These Sacred Swaying Anthems
The cold slowly disappeared,replaced by a gentle warmth that started over his heart and flowed outward. He took a breath, then another. Something itched his nose, but when he tried to move his hand to swat at it, his limbs wouldn’t obey.
“It’s okay,” someone told him, that warmth still bleeding through his body. “You’re safe.”
He floated for a while in a dreamlike state, but the warmth in his chest never left him. Voices spoke around him in hushed tones, the sound thick in his ears, as if he were hearing them through water. Just when he started to sink back down, someone coaxed him to the surface, the heat in his chest like a brand he couldn’t ignore any longer.
“Can you open your eyes for me, Kyle?”
His eyelids felt as if they were weighted down by the full fifty-pound pack he’d carry during training runs, but somehow, Kyle managed to open them. Everything was blurry, the room he was in dimly lit, but the light still hurt his eyes. He flinched away from the brightness, closing his eyes again.
“Don’t go back to sleep on me. I need you to stay awake, Kyle.”
More poking and prodding, the sound of his heartbeat echoing in the room, and the warm touch that never went away finally made Kyle open his eyes again.
Gracie smiled down at him, the relief in her dark eyes impossible to miss. “There you go. Welcome back to the land of the living.”
Kyle’s fingers twitched as he realized the weight on his bare chest was Gracie’s hand, and the warmth was her power, the ability to coax another person’s body into healing faster than normal. Which made no sense because his power consisted of rapid healing. He didn’t know what had happened that required Gracie’s intervention.
His mouth felt dry, tongue like sandpaper against the roof of his mouth. A strange chemical taste lingered in the back of his throat. He licked his chapped lips, suddenly thirsty.
Gracie reached for a nearby cup and plucked an ice chip out of it without removing her right hand from Kyle’s chest. “Here.”
She slowly fed him ice chips until the dryness eased. The chemical taste didn’t go away and he swallowed against it.
“Wha’ happened?” he croaked out. His tongue didn’t really want to work, so the words came out a little slurred.
“I’ll tell you in a little while,” Gracie promised.
“Wanna know.”
Gracie touched his cheek with her other hand, the warmth in her skin seeping into his. “I know. But we need to run some tests first, okay?”
Kyle blinked slowly, trying to get his brain to work, but it was harder than it should’ve been. “Team?”
“They’re all okay, I promise.”
Kyle wouldn’t believe it until he saw them with his own eyes. Right now his eyes were closing again from exhaustion and no amount of cajoling from Gracie could keep him awake. He drifted, held in capable hands, until Gracie gently prodded him back to wakefulness however many hours later. The lighting in the room hadn’t changed much, but Gracie had removed her hand from his chest.
“Wha’s that?” Kyle muttered, squinting at the holoscreens layered in the air above his biobed.
“Your brain,” Gracie told him calmly. “And your heart.”
Kyle dragged his hand over his chest, fingers spreading weakly over the electrodes that were now scattered over his heart. “Wha’s wrong with my heart?”
Gracie studied Kyle in silence for a few seconds too long for him to ignore her silence. Her hesitation drove away some of his grogginess, forcing Kyle to focus.
“Gracie?” Kyle asked.
“Do you remember what happened to you?” she wanted to know.
Kyle blinked, his fingernails digging into smooth skin. “Should I?”
“What is the last thing you remember?”
“This a trick question?”
Gracie’s gaze shifted back to the scans of his body and organs on the holoscreens above him. “Try and remember. Please, Kyle. It’s important.”
