Chapter 3 — Three Days

I opened my eyes three days later.

The first thing I knew was an alarm I didn’t recognize, and a hollowness low in my body that felt profoundly wrong, as though something essential had been taken out of me while I slept.

My throat was sandpaper.

My head swam in a chemical fog.

For one terrible moment I could not remember where I was, or why I could not feel my legs, and then the pain arrived all at once — a hot, tearing ache across my abdomen that pulled a gasp out of my cracked lips.

A nurse was at my side in an instant, her face kind and, I would only understand later, guarded.