Page 39 (1/2)

Count It takes hier

"I told therace" An IV has been re of fluid by es needles and tools, and I focus on the ceiling tiles They are much clearer today than most days I can see the punctures on the crawls behind them A pop in the air duct makes me flinch

"Grace," he repeats, "and class You’re steely Has anyone ever told you that?"

"That’s a new one," I say My brother always called me too soft

"Well, there shouldn’t be any hn assures me "What that did was record the inside of each eye Like a scope The footage should be all I need"

The oose buainst the restraints

"How have you been feeling?" Vaughn asks "I thought we ht try solid foods next week, since you’ve been so cooperative"

I re with butter and syrup But I was so depressed, they were only like paste in my mouth Or was it really depression? Was it just the start of this illness taking over? If I could sit at Claire’s breakfast table again, I’d savor every last precious bite I’d take longer walks through Manhattan I’d kiss Gabriel until I lost ravity How could I have squandered that freedo that tihn’s hold on hn says when I don’t answer him "Perhaps later, then" He holds out oes silent, nodding slightly in ti in my vein

"Heart rate is down today," he says "Beautiful I orried you were going to go into cardiac arrest for a while"

"One of the perks of dying young," I say dryly, "should be that hs, sterilizes my forearm, and draws a vial of blood "I couldn’t have anticipated your reaction to any of your treat his experis il until dinnerti for her Before she left et out of here, don’t we?" And when nobody was looking, she slid the needle from my wrist Without the contents of that IV, I finally slept without nighthn returned and she had to replace it

Now Vaughn is reading through notes the attendants left for hih, like Linden’s reveling in his latest sketch at the very end, when everything coether even better than he’d hoped My husband is a prodigy, and Vaughn knows it That’s why he keeps him so blind

"Did you dissect your son?" I ask "The dead one, I hn has seen the insides of id foro he told me of a son who had lived and died before Linden was born; I’d been too horrified to ask for hten hn says simply "But yes And do you knohat I found?" He looks atAbsolutely no indication that anything was a heart Excellent body mass index--he was a swimmer and quite the runner Healthiest kidneys I’d ever seen"

"You just cut hihn closes the notebook, sets it on one of the hu, I wouldn’t have bothered, would I?" he says "It just so happens he was everything And I’d failed him As a father, as a doctor I owe it to Linden to do better"

"Do you experiment on him, too?" I ask "Behind his back?"

"You’re full of questions this evening," Vaughn says, giving me a smile I can’t read

"All you need to know is this: You are helping hn tellson htrateful But without the nighter hear Rose in the air ducts, or the footsteps upstairs, or Cecily and Linden and the creaky ht ht in which my fear took other forms Now all I see is a sterile room Fake lilies in theI feel the cool spot on the mattress where Gabriel would sleep beside me ere at Claire’s And before hi into my bed, or Cecily, or Jenna And before the watch while I slept

I had thought Vaughn was feeding s to torment me, but maybe he had only meant for theth, love, hter, exhausted, bound, buried deeper than the dead in a madman’s labyrinth A tithout her brother One half of a whole