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to remember is a good sign that if you do have one, it is not severe.”
    “Who did this to you?” Another voice. Male.
    She turned her head toward the voice and tears sprang into her eyes when excruciating pain shot through her head.
    The voice belonged to a uniformed policeman.
    Old conditioning died hard, and she cringed at the sight of the blue-clad officer standing so close. “Don’t know,” she croaked. “Wore a mask.”
    “I’d like to finish my examination before you interview her.” The first voice belonged to a white-coated doctor, she now realized.
    The policeman nodded.
    She looked around her without moving her head. She was in an emergency room cubicle. How long had she been out? She didn’t remember leaving her home.
    “How did I…”
    “How did you get here?”
    “Yes,” she sighed.
    “A neighbor came to check on your alarm. He saw you lying on the floor of your living room through the open drapes. He called 911.”
    “I know the neighbor…used to be a SEAL.”
    “Yes, I believe the older gentleman is former military,” the policeman said.
    “Not so bad…guess.”
    The officer laughed, but she didn’t know why.
    A nurse joined the doctor and they gently examined her, checking her reflexes and responses, asking lots of questions.
    Finally, the doctor sent the nurse out of the cubicle for a pain reliever and he straightened to stand beside her bed. “I’d like you to have an MRI, but from my initial examination, you appear to be a very lucky young woman. You appear to have no more than a mild concussion. It could have been a lot worse.”
    She blinked. “Yeah. I think he wanted to kill me.”
    “Why do you say that?” the policeman asked.
    That began the interrogation.

Chapter 4
    I   t was hard to focus, and she just wanted to go to sleep, not to mention that talking to the authorities always made her tense. She had no good memories connected with the police. A state policeman had come to tell her and her mom that her dad was dead. After that, her encounters with the police had always been full of fear…both hers and her mother’s. Unless Mom had been too drunk to be afraid. Then she’d been belligerent and that had only increased Claire’s fear.
    It had been years since Claire had had a negative run-in with a cop, but old habits died hard. No matter how irrational they were. But she tried to answer the officer’s questions the best she could. Finally, when her words were slurring, the doctor shooed the officer out of her cubicle.
    “Can I go home now?” she asked the doctor.
    “I would still like to do an MRI.”
    She shuddered inwardly at what that kind of test would cost. “No.”
    “You need it.”
    “You said…concussion not so bad.” It was hard to concentrate after answering so many questions for the officer. She was so tired and her head still hurt.
    “I would like to confirm that diagnosis with the test.”
    “Not good enough reason…” She drew in a shallow breath. “I want to go home now.”
    “Do you live alone?”
    “Yes.”
    “You aren’t going to like hearing this, but in that case, with your symptoms, I would rather keep you overnight for observation than send you home.”
    “No.” She didn’t have medical insurance. No way was she going to stay overnight in the hospital. The bill from the ambulance and her emergency room visit would be high enough.
    “You will be taking an unnecessary risk with your health.”
    “But not a big risk.” And it was necessary, even if he couldn’t see it.
    “That depends on how you look at it,” he said.
    “Not staying.”
    The doctor nodded his head curtly, as if he could tell it would be useless to argue further.
    “You’ll need to call someone. You cannot go home alone, and you’ll have to sign a release form saying you are denying the prescribed medical treatment.”
    “I’ll sign the form.” But there was no one she could call.
    When she told him that, he would try again to insist she stay