“Wait, Zo—” I didn’t mean to use Nico’s nickname for her. My voice sort of fizzled out. I don’t know how to say what I need to say discreetly, so I shuffle a couple of steps away from Baseball Cap and turn so he can’t hear. “I need something. Don’t tell anyone. Please.”
I think she might have hung up on me until I hear thumping and faint shouting on her end, then: “What do you need?”
She’s patient as I struggle to get the words up and out through my burning throat.
“I know where to get one,” she says. I hear the van door slam down the line. “I’ll bring it with me. We’re coming. Stay put… Ede.”
Baseball Cap insists on staying with me until 911 arrives. I don’t know what he’ll do when ghost hunters show up instead. We sit together in silence on a bench, and I try not to think of Nico’s shallow breaths. I get an urgent burning feeling crawling under my skin, like I need to ditch this guy before the team gets here, but knowing he cares enough about a stranger to sit with me until help arrives brings me comfort. I’ve spent so much time around the worst people this world has to offer. It’s easy to believe all people are bad. I need this reminder that most people are good.
I’m still sitting with Baseball Cap when the van comes tearing into the parking lot. The back doors burst open before it fully stops.
“Ma’am, we got a call about an injured person?” DJ’s out first, and she’s wearing a navy paramedic jacket with reflective strips on the sleeves. She crouches in front of me, splitting into two before smashing back into one. “Can you tell me what happened?”
Griffin appears beside her wearing an identical jacket. He glances at Baseball Cap, giving him a quick nod. “We’ll take it from here, sir. Thank you for waiting with her.”
Baseball Cap’s eyes linger on the unmarked van, but he goes back toward his truck.
“Can you walk?” DJ asks me, but she’s already signaling to Benji, who hops out with a backboard.
“Nico,” I rasp, gripping the armrest of the bench as I stand. “In dumpster.”
Griffin and DJ sprint up the hill toward the dumpster with more urgency than real paramedics. My knees buckle, and Benji catches me as I tip forward into him. He helps me into the van. Zoey drives us over there.
She tells Benji to take the backboard to the dumpster. Once he’s gone, Zoey climbs through the van to sit with me and hands me a bottle of water with the cap off. I guzzle it down.
“Pace yourself,” Zoey says, fiddling with a small foil tray. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”
She pops the pill out and hands it to me. She watches me take it with a sip of the water. I can’t tell what she’s thinking, especially when she lays her hand on mine for a split second.
She stays with me while I cling to the window, watching Griffin and DJ haul themselves up and over the dumpster’s edge. They emerge, Nico suspended between them with his arms over their shoulders, his head lolling forward. There’s blood everywhere. On his face. On his clothes. But his chest is moving. Up and down. He’s alive. We made it out, and he’salive.
Only when they’re loading him into the van does my brain give me permission to collapse.
CHAPTER 51
If I had to rebuild this team from scratch with only one person, I’d choose Zoey.
—Journal of Donald Dellman, September 2025
I come to in slow motion. The world feels soft and filmy, like someone smeared Vaseline on my eyeballs.
The ceiling tiles are white. Everything looks gray and dim. I smell bleach and sterile packaging. Machines beep in that steady rhythm that I know means I’m alive. I don’t feel alive.
I try to sit up, but my body responds with all the enthusiasm of a wet sandbag. The room fills with beeping. An IV line snakes from my arm, and my left hand has been wrapped in bandages and gauze so thick I look like I’m wearing a club.
“Eden?”
Griffin is sitting in a chair next to my bed. His blond hair is rumpled, and there are purple circles under his eyes.
My chest almost caves in with the force of the relief plowing into me. I reach for him. He takes my hand and squeezes, but it’s not good enough. I drag him down into a hug, my fingers grappling for him and knotting into the back of his hoodie. His arms come around my back.
I open my mouth to ask where I am, where Nico is, what happened, but the only thing that comes out is a wheeze.
“Don’t try to talk,” Griffin says. He guides me back onto the pillows. “Your throat’s damaged. No talking until you heal. Doctor’s orders. I know that’s going to be a real challenge for you.”
I get the distant sense that I should give him the finger, but his words are floating past me like he’s not even here, only an illusion that my brain conjured up.
He settles back into the chair and fills me in on what happened. I’m at a hospital in Ohio. I’m on IV fluids to rehydrate. The doctors got the glass out of my feet and are expecting a fair amount of nerve damage. I’m on antibiotics for the infection. The doctors were also able to save what was left of my hand, which was not a lot: all four fingers and knuckles were amputated. They had to remove more from the top of my thumb than I expected, but the remaining stump will stay functional.
