Chapter 2 - The Echo in the Emergency Room
The absolute stillness in the emergency room felt heavier than the rusted cart I had pushed for miles. Dr. Harrison, a tall man with silver threads at his temples and lines of fatigue around his eyes, knelt until he was eye-level with me. His badge swung slightly against his white coat: Pediatric Specialist.
"Elara," he said, his voice terrifyingly calm, like the surface of deep water before a storm. "I need you to listen to me very carefully. Did anyone else come into your house while your mother was... while she was sleeping?"
I shook my head, my braid catching on the collar of my oversized coat. "No. Just us. Mom said we had to stay quiet because the bad men who wanted our land were looking for us."
Dr. Harrison exchanged a sharp, grim look with a nurse holding a clipboard. The nurse covered her mouth with a gloved hand, her eyes widening in horror. They didn't know about the "bad men"—they were reacting to something else entirely.
"Elara," Dr. Harrison whispered, placing a warm, steady hand on my shivering shoulder. "Your mother didn't just fall asleep. And your baby brothers... they were born prematurely, weren't they?"
"In the bedroom," I whispered back, my throat burning. "On the floor. Mom screamed a lot, and then she cut the cords with the kitchen scissors like she practiced. But then she laid down on the rug to rest her eyes, and she wouldn't get up when Owen and Silas started crying."
A soft gasp rippled through the surrounding nurses. One of them turned away, wiping a sudden tear from her cheek.
"What is it?" I demanded, a sudden surge of sharp, seven-year-old panic making my voice crack. "Is Mom going to wake up? Are Owen and Silas going to be okay? I fed them sugar water! I kept them warm!"
"You did an extraordinary thing, Elara," Dr. Harrison said, his voice thick with unsphed emotion. "You saved your brothers' lives. If you had waited even a few more hours... they wouldn't have made it. But your mother... your mother was poisoned, Elara. Carbon monoxide. The old gas heater in your hallway had a leak, and it filled your house for days."
May you like
The words floated in the sterile air. Poison. Gas. Heater.
Before I could process what that meant, a team of nurses gently lifted me away from the cart, wrapping a warm, electric blanket around my shoulders and offering a cup of warm broth. But I wouldn't drink it. I kept my eyes locked on the trauma bay doors where they had taken Mom, praying to a God I barely knew that she would open her eyes.
