Chapter Forty Three:
—
THE COUNTY HOSPITAL had its own kind of sound. Like echoes in Ransom Canyon and the lone clank of a windmill turning on the prairie or the rustle of paper in empty school hallways, hospital noise was unique.
The place rumbled like a train station. Phones rang, pagers beeped, and machines hummed and ticked like the final clock measuring someone’s life away.
There was a rush about the people in white one moment and a stillness the next. Lauren had no idea what time it was. She’d seen a clock not long after she’d been wheeled in that said 2:00 a.m., but that had been hours ago.
In a hospital, only the smell of antiseptic seemed to remain the same. In her windowless space, she could have been waiting a few hours or a day.
Lauren sat alone in the third curtained-of
