Free Eternal Hunger by Laura Wright Page A

stop the questions, Sara turned back to the keypad and stabbed in her security code. Yep, all good. Walked into the ER and told them about the patient who attacked me and the vampire who kidnapped me and they immediately sent Cameron Phelps down for a psych eval . . .
    The door buzzed and Sara took off through it. Just like any other day, she headed straight for Gray’s room. She found him sleeping, curled up into his pillow, looking peaceful and young. The sight should have eased her, but it didn’t. Every moment since the night of that fire she’d thought of nothing else but making her brother well. Every day he’d been stuck at home with their mother, voiceless and in pain, she’d been studying her ass off, waiting for the day she would graduate from med school, waiting for the moment she could come and get him, help him, fix him.
    It had been four years now, four years that she’d been working with him, at this hospital, trying to take the trauma from his mind. She had performed countless drug trials, a yearlong study into levels of anxiety, depression, fear memory versus permanent memory, memory replacement, even false memory replacement, and though some of her patients had been helped, had gone home to live what she hoped would be normal lives, Gray remained unchanged. What was wrong with her that she couldn’t find the answer, find a way to fix him?
    Pushing away from the doorjamb, she left his room and headed for her office. She was in immediate, real trouble here—and in her world, if you were in trouble you fixed it. The scenario was simple: Patient broke into your apartment and tried to kill you. You didn’t stop to think or consider the feelings of others. You called the police.
    Her door was open and she flicked on the overhead lights and went over to her desk. She dropped into her chair and scrubbed a hand over her mouth, as if she were trying to stop herself from talking out loud.
    Pick up the phone.
    She stared at it.
    What the fuck are you thinking, Sara? You’re no idiot. Do it . You owe the . . . vampire nothing, no loyalty .
    But was that the truth? He’d saved her life. Whatever he was, whatever he claimed to be, he’d kept her alive so she could keep her brother alive, and wasn’t that worth something? Some token sense of loyalty?
    You know what they call that, honey? Stockholm syndrome. Yep, you studied it in school, have patients who suffer from it.
    Clamping her teeth together until her jaw ached, she pressed the intercom button, then stabbed in the numbers for Precinct 23. But before she even finished dialing, the call failed.
    Without missing a beat, she tried again. But the second time, though the call went through, the ringing distorted into a strange moaning sound and wasn’t picked up on the other end. What the hell? She pressed the call button again, got a dial tone, and punched in the numbers. This time she heard the irritating trill of a fax machine. Frustrated, she slammed the phone down, glared at the thing, and fantasized about yanking the cord from the wall and chucking the whole thing at the door. But that would be a reactionary move, not a productive one, and today of all days she needed to pretend to be flexible and sane.
    She took a deep breath, grabbed the piece of paper with the number on it, then headed out of her office and straight for the adult-care nurse’s station. Without a word to the crew, Sara picked up one of the desk phones and tried again. Thankfully, this time the call connected, and she sighed as the ringing continued on perfectly normal. But as it did, she started to feel a slight panic take over her nervous system. When the cops actually answered, she’d have to report the crime, not to mention explain his involvement in it. Or did she? Maybe she could just leave him out of it—make it all about Tom and the attack.
    But Sara never had to make that choice. No one picked up, not even a machine. It just rang and rang. Cursing, she hung up, dialed one