The water was running hot, steam fogging the mirror, and she was scrubbing her hands with a stiff nail brush, over and over, the skin gone raw and red.

Chapter 6 — The Ward in Her Sleep

“Beth?” I whispered.

She didn’t hear me.

Her lips were moving, fast, a low frantic murmur, and when I leaned closer I caught fragments of it — numbers, a blood pressure, push the epi, where’s the pulse, I can’t find the pulse. Hospital words.

I reached out and touched her shoulder, and she flinched so hard she knocked a glass off the counter; it shattered on the tile.