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    Maybe it was grief, Abbie thought, watching the nurse try to deal with her. That could make a person scream like that. In that case, she needed the psych ward. The nurse was trying to talk to her, calm her down, but all the woman did was bat at the nurse as her screams rose to an even greater pitch.  
    Abbie had been heading out to the front to refresh the coffeepots that were emptied seemingly as fast as she could fill them, and to check the supplies of sandwiches a local restaurant had been sending in for the staff. It wasn’t that she minded being a runner. Cal had been working in the back with the wounded. The last time she’d seen him he was covered in blood, and a little spilled coffee and overexposure to tuna salad was far better than that. Still, she needed a break and there didn’t seem to be any way to take one without leaving the hospital completely — and she didn’t want to abandon him. Stupid, she knew that, but she couldn’t just leave without at least telling Cal where she’d gone.
    “You! You!”
    It took Abbie a couple seconds to realize the screaming woman had not only cut off her fire bell clanging, but that she was talking to Abbie. She turned and caught the nurse’s look of relief, but shrugged. She had nothing to do with it, really. “Me?”
    “Yes. You. Come here.”
    Abbie settled the glass carafe on the hotplate and pulled out the filter, dumped the grounds and opened another packet of coffee before she answered. “I’m busy.”
    The exhausted young mother who’d been there for almost four hours holding her cranky, colicky baby gave her a weary smile. Abbie returned it. She’d offered to walk with the baby when it was screaming, and it was a statement about the woman’s state of mind that she’d let a stranger hold her baby. Now the infant slept, curled tight against her mother. If the wacko over by the desk had woken her, Abbie thought the young mother might’ve been compelled to contemplate murder.
    The coffee brewing, she went to the woman at the desk. “Yes?”
    The woman lunged forward hard enough to grab hold of her shirt. “You’ve seen it. Haven’t you? I can smell it on you.”
    It had been too long since she’d showered, and self-consciously Abbie pulled away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “The flowers,” the woman said. “You saw the flowers.”
    Abbie tasted the memory of that bitterness again. She swallowed hard, not sure why she lied except that being a liar seemed to have become her nature. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “The flowers,” the woman insisted. “I can smell them on you, you must’ve seen them. They’re inside you now.”
    The woman opened her fist to reveal a palmful of blue and purple blossoms, the crimson threads of the roots wound around her fingers. They’d stained her fingers with brown juice, and the smell that came up was both exquisite and revolting.
    “Ma’am I’m going to need your —” The nurse broke off with a grimace and put a hand on her stomach. “Hmm.”
    Abbie felt the way she had in the early days of both her pregnancies. Queasy and starving at the same time. The woman closed her fingers over the flowers, and the smell diminished but didn’t fade entirely.  
    “They’re inside you now,” the woman repeated. She closed her eyes, her head lolling. Mouth open. A low, growling groan grated from her throat, which convulsed.
    “Oh, dammit.” The nurse sounded totally put out. “I’m too tired to deal with this.”
    The woman’s head snapped upright. She stared hard at Abbie, who noticed her eyes were the same color blue as those flowers. The veins the same threaded crimson as the roots. A single, clear strand of drool appeared in the corner of her mouth and hung, swinging.
    “It’s not over,” the woman said. “There are still more coming.”

TWO

4

    If it hadn’t been for the pork-n-beans, everything would’ve been fine.
    But no, she’d gone ahead and