Alors! The neurosurgeon repaired the nasty vein wall in your brain that had collapsed.”

His words faded and blurred.

“You have a venous malformation,” he was saying. “Congenital, not something you’d ever know you had. But pressure on your neck caused the vein to blow.”

She’d dropped out of pre-med at the Ecole des Médecins but remembered brain hemorrhages. “What do you mean. . . . I’ve had brain surgery?”

“It’s all done by threading the catheter up to the collapsed vein and embolizing it. No cutting. Count yourself more than lucky on this one!”

“But doctor. . . .”

“Shhh . . . take a little nap,” he said. “This will help the pain.”

She felt a prick in her arm, then icy cold.