“I’m fine.” I take his proffered hand and shakily gain my feet.

“What happened?”

“I lost my . . .” I bend over, hands on my knees, and take a few deep breaths. I’m dizzy and light-headed. My bones ache with heaviness, like I could sleep for days. God, I hate being weak. “I’m sorry, Trey. I just woke up a few days ago, and I think I almost died of dehydration, and—”

“And you just spent all morning on your feet, hauling groceries. Here. Sit.”

Emmaline sits prettily.

I smother a laugh. “Good girl.”

Trey guides me back toward the car and sits me down. He disappears, and I hear him rummaging in the backseat; then he returns with a nutrition bar and a bottled water. “We can scout the hospital tomorrow,” he says. “Let’s find a place to camp for the night.”

I tear off the wrapper and take a big bite. “I’ll be fine,” I say around a mouthful of something that’s not-quite-chocolate. “I always get a second wind.” I brandish the partly eaten nutrition bar at him. “You realize these are pure crap, right? That whole nutrition bar fad. Total scam.”

“First-world problem.”

“Huh?”

“When I was little, before my mom graduated from PA school, anything that wasn’t ramen noodles or boxed macaroni and cheese was a rare delicacy.”

“Oh.” I swallow guiltily.

“You’ll get healthy,” he assures me. “You already look better than when I first saw you.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure you don’t want to find a place to stay for the night?”

The possibility of a hot shower makes me say, “We’re here, and we might as well investigate.”

Emmaline trots around, sniffing bumpers, daffodil shoots, and park benches. I expect her to raise her leg like she did in the grocery store, but I guess peeing is reserved only for really interesting discoveries. I finish my nutrition bar and wash it down with some water. I stand, carefully this time. “Let’s go.”

Trey opens his mouth to say something, and I expect to hear my mom’s words: Use better judgment . . . No one can be a hero all the time. . . . You’re not invincible, Paige. But he changes his mind. Instead, he stretches an arm out in a “lead the way” gesture.

I climb onto the hood of the nearest car—a white Ford sedan—and walk over it toward the next car, which is an older Hyundai. They’re so close together that I can step from one to the other with little effort. Trey follows, then Emmaline, and our boots and claws make hollow drumbeats as we go from hood to hood toward the front of the nearest hospital in the huge complex.