It was not the soft voice of someone telling me I was safe.
It was my sister, Tessa, sounding annoyed that I had survived loudly enough to inconvenience her.
“She does this,” she said. “She always makes everything bigger than it is.”
Her voice cut through the hospital room before the rest of the room came back to me.
There was a steady beep somewhere to my left.
There was the sharp chemical smell of disinfectant.
There was plastic against my skin, cotton stuck under my shoulder, and the strange heavy pressure of a body that had been handled by strangers while I was not awake to give permission.
Fluorescent light pressed white against my eyelids.
My mouth tasted like plastic and copper.
When I tried to breathe in deeply, fire moved through my ribs.
I opened my eyes a little.
The ceiling came into focus first.
Then the rail beside the bed.
