Free Crosstalk by Connie Willis Page B

want anything, so she said, “I’m sorry I buzzed you. I had a nightmare. There was a man in my room. With a knife. In the bathroom,” and thought,
What am I going to do if she doesn’t go look?
    But she did, opening the bathroom door wide and switching on the light so Briddey could see inside, and then doing the same thing to the closet, which held only the hospital robe Briddey’d worn to the bathroom earlier. “See? Nobody there.”
    The nurse came back over to the bed. “Just a bad dream.” She picked up Briddey’s chart and began entering something. “Confusion’s common after surgery. It’s the anesthetic. It frequently causes strange dreams. Or you may have seen a nurse’s aide or an orderly coming in. Do you need me to help you to the bathroom?”
    Not now that I know he’s not in there,
Briddey thought, wondering if there was something she could drop so the nurse would have to look under the bed, but there was nothing within reach. “No, I’m fine,” she said.
    “Try to get some sleep,” the nurse said, and switched off the light.
    “Would you mind leaving that on?” Briddey asked, putting a quiver in her voice. “Or—could you check the rest of the room before you leave? Please? I know it was just a dream, but I’d sleep so much better if you would.”
    And if I’m asleep, I won’t be pushing my call button and bothering you,
she added silently, and the nurse must have come to the same conclusion because she turned the light back on and checked under both beds and in the far corner.
    “See?” she said, coming back over to Briddey’s bed. “Nothing there. Good night.” She switched off the light again and went out, pulling the door almost all the way shut behind her.
    “Thank you,” Briddey called after her and then lay there, trying to make sense of what had happened. C.B. wasn’t in her room. Was the nurse right? Had his voice been part of an anesthetic-induced dream?
    That must be it,
she thought, because C.B. hadn’t spoken to her since the moment the nurse came into the room.
    Nice theory, but no,
C.B. said, and his voice was as clear and close as ever.
And what kind of nurse tells you to go to sleep when there could be a serial killer on the loose in the hospital?
I wouldn’t trust anything she says
.
    How is he
doing
this?
Briddey wondered, despairing.
    He bugged my room,
she thought. He had a mike and speakers hidden in here somewhere.
    Bugged your room?
C.B. said.
Are you crazy?
    No.
It made perfect sense. That was why he hadn’t said anything while the nurse was in the room, because the nurse would have heard him. And with a bug, he could hear if she was alone or not. Briddey sat up, switched the light on again, and began looking around the room for a concealed bug.
    Briddey, I did not bug your room.
    “Liar.” It explained everything. How he’d known what the nurse was saying and—
    I didn’t hear what she was saying,
he interrupted.
I heard you
thinking about
what she was saying. When you have a conversation, you not only think about what you’re saying but what you’re hearing. And when am I supposed to have done all this? I didn’t even know you were having the surgery till a few minutes ago.
    “I don’t know,” she said, “but you did.” He could have hidden the bug and the mike anywhere, on the lining of the curtains, on the windowsill, in the roses Trent had sent. She squinted at them, searching for telltale wires.
    But there wouldn’t necessarily
be
wires. C.B. could have rigged up some sort of wireless thing. He was a computer genius—
    Thanks. I didn’t think you’d noticed
, he said dryly, and his voice wasn’t coming from over by the window. It was right in her ear.
    It’s in my pillow
, she thought, sitting up to feel for an unnatural lump. Nothing. She pulled off the pillowcase, shook it, and then felt down behind the head of the mattress.
    It wasn’t there. But it could be anywhere—and tiny. It could be on the wall panel above her bed.