My legs moved before my thoughts could catch up. I sprinted down the hallway, heart pounding louder than my footsteps, past rooms filled with quiet groans and nurses who turned too slowly. The further I went, the heavier my chest became.
She wasn’t in her room.
She wasn’t in her room.
She wasn’t—
Oh God.
“Where is she?!” I yelled, but no one had an answer. Not the nurse with trembling fingers, not the receptionist who suddenly couldn’t meet my gaze.
A growing noise rang in my ears as an unbearable pressure built in my chest.
I don’t even know how I got there. Maybe I flew. Maybe I fell. Maybe I ran with so much desperation that my limbs forgot their limits.
But I found myself pushing past the familiar white door that led to the hospital’s back garden.
It smelled like damp soil.
A
