Chapter Twenty-Five Sienna
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sienna
I’m dropped mercilessly into my ravaged body. The sudden jolt leaves me stunned and disoriented, but within seconds, I become aware of physical pain everywhere, from the bones in my arm to my fractured skull, my chafed flesh, my smashed rib cage.
I am alone in a dark cave, but machines are beeping.
Wait. It’s not a cave.
I’m vaguely aware of a woman moving around me. My eyes are closed, but I sense her hovering like an angel, just above my face.
“Sienna. Can you hear my voice? Can you open your eyes for me?”
My mind registers her words, but my body won’t respond. All I can do is listen.
“Can you squeeze my hand?”
After some struggle, I manage to bend my middle finger.
“Excellent.”
I sense another presence in the room. A man.
He speaks to the woman. She’s a nurse. I know this because I’m finally grasping that I’m in a hospital and something terrible has happened to me, but I don’t know what.
I can’t remember much of anything, except for where I’ve just come from, which leaves me heartbroken and devastated to have left it behind.
The doctor pinches my arm. He asks me to open my eyes, but they weigh a thousand pounds. It takes a while before I can push them fully open.
A white ceiling. I blink a few times, but I have no strength. I fall in and out of consciousness, and I savor the sensation of floating in space, among stars . . .
It’s so quiet in space, except for the pumping of my blood through my veins and arteries, and the random movements of my cells—like tiny bubbles in the ocean of water that makes up my physical body. I could float there forever.