CountryCore Series: Her Lady of the Lake (WLW)

A Good Scare

Leah let Trin lead her into UT Health Athens and she trembled as she grew closer to the front desk of the emergency unit. This couldn't actually be happening. She felt as if she was in another person's body, carted along for the ride as an unwilling spectator. The only thing that made it real, that told her this was actually happening, was Trin's solid hand in her own.

She stumbled over absolutely nothing and Trin immediately stopped, keeping her afloat on quaking legs. She stood there in silence, rubbing Leah's back. No words needed to pass between them. Not after that phone call. Her being there with Leah was enough and so much altogether.

Once they made it to the desk she heard Trin's voice asking questions and someone answering, but it was just a jumbled mess of slurs. Distorted tones that felt like a foreign language.

"...ah. Leah... Can you hear me?" Trin's voice carried her out of her stupor and she gave her hand a squeeze reaffirming everything was still very real. Still happening.

"Y-Yes..."

"Are you Leah Anderson, ma'am? Ruth Middleton's emergency contact?" Someone else asked and try as she might, all she could manage was a nod. "Can I see some ident--"

"Leah?" That voice she knew.

Trin let her go and she immediately searched for her steadying hand. She needed it back. Now. Instead, she felt shaking hands wrap around her forearms and heard uncontrolled sobs from someone all too familiar. Someone whose presence added to the intense swirl overtaking Leah's gut, threatening to send her plummeting to the floor.

"Th-This isn't..." Belle babbled between sobs. "It's not right! It's not Ruthie! Th-They... They have to have the wrong vehicle or...! Something's just...!"

Leah took her hand and turned her head toward the woman who'd spoken before as she held out her purse with her free hand. "My... My w-wallet...it's inside..."

"I'll get it, Leah." Trin took her bag and she heard her rifling through it moments later.

She could make out muffled murmurs of the receptionist, but it all became a slur of odd sounds. A mocking and warped sound. That was, until she heard something that changed her world from the shaking earthquake it once was to something else entirely.

* * *

Leah was led through a pair of doors. The gravity of what she must do still hadn't quite hit her. At least, not in the way she might have expected. On one hand, she felt relief and on the other, dismal fear. Only when she smelled something so filled with disinfectant and inhuman did she finally register just where she was being led and the magnitude of her task.

"We can only allow the next of kin inside. If you would wait--"

Leah clutched tightly to the tail of Trin's shirt as she interrupted with, "I'm blind. I... I-I need...Trinity. P-Please."

"...Okay, ma'am. Just please take your time in identifying the body."

As soon as the last two words left the medical examiner's lips, Leah let out a trembled sob and held onto Trin with all her strength. Her knees felt like jello. Not in the way they liquified when she touched her and sent a heatwave throughout her body. Not in the way they melted when she felt so satisfied with a good narration recording. A coldness that Leah couldn't escape and consumed her all the way up to her spine, sending a chilled sweat over her backside.

She was led through a set of double doors and down two levels of stairs. The smell of blood definitely hung in the air, yet what she found most strange was the scent of mud and something sour that flooded her nostrils.