Her room was painted a soft purple, and it didn’t smell like harsh chemicals and sickness. It smelled like crayons and the flowery powder the housekeeper sprinkled on her rug before running the vacuum over it.
Mia’s heart hammered against her ribs until her bones ached. She tried to call out, but choked on the effort. Something was shoved down her throat. Something that made her feel like she was drowning.
“Nurse!”
Her father’s voice! Where was he? Why wasn’t he helping her?
She clawed at the thing taped over her mouth. Her stomach rolled, and she felt the urge to retch like the time she’d eaten too much Halloween candy.
“Nurse! She’s trying to rip out her breathing tube!”
There. There was her father, leaning over her, his hair sticking up in every direction like he’d been running his fingers through it. He grabbed her hands, forcing them away from her face.
“Daddy!” she tried to say, but only managed a strangled gag.
A woman in an outfit similar to the one worn by the doctor who had treated Mia for strep throat stood beside the bed. She whispered something in a soothing voice, but Mia couldn’t make herself stop struggling long enough to listen to the words.
She couldn’t breathe. She was dying. Hot tears spilled from the corners of her eyes to burn trails down her temples into her hair.
The woman pulled on the plastic thing in Mia’s mouth, and Mia felt movement deep inside her throat. Whatever was in there burned like fire on the way out. Once it was gone, she dissolved into a spasm of coughing that made her curl into a miserable ball on her side.
Everything hurt. Her chest. Her head. Her throat.
“Pumpkin?” Daddy brushed her hair back from her brow. His voice sounded funny. When she blinked at him, she saw his eyes swimming with tears.
Her father never cried. If he was crying now, it meant something was very wrong. She must be really, really sick.
This room looked like the one her grandmother had stayed in after she broke her hip. Which meant Mia was in a hospital. Only sick people went to hospitals, right?
“I’m so sorry.” Daddy’s words broke over a hard sob as he bent to kiss her temple. His breath was hot and smelled bitter, like old coffee.
Mia tried to wrap an arm around his neck, but a loud beeping came from the hallway. Daddy stood up before she could pull him close.
“Code blue!” shouted a disembodied voice from somewhere outside the room. “Room thirty-six!”
“Thirty-six?” Daddy stared wild-eyed at the woman who gently patted Mia’s shoulder. “That’s Andy’s room!”
Before Mia could blink, Daddy ran around the end of the bed and disappeared through the open door.
Andy? Was her baby brother sick too?
Mia desperately wanted to follow her father. But when she tried to get up, the pretty woman held her firmly against the mattress.
“Shhh, sweetheart,” the lady crooned. “You rest and relax. Everything is going to be okay.”
Mia didn’t believe her and she fought with everything she had against the hands restraining her until her head began to throb like she’d hung upside down on the jungle gym for too long. Bright lights, like fireflies, blinked in front of her eyes. And then…darkness.
Blessed, cool, painless darkness.
“Breathe.”
Mia came out of her uncomfortable reverie with a start, only to discover Romeo had planted himself in the plastic chair next to hers.
“I thought I was,” she whispered.
“Mmm-mmm.” He shook his head, and she dragged in a rattling breath that blew the last of the cobwebs from her brain. “That’s good,” he praised. Then he added, “She’s going to be okay, you know.”
For a second Mia wasn’t sure which “she” he was referring to. Then she remembered.Chrissy!And berated herself for having fallen into the dark depths of her past when there was a real crisis in herpresent.
