House of Gray Book 1: Quiet Mercy
What would you do for the ones you love most?
Five hours ago, Dr. Aaron Lee had been annoyed at his daughter for being unusually late to dinner. Now he sat in a curtained ICU bay beside her comatose body. His red-rimmed gray eyes fixed on the ventilator’s soft rise and fall as he clutched her still hand.
If this wasn’t hell, he didn’t know what was.
It wasn’t long after midnight, and activity in the bay was low. Occasionally, he heard a medical cart wheel by and soft footfalls or nurses’ voices. The doctors and nurses had come. They’d spoken the words a parent never wanted to hear.
It isn’t likely she will make it.
Amy was only twenty-six. She would have graduated with her master’s degree next week. She was supposed to show up for dinner, drink half a bottle of white wine, and tease her father about being so up to his neck in work that he barely had time for her.
In return, he would tease her about her lowlife boyfriend, Connor. She would say, “Dad, I’ve told you a hundred times. Connor is my colleague, not my boyfriend.” Colleagues didn’t sleep over on Saturdays.
Aaron would have given anything now to argue with Amy over her personal relationships.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
He was aware of the late hour, but it didn’t feel like the middle of the night. None of this felt real. His daughter’s body, the clock of her life running out. The phone call he’d received from a police officer that evening.
“Sir, are you a relative of Ms. Amy Lee?”
“Yes, sir. That’s my daughter.” Amy, ever practical, kept a card in her wallet with an emergency phone number, her blood type, and the names of the medications she was allergic to.
Aaron knew most of the information. His own number and her blood type. Amy was allergic to shellfish and some fresh fruit. He couldn’t remember what medications she couldn’t take. Penicillin?
Did it matter now?
“I’m afraid your daughter has been in a car accident,” the officer had told him. “She’s been airlifted to the hospital. Do you want the details?”
Aaron’s voice had trembled. “Y-yes, please.”
He was out of the restaurant and hailing a cab before he knew where he was going.
He didn’t remember the ride over here or what he’d said to the nurses at the front desk. He didn’t remember coming into this room, only Amy’s pallid complexion and closed eyes, her arms and legs littered with cuts and bruises. Her clothes had been cut off.
“Who did this?” he’d gasped. He’d heard something about a taxi accident. The driver was dead, too. Whoever hit them had gotten away. Probably some drunk asshole so miserable with his own life he didn’t give two fucks about hurting someone else.
Aaron wasn’t on a path of vengeance yet, though. He was caught somewhere between a sorrow he would never be able to explain and a numbness that was his body keeping him alive.
The curtain behind him moved, but Aaron didn’t know anyone was there until he heard a clearing throat and a soft voice. “Dr. Lee? There’s someone here to see you.”
Aaron turned. The woman, whose nametag identified her as a senior hospital liaison, gave him a wan smile before parting the curtain further to reveal a second figure.
This woman was not hospital staff. She was tall, her dark hair streaked with silver and tied in a tight knot at the back of her head. Her gray-blue eyes seemed to register everything, from the threads in Aaron’s shirt to the fact that one of his shoes was untied.
The liaison ducked out of the curtained-off room, murmuring something about coming back later. The tall woman remained. She did not smile or engage in small talk.
She set a small black purse aside, then extended her hand. “Juliana Davenport.”
Aaron stood on wobbly legs and shook. It was far from his best handshake, but the woman didn’t seem to mind. In his daze, he forgot to introduce himself. “Davenport?”
The woman nodded curtly with no self-satisfied smile evident. She wasn’t here to impress the scientist whose daughter was dying with her last name and what, exactly, that implied. From the moment she stepped through the curtain, it was evident this woman had money.
Aaron wondered whether they had crossed paths before, whether Ms. Davenport had any interest in bioscience and engineering, and whether she had ever donated to causes like his. Why was she here?
Ms. Davenport didn’t waste time. “The doctors say your daughter isn’t going to make it.”
Aaron’s throat was too thick with emotion to respond, so he only nodded.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” she informed him. “I represent a private foundation that, in rare cases, funds experimental interventions.”
Aaron blinked. “Sorry? Do you know Amy?”
The woman smiled, tight-lipped. “No, but I would like to.”
“I’m confused. How—”
Ms. Davenport waved a dismissive hand. “We haven’t done this often, but when we do, we see good results. My foundation specializes in discreet bereavement management, if the family of the nearly-deceased consents.”
She spoke politely, but urgency tinged her voice, as if time was running out. Amy could die, and this proposal, whatever the hell it meant, could be withdrawn.
Her foundation couldn’t specialize in resurrecting the dead.
“I don’t understand. Ms. Davenport, this is kind, but I’m afraid it is too late.” Aaron lowered himself into the chair he’d been glued to for the past hour. This was almost too much. He couldn’t bear it.
Ms. Davenport brought over a nurse’s stool and sat with the air of a kind grandmother. “As I’ve said, we have done this before. We have saved lives, given new ones. I can’t offer too many details, but the last person we did this for has been alive now for three years since their accident. I am hoping to do the same for your daughter.”
She reached into her purse and extracted several folded sheets of paper. She unfolded them, smoothing them on her lap before handing them over to Aaron.
The top of the first page read Accord of Quiet Mercy, with Davenport Foundation typed beneath it.
