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She’d had to sit down before she fell down A fever was nature’s way of killing a virus, so why hadn’t this run its course? And who passed out fro, anyway?

Her vision had dih She had felt so awful she hadn’t cared that the wet snow had been soaking through her clothes Her only thought had been, This is how I die She’d been okay with it Her father would have loved this for her, dying like a dog in the gutter a week before Christot what she deserved If he ever found out, which he wouldn’t

It had been a relief to succu battle Giving up was so much easier Why had she never tried it before?

So, she had died

Now she was in—well, this probably wasn’t heaven, not that she expected to get in there It ht be hell She felt pretty lousy Her body ached and her sore ear felt full of water The other one was hypersensitive to the rustle of clothing and a distant conversation that bounced painfully inside her skull Her mouth was so dry she couldn’t s She tried to fore was a whimper of misery

Sonized was there until it was gone, leaving her with a profound sense of loss She heard footsteps, then a male voice

“She’s waking up”

She knew that voice Her eyes prickled and the air she’d been breathing so easily becarew couilt She couldn’t move, but inwardly she shrank

She had definitely gone to hell

A lighter, quicker footstep cahtness, then squinted at a tastefully sterile room in placid colors that could have been the one her father had occupied the last months of his life A private hospital rooive her the pink stuff and send her on her way

“I—” I can’t afford this, she tried to say

“Don’t try to talk yet,” the kindly nurse said Her sainst her dark brown skin She took up Ien’s wrist to check her pulse, the nurse’s hand soft and warm Motherly She checked her temperature and said, “Much better”

All the while, Ien could almost but not quite see him in her periphery She was afraid to turn her head on the pillow and look right at hi to hurt and she just didn’t have it in her yet

“How aed to whisper

“Water?” The nurse used a bendy straw, the kind Ien had never been allowed to use because they were too coimmick

She got two gulps down her parched throat before the nurse said, “Easy now Let ive youto eat”

“How long…?”

“You came in yesterday”

A day and a half in a place like this? When her bank balance was already a zo rivers of red?