Normal hospital sounds.
Normal life happening all around us while I lie here, a walking corpse who has somehow cheated death one more time.
I look down at my arms, visible beneath the thin hospital gown.
The track marks stare back at me—some fresh, angry red lines barely starting to scab, others faded to silvery scars that map years of self-destruction.
A roadmap of every bad decision.
Every moment of weakness.
Every time I chose the needle over everything else.
Over him.
The crook of my left elbow is the worst.
I've overused that vein until it collapsed, leaving behind a dark, sunken line that looks like something has died beneath my skin.
Something has.
The girl Garrett fell in love with.
The girl with the golden hair and the bright eyes and the future stretching out before her like an open road.
I killed her years ago.
Buried her in a shallow grave of heroin and broken dreams.
"Where did they find me?" I ask, even though I'm not sure I want to know.
Garrett's jaw tightens. "Sabraton. One of those houses near the old miners' housing."
A trap house. Of course. Where else would I be?
Fragments of memory start filtering back like shards of a broken mirror—each one sharp enough to cut.
The cramped room with mattresses on the floor, stained with things I don't want to identify.
The guy whose name I never learned, skeletal and hollow-eyed, cooking up the next hit over a blackened spoon.
The familiar rubber tubing tight around my bicep.
The sting of the needle.
The rush that started in my chest and spread outward like liquid fire.
And then... nothing.
Blessed, terrible nothing.
"Was there anyone else?" I ask.
"Just you." His voice is flat. Dead. The voice of a man who has learned to seal away his emotions just to survive. "Found you on a mattress in the back room. Alone."
Alone.
I almost died alone in some filthy trap house, surrounded by strangers who wouldn't have cared enough to call for help.
