Chapter 111 - POSITIVE TEST

The world narrowed to the bright light and the soft, clinical hiss of oxygen when the nurse tightened the IV on Elena's arm. For a moment everything else, the bustle in the ER, the murmured questions, the clinical efficiency of the staff felt like wallpaper on a wall I was no longer quite part of. There was only her: the fine dark lashes that rested against pale cheeks, the thread of her hair that had come loose and clung damp to her forehead, the way her fingers gripped the sheet when the saline flowed in and the color bled back into her skin slowly, and then more quickly, like paint seeping into paper.