Free Sleight of Hand by CJ Lyons

exhaustive investigation, had found no evidence of abuse or neglect.  
    Cassie skimmed through George's next admission, this time for breathing problems, and found a medication mishap form.  George had apparently received more than ten times the dose of potassium in his IV fluids.  A nurse who prepared the bag of fluid was blamed.  She raised her eyebrows when she noted the nurse's name: Sheila Kaminsky.  Coincidence?   
    Dr. Sterling's notes detailed more and more exotic possible causes for George's illness, each hypothesis tested for and rejected in turn.  Cassie could detect his growing frustration as he documented consultations with colleagues throughout the country, each with more ideas but no one with an answer.  She sympathized with Sterling as he investigated every possible avenue, trying to find a cure for his patient.  She would have done the same thing.
    Sterling's spidery handwriting blurred before her as her eyelids drooped.  
    "When's the last time you slept?" Adeena's voice jerked her back to attention.
    Cassie rubbed her eyes, swallowed a yawn as Adeena pulled a chair up beside her.  "What? You mean like all night?"  She tried to joke away Adeena's look of concern.
    Adeena's frown deepened until parallel furrows divided her forehead.  "I can't believe you're going to treat patients in this condition.  Cassie, you have to take care of yourself."  Then her gaze dropped to the chart in front of Cassie.  "George Ulrich.  I had a feeling you wouldn't let go so easily."
    Cassie shrugged, looked away.  "I couldn't stop thinking about Charlie."
    "Is that what kept you awake all night?"  Cassie was silent.  "Let me guess," Adeena continued.  "You're dreaming about the shooting.  What to tell me about it?"
    Cassie touched her lips with her finger and looked away.  No, she didn't want to talk about it, let her fears control her waking hours as they did her dreams.  Not dreams, not nightmares–night terrors.  Filled with images of blood and death.  The man she'd killed with her own hands.  Drake, lying still as death, staring at her with unblinking eyes.
    Then came the worst part.  Drake would morph into her father.  She'd hear her father's voice, his last words.  "Be strong, Cassie.  I need you to be strong."
    Some nights history would rewind itself and Cassie's twelve-year-old self would trudge through the snow, scrambling to find help in time to save her father.  Sometimes the entire car accident would play itself out, the lurching sensation as they bounced off the mountain, the sickening wrenching feeling when they'd become airborne, plummeting through the air.
    The deafening crash of pain when they'd finally hit the ground.
    She'd see her father hopelessly pinned in the wreckage.  Hear his words.  Feel the snow slipping over the tops of her boots, the cold biting the bare flesh of her hands as she climbed back up the mountain.
    When she returned with help, she'd tasted the salt of swallowed tears, the bitter knowledge that she'd failed her father choking her into a strangled silence.
    These dreams were familiar ghosts, haunting her sporadically in the eighteen years since the crash.  But now as she floundered through the snow to the wreckage, it was Drake staring out at her, his eyes dull with death.  She would flee her dreams, heart slamming against her ribs with the certain knowledge that she'd killed Drake.
    She'd reach out for him, the empty bed beside her opening up like a dark, bottomless abyss and he wouldn't be there.
    Cassie hunched her shoulders, still not meeting Adeena's gaze.  "It's not so bad," she lied.  "Getting better.  I'm fine."
    Her voice was leaden and she knew she fooled no one, much less her best friend.
    "Right," Adeena said.  "That's why you're spending your free time digging up the ghost of a dead little boy.  Beause your life is just so very fine ."  
    Cassie turned to Adeena, her palms flat on George's chart as if daring her friend to take it from