And she’s gone.
The space she leaves behind is too big.
Too empty.
“She’s dead.”
The words come out before I can stop them.
Before I can think.
“She’s dead,” I repeat, louder now, the panic turning into something worse, something colder. “Oh my fucking God, she’s dead!”
I can’t breathe.
I can’t think.
I can’t...
“We just got her back,” I choke, my voice breaking completely now. “We just, how the fuck...no...no, they can’t—”
My legs feel like they might give out.
Everything feels like it’s collapsing inward.
This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.
We found her. We got her back. We were supposed to—
“She’s not dead.”
Elijah’s voice cuts through.
Hard. Unrelenting. I look at him.
And for a second, I don’t know if I believe him.
Because all I can hear, is the silence behind those doors.
And the last thing they said.
They can’t find a heartbeat.
twenty-seven
Elijah
Time doesn’t move the way it should.
It stretches out, flattens, loses any kind of structure until it stops meaning anything at all, and the only way I know it’s passing is the shift of people moving through the hallway, the change in light overhead, the way the sounds around us dull and sharpen again without ever fully settling into anything I can hold onto.
We’ve been here for hours.
I don’t know how many.
I don’t check.
Because the moment I start counting, the moment I let myself measure how long she’s been behind those doors, the wrong thoughts will follow it, and I can feel them there already, waiting just beneath the surface, pressing in at the edges of my control.
