And then, from a long way down, I managed to get my eyes open, and Whitaker bent toward me and asked me the question quietly.

“Ma’am.

Did you do this to your own wound, deliberately?”

“I’m a paramedic,” I said.

It was all I had the breath for.

Chapter 12 — Not Random

It took me a while to get the rest of it out, in pieces, between the fluids they were running into my arm.

“It wasn’t an accidental infestation,” I told him.