CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The ICU was a place built for whispers. A place where fluorescent lights buzzed louder than voices, where the smell of antiseptic clung to your skin like secondhand fear. Leia Cole lay motionless in Bed 3. The ventilator hissed beside her in steady, mechanical beats — air forced into lungs that could no longer fight for themselves. Her face was pale. Not the kind of pale that suggested sleep or peace — the kind that looked bled out. Color that might never come back. A tangle of IV lines ran into both arms, taped down against bruised, papery skin. Monitors beeped in irregular, cautious rhythms — oxygen saturation dipping and rising like a tide too tired to choose a direction. Chloe sat at her mother’s bedside. Alone. The chair was too low. The bed was too high. It made her
- Writer
