Sentence Sneak Peek - Crosstalk

Crosstalk by Connie Willis  

* Received via NetGalley for review
* Spoilers are highlighted like so :)

“By the time Briddey pulled into the parking garage at Commspan, there were forty-two text messages on her phone.”

“Wh-what… how?”

“Keeping the surgery date secret for even a few days turned out to be a huge challenge, especially after Dr. Verrick’s office sent a pre-admission form to Briddey’s office email address, and Charla saw it.”

“Please tell me I’m dreaming, Briddey thought, but she knew she wasn’t.”

“Where are you?”

“Dr. Verrick!”

“What are you doing here, C.B.?”

“Can you hear me, Briddey?”

“I told you you might need another ride, C.B. said.”

“Aunt Oona’s in my office?”

“Midnight?”

“Thirteen?”

“Oh, I hoped you’d wear your black dress,” Trent said, frowning at Briddey. “It’s so much more elegant and understated.”

“Briddey, C.B. said, his voice cutting through the cacophony of voices like the beam of a flashlight through darkness.”

“What are you doing?”

“You’re Irish?”

“Ahem!”

“The stacks?”

“It was the theater all over again, only much, much worse because she couldn’t see anything.”

“When Briddey woke again, the lamps were back on, and the chair— and the room— were empty.”

“Oh, no, Briddey thought. It can’t be!”

“Briddey raced through the front door and up to her apartment, fumbling for her keys as she ran.”

“Saved in the nick of time, Briddey thought, looking gratefully at Maeve standing there in the doorway with her pink umbrella and heart-covered rain boots.”

“If I find out, I won’t what?”

“That’s the great thing about telepathy, Maeve said.”

“Fire!”

“D-Dr. Verrick’s back?”

“Zener cards?”

“But C.B. said psychics weren’t telepathic, Briddey thought.”

“For an endless moment nothing happened, and Briddey thought, It’s not going to get here in time. They’ll hear Maeve’s name before it— And then the voices hit her head on, not like water at all but like a battering ram, so fierce it had to be every single person, every single thought in the hospital: It hurts, oh, it hurts!”

“C.B. had been worried that they might be looking for them, but they were all in the other testing room, along with a nurse, who knelt next to Lyzandra as she sat huddled on a chair with a blanket around her shoulders, breathing raggedly into an oxygen mask.”

“Shh, Maeve, Briddey said automatically, looking at Lyzandra and Trent and Dr. Verrick.”

“Dr. Verrick immediately phoned his two other telepathic patients, the Dowds, and asked them if they’d noticed any difference in their ability to communicate.”

“The good thing about hitting bottom is that things can’t get any worse, Briddey thought, lying there in the dark listening to the silence, but she was wrong.”

“They stood there for a long minute, facing each other across the heater, and then C.B.”

“There should have been a wooden back to the cupboard and, behind it, the adobe wall of the courtyard, but there wasn’t.”