Her monitors were flashing red.

Her heart rate had climbed past 190, the number pulsing angry on the screen, and the alarm kept up its sharp rhythmic beat, and it sounded — I had never thought of it this way before that night, but once he was in the room I could not stop hearing it his way — it sounded exactly like a countdown.

Chapter 5 — Back in the Dirt

He reached his hands in through the portholes of the isolette, and the moment his skin touched the linens beside her, she shrieked.

It was a sound sharper than any she had made yet, and it did something to the room.

Two of the other nurses froze mid-motion. And it did something worse to him. I watched his eyes go wide and his pupils blow open, watched sweat break across his forehead all at once as though someone had turned a valve.

His breath came short.