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uncomfortable…”
    “No, Sharon, really, I’m fine.”
    Comfortable or not, I wasn’t about to leave the room. I needed some time alone with Grace. Time to come to terms with everything, and perhaps do a little begging for her to wake up. And besides, Officer Steele still owed us a visit.
    Sharon gave my shoulders a squeeze, then collected her purse and walked silently out the door.
    “You sure gave us one hell of a scare yesterday, Grace.” I shook my head slowly and tried to suppress the prior day’s memories. “But now that we know you’re okay, it’s time to wake up. So, come on. Just open those beautiful green eyes of yours. Come on. You can do it.”
    Grace’s eyes remained shut, not a quiver or a blink.
    “Aw, come on Grace. This is no time to go and get all stubborn on me.”
    She answered me with nothing.
    I spent the next half-hour trying to get her to wake up. I asked, begged, and pleaded. Even tried guilting her into it, but nothing seemed to work. She offered no changes in her facial expression, nor sound of any kind. Not anything at all, except the slow rise and fall of her chest with each breath.
    The continued silence pained me, and I found myself filling it in with my own mundane ramblings. What I’d had for breakfast, who I’d seen in the lobby, what the weather was like outside. But eventually even I ran out of things to say and so, admitting defeat, I sat down and resolved to just quietly be there for my best friend.
    In the silence, my mind drifted back to the state of her purse. I tried to come up with possible scenarios for why it’d ended up in its current messy state. And no matter what angle I started from, I kept coming back to the same sneaking suspicion that someone other than Grace and Officer Steele had been in that bag.
    But why? What had they been after? And had they found what they were looking for?
    I hugged my knees to my chest and looked back over at my peaceful, battered roommate. “I swear, I will get to the bottom of this.”
    * * * *
    Grace’s parents returned an hour later.
    “We bumped into Officer Steele when we were downstairs,” Sharon said as she stepped around the curtain once more.
    “Oh? Is he on his way up?”
    “No,” Norm replied. “He was on his way out. He’d been dispatched to some accident nearby. Asked us to relay his apologies.”
    My germaphobia stretched to its limits, and my main reason for an extended visit gone, I decided it was time to head out. I gave Grace’s had a tiny squeeze and promised to come back the next day. Or sooner, I told her parents, if her condition changed. Sharon hugged me good-bye, and Norm made me promise to drive safely. I said I’d do my best.
    But as I steered my car out of the parking garage, my thoughts weren’t on the road—they were on Grace and the prior day’s accident. Preoccupied, I missed my turn off East State. Passed through the intersection of North Coliseum Blvd. and kept right on going. I zoned everything out until I came to the turn off for Maysville Road and saw a slew of caution tape wrapped around a damaged pole ahead of me on the left.
    But it wasn’t just any damaged utility pole, it was the damaged utility pole.
    My breathing quickened as I drove past the accident site, made a careful U turn at the next neighborhood entrance, and then maneuvered my car onto what little shoulder the road offered. The first break in traffic, I scrambled out of my car to take a look around.
    There was a path worn into the grass not far from where I stood, presumably from foot traffic the day before. The image of what it must have looked like, with first responders rushing back and forth from ambulance to car with their supplies and gurney, was almost too much for me to bear. But curiosity soon won out over grief, and I found myself headed down the footpath.
    While the slope of the embankment wasn’t un-navigable, it wasn’t an easy walk, either. I stumbled along as best I could, choosing each footstep