Leah
I came back slowly, like my body had to be talked into it.
Fluorescent lights.
Too bright.
A buzzing sound that might have been the lights or might have been my head.
Voices came in pieces.
“She’s conscious.”
“Can you hear me?”
“Dehydration.”
“Low blood pressure.”
Someone’s hand was on my shoulder, steady enough to keep me from floating too far away.
Two paramedics. The floor of a lecture hall at the edge of my vision, then a ceiling, then outside light through an ambulance window.
I knew I was being moved.
People kept asking questions, but my brain would not line up the answers.
I remember thinking, I need to tell someone I’m fine.
I was not fine, as it turned out.
But I was awake enough to be embarrassed by the stretcher and the stares of my classmates, because appar
