She believed him. Whether he believed himself or not.
There was a knock on the door. “I don’t want to move.” Lucy said what she was thinking, but she knew she couldn’t stay wrapped in the safety of Ramsey’s embrace forever.
She heard the door open. “Detective, can I come in?” The voice was female. Even. Calm.
“Dr. Zimmerman.” Ramsey’s chest rumbled beneath her cheek as he spoke. He didn’t move.
The door closed, a chair scraped, and Lucy knew that if she didn’t want to be hauled off, she was going to have to pull herself together.
“Lucy?” The doctor’s voice wasn’t far from her. And Lucy pulled herself out of the last safe harbor she might ever know. Sitting up, she looked over at the doctor, expecting to see pity in the other woman’s eyes. Instead, she saw intelligence assessing intelligence.
“You’ve had a shock.”
“Yes.”
“You remember what Detective Miller told you just before you fainted?”
“Yes.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“No.” She took a deep breath. “But I guess I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” With a glance toward the window, Lucy noticed that everyone but the EMTs had faded away.
Dr. Zimmerman shook her head. Lucy figured the woman was old enough to be her mother. And then had the crazy thought that she’d have to stand in line if she wanted to apply for the job. The doctor had a little bit of gray showing through her dark hair, and she wore a dress that Marie might have worn.
“I’m not sure what to do.” She repeated what she’d told Ramsey. “I mean, practically speaking, do I just get up and walk out of here and change my driver’s license?” The damned tears started again on that last word.
“No.” Dr. Zimmerman smiled softly as she shook her head again. “I think the best thing is for us just to sit here and chat for a few minutes. Would you like Detective Miller to leave us alone?”
Ramsey was still sitting next to her, but he was no longer touching her.
“No.” Her answer was unequivocal. Ramsey was the one person she wanted around. No one else felt real to her. In any life.
“Okay, then let’s talk about this morning.”
Right. She’d already lived through that. “You know how the discovery came about?”
She shook her head.
“You gave a sample of your DNA to a woman named Lori Givens…?.”
“My friend from the DNA lab in Cincinnati. Or rather, Lucy’s friend.”
“You are Lucy Hayes. Don’t for one second think that you are not.”
“But I’m not really, am I?”
“Yes.” Dr. Zimmerman’s nod was emphatic. “You are also, by birth, Claire Sanderson. Our job, or your job with someone else if you’d prefer another therapist, is to help you bring the two together.”
For the first time since she’d woken up, Lucy felt just a small bit of familiarity. Like she had something she could grasp.
She felt a smidgen of relief.
The horror wasn’t gone. Nor was the fear.
“You aren’t going to lose yourself,” Dr. Zimmerman said.
“I feel like I have. Like I’m nobody, dropped into this room from outer space or something.”