A tremor had rattled parts of the region not long ago. It was small, but she remembered news clips replayed swaying chandeliers and rippling glasses. A USGS alert had flashed: Epicenter—near Marlin Ridge. It was minor, but uncomfortably aligned with the vocabulary spilling from her patient’s fractured mind.
When she went to Room 304, he was awake, pupils dilated, as if he could feel tremors right then. Helen approached slowly. “Have you remembered anything more?” she asked. He stared past her for a moment, then uttered a string of tones that almost became a sentence, and then he fell back.