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face.
    Shaking her head, Pru admitted she should have returned to her body earlier than now. She’d achieved nothing by sticking to Luke every hour of the day and night.
    She drifted over the steps leading into the hospital, the stillness inside adding gloom to the sadness churning in her heart. She’d made it a habit not to return to the hospital at night, when everything was silent, hushed, like a tomb. She paused by the full-length poster at the entrance depicting a smiling brunet nurse, a finger poised on her pursed lips. The words Quiet, please! were written in a big bold font just below it.
    Floating through two ceilings, Pru ended her ascent in the third floor hall. The hospital was anything but quiet during the day. Pages went off calling doctors to different wards or emergency rooms, nurses hustled about, and visitors chatted. She liked being here during the day, when there was life to watch. Nights dragged out the dark thoughts of loneliness and the possibility that she might never awake from the coma. Dead stillness was too unnatural, too unsettling to bear.
    What added to her sense of desolation was that after the intensive care unit she was relocated to a more secluded section of the hospital. Whether it was because the doctors despaired her awakening or they wanted to surround her with tranquility, Pru wasn’t sure which, but she hated the isolation.
    At the door of her room, she paused and gazed at her comatose self lying on the bed, arms flat beside her, eyes closed. The window faced a brick wall while a small faded painting of the prairies hung opposite the bed. A nightstand was on one side of the bed, while a high-back chair took up the side closer to the window. If it weren’t for Mrs. Lancaster’s generosity, Pru doubted she would be in the hospital, let alone have her own room.
    “So, this is where you go when you’re not plaguing me.”
    Pru gasped and turned around. Luke was leaning on the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest while he studied her body on the bed. She backpedaled defensively closer to the bed. “You followed me.”
    “Yup, guilty as charged. You’re not the only one capable of shadowing others.”
    She’d been in such a foul mood that she wouldn’t have noticed him even if he’d smacked her on the head. Pru lifted her chin. “How did you get in?”
    “People like me have their own ways.” He pushed against the doorframe and stood straight. “Stop glaring at me like mother hen defending her chicks from a fox.”
    She crossed her arms. “What do you expect me to do then? You’re the one with the delusion that you’re some kind of superhero priest running around stabbing people to exorcise them.”
    A smirk made an appearance along with that dimple in one cheek. “First off, I’m neither a superhero nor a priest. Second, those people I stab don’t always die. Third, your body’s aura is healthy red. You’re neither dead nor possessed. Why would I go after you?”
    “Perhaps because you’re insane?”
    He took a step forward and Pru stood her ground, which brought them closer. He hesitated. Normally, she avoided physical contact with others, but with him it was different. When she’d gone through him at the cinema, Pru experienced freshness and joy of elemental intensity. With others, it was always a variation of decay, nausea, and darkness.
    “For God’s sake, if I want to harm you, there isn’t a thing you can do to stop me.”
    She lowered her gaze. He was right.
    His tone softened as he added, “I don’t have a reason to hurt you, Pru. Please believe me.”
    At his tone, she lifted her gaze. Luke’s right hand was raised, as though he were about to cup her cheek. Awkwardly, he lowered his hand and shifted his gaze to the bed, specifically to how her hair fanned out over the pillow. He was so intense, his muscles knotted as though trying to suppress something within him.
    Probably his other personalities. Pru pushed that sarcastic thought out of her