No. No, no, no ! This isn’t happening.
The room is too bright. Too loud. Too… wrong.
Voices overlap... urgent, clinical, detached... but none of them make sense. None of them matter.
All I see... All I feel... is her.
Posy lies on the small bed, swallowed by wires and machines that beep in sharp, unnatural rhythms. Tubes. Lights. Cold metal.
She looks… smaller. Smaller than she should. Smaller than she was.
“Come on,” I whisper, my voice trembling as I grip the edge of the bed. “Come on, baby… wake up.”
Nothing. No movement. No twitch. No tiny fingers curling toward me.
My chest tightens until it burns. “She’s just… resting,” I say, louder this time, like if I say it enough, it’ll become real. “She’s just tired. She’s been through a lot. She---”
“Heath.”
I don’t want to hear that
