Chapter 16
Hissing Cold Air
IVY
White.
Noise—a high thin ringing from inside my skull.
Movement. Vibration beneath me. Something hard and narrow under my back.
I open my eyes.
A ceiling. Curved, white, close. Strips of harsh light. A face above me—young, a woman in green, hands moving efficiently across my body, attaching things, pressing things, her mouth moving but the words arriving underwater, distorted, wrong.
A mask on my face. Hissing. Cold air.
Something warm running down the side of my head into my ear.
I reach up. Someone catches my hand before it gets there and places it back down firmly, without unkindness, the way you'd redirect a child. There is a clip on my finger. A cuff around my arm, tightening, releasing.
The vehicle lurches. Siren above me, very loud, then muffled, then loud again.
Baby Alex.
I panic and try to sit up. The woman in green puts one hand flat on my sternum and shakes her head. Her mouth is still moving. I catch a word—still—and another—okay—and I don't know which order they go in or what they mean together.
Alex. Brumilde.
The blue light pulses through the small window above me.
The ringing won't stop.
I close my eyes.