Until I figure out what is happening, I must be careful. I must pretend to be out of it, so no one suspects that from this angle—pitifully slumped in this wheelchair—I can spy on them. They must misjudge my mind, so I can see into their hearts and guts.
Spurred by confusion, no one knows where they’re going, and neither do I—but I’m happy to be out of bed and away from my room, happy to be moving, which is why it irks me to be stopped.
I allow myself to take a quick glimpse around me, but can’t turn my head back to see the cop. Instead, I rely on what I know best: perking up my ears. From the far end of the corridor behind me, the nurse cries for him to stop pushing me forward and wait a minute, wait for her. With a zigzag grind along the linoleum floor, he slows my wheelchair down to a standstill.
“I forgot one thing,” the nurse says, breathlessly, upon reaching us. “Here, let me put these mitts on her hands.”
I allow my eyelids to droop, not before noting that the cop seems to be on edge. His shift has ended hours ago, and no one has arrived to replace him, and now, he has this problem on his hands, by which I mean, me. With no donuts at hand, he begins to sound somewhat acidic.
“Mitts?” he grumbles. “What, you think this patient is going to play baseball, or have a fist fight with someone, in her condition?”
“It’s a fight alright,” she says. “With herself.”
He says nothing, which is clearly an expression of doubt. Maybe he’s even raising an eyebrow.
So the nurse goes on to add, “Trust me, we need to protect this patient from doing harm to her own body.”
“You serious?” he says. “If you ask me, there’s no sign of life in her.”
Ash finds herself in the ER diagnosed with coma. She has no memory of what has happened to her, but what she can do--despite what everyone around her might think--is listen to the conversations of her visitors. Will she survive the power outage in the hospital and then, being kidnapped out of it?
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