Aaron had heard of the Davenports, but he’d never heard of this foundation. It surprised him, considering his bioscience background. If Juliana Davenport was in the business of saving lives, he should have been familiar with this.
“This experiment will revive Amy in a way no doctor in this hospital or any other can. The papers outline three conditions. First, transfer to a private facility. Second, guardianship posting that will protect your daughter’s identity if she survives,” Juliana stated.
That “if” rattled through Aaron’s skull. There’d been no “if” half an hour ago. She was simply going to die.
Ms. Davenport’s face softened. Pity shone in her gray-blue eyes, as if she’d been through something like this before. “Third, a memory veil, as we call it. You will believe your daughter is dead. I know it sounds cruel, but it is for both your safety and hers. It will guard you from questions and danger.”
She said this simply, as if discussing the weather. As if she regularly arrived at the bedsides of the nearly-deceased to propose removing their body and performing an experimental procedure to return them from the brink of death.
She’d found Aaron at his lowest low and given him a micro-dose of hope. Then, she’d plunged him back to rock bottom. Could he give his daughter a second chance at life, even if that meant he’d forget her?
“I won’t see her again?”
“Someday, perhaps. If the experiment goes well and Amy decides she wants to see you again.”
Why wouldn’t she?
Aaron swallowed thick saliva and didn’t bother erasing the tear from his cheek. He asked the only question left that mattered. “Will she suffer?”
Again, a small, pitying smile replied, as if Ms. Davenport understood the weight of the decision he faced. “I can promise a controlled, painless course. Amy will not only experience regeneration but also a comfortable recovery. Everything is outlined in the paperwork.” She gestured to the papers.
Aaron glanced at them, having forgotten what he was holding.
He weighed his options. He could sit here, watch the numbers on the machines slow, see Amy die. He could have her body transferred to a morgue for cremation, then hold her funeral in a few days. Or he could let this strange woman take his daughter and give her a chance to live, at the cost of his memory.
“You will still be able to hold a memorial for her, believing her true body is buried or cremated,” Ms. Davenport went on.
In other words, he wouldn’t lose more than what already hung over his head. Why not give Amy a chance?
Aaron wanted to think about it. He’d always wanted to think everything through. He was the opposite of impulsive. He had considered every big decision for a long time before making it, which allowed him to succeed in life so far, but time was not on his side. Amy would be dead before the sun rose.
He met the woman’s gaze, sweating and struggling not to break into sobs. “I don’t have a pen.”
“That’s quite all right. I’d like you to use mine, anyway.”
***
The hospital logged a routine compassionate transfer and initiated a dawn release schedule.
Dr. Lee had left. Juliana knew that the moment he stepped out of the hospital, he would forget this had happened. The ink stain on his right index finger would vanish. Even mentioning the name Davenport would not be able to jog his memory. To him, his daughter was gone forever.
Juliana did not envy his position. She understood loss and grief better than most. Aaron had a difficult life ahead of him. His file, which she’d read before her arrival, revealed that his wife had died while giving birth to Amy. Aaron had already come face-to-face with grief.
After he’d gone, she stepped into the hallway and stopped a night nurse who had signed a donor confidentiality contract hours ago. “Would you be so kind as to lower all the blinds on this floor before dawn?” she asked.
If this request confused the nurse, she didn’t show it. She nodded and continued on her way, murmuring, “Right away, ma’am.”
Back behind the curtain, Juliana stood at Amy’s bedside and waited. The room was still. The monitors whispered. Amy’s chest barely moved. This transfer would have to be quick and seamless, and the procedure quiet and without error.
Juliana placed two fingers on the young woman’s wrist. She felt the faintest pulse, one most staff in this building would not have detected.
What she’d told Dr. Lee had been true. Amy would not suffer. Not physically, anyway. No more than she had in the car accident. However, she would go through a steep adjustment period. Don’t hate me for saving your life, please, Juliana thought toward her.
As if to make herself feel better, Juliana reviewed the proposal she’d given Amy’s father. The Accord of Quiet Mercy was her lawful doorway for lifesaving intervention. It was rare, expensive, and dangerous if mishandled.
The memory veil existed to protect Amy’s father and the masquerade. It was not mind control for fun, as some might have believed. It was, as Juliana liked to call it, surgical concealment.
Her fingers slid away from Amy’s wrist, but she was still attuned to the young woman’s vitals. Amy was the best candidate they’d ever had for this experiment, despite her situation. She could be their crowning achievement if things worked out the way Juliana hoped.
She released a long, controlled breath. Despite his desperation for his daughter’s survival, Aaron’s decision had required courage. Juliana wouldn’t take that for granted. No one had refused her offer yet, but she’d always known there was a chance they would.
She surveyed the woman’s face, her soft blonde hair, and the injuries marring her body. Not long from now, Amy would be a new person.
Juliana reached for the small pile of Amy’s possessions on a nearby counter. Among them was a tube of cherry Chapstick, an empty gum wrapper, and her ID. She read the driver’s license details and surveyed the smiling young woman in the photo.
Amy Lee was no more.
Juliana turned back to the unconscious woman and thought, Welcome to the family, Amy Davenport.
Will it be worth it to give his daughter away to someone, is the thought of them possibly surviving and never seeing them again better than death? Find out on December 31st, when House of Gray: Quiet Mercy is released. Until then head over to Amazon and pre-order it today.
