She was right. Damn it, Aerin! Do you want to get better, or what?

By the time the nurses had burst into the room, I’d taken a few deep breaths and tried to summon calming memories as I shut my eyes. My thoughts called up the night sky and gave me a thousand twinkling stars.

Must be from one of those nights I’d spent out in the terrace of the penthouse back home in New York.

But wait … I could hear the faint sound of water, too, and imagined a pleasant smell of aquamarine and bergamot and citrus. Not a smell I associated with the penthouse in New York. But I do love that combination! So the view of the stars came from a beach or someplace like it?

The nurse interrupted my reverie with sharp questions that didn’t let up until I opened my eyes and answered her. She also checked my pulse and took my blood pressure again.

The calming memories of stars and other things dissipated as the nurses went about checking everything and conversing with Olivia and Bai, and then deciding to call Dr. Button, “she’d said to call her for anything about this patient, even if she is about to end her shift.”

Everything they did was clinical and efficient and it was clear they ran things in this floor like clockwork. At least I’d been left with the calming effect of those memories.  By the time Dr. Button came, I’d regained control of myself, hanging on to the pleasant effects on my emotional state that the images of the night sky and starlight and the smells of aquamarine, bergamot, and citrus brought to me.

Dr. Button seemed relieved as well that I was more placid. Before she left she told me that Dr. Brooks could return in half an hour to start a physical exam to check my reflexes and everything else that she’d talked about earlier.

After she left, I looked at Olivia and Bai, in turn, as they each took a side next to me, and asked, calmly this time, “So what do you two know? Is there a good reason why I went to Vegas?”

“Well … we think we do. And part of it … probably a big part … has to do with a girl,” Bai started slowly.