I blink, my eyes adjusting. There are no wasps. Just Ryan tucking my neb mask beside the machine. The clock reads 2:22 a.m. I don’t know what day it is. My head is heavy, muddled, and my eyes are crusted with a mucus-y discharge. I rub them with my palms.

Adam.

The memory impales me, and I shoot up in bed. “Where’s Adam?”

Ryan presses my shoulders. “Adam’s at the hospital. He’s banged up, but the doctors are good. They’re . . .” Ryan pauses long enough for me to know he’s lying. “They’re going to help him.”

I squeeze my eyes. Fall back on the stack of pillows. Pain wrings my insides with its giant fists and shreds me with its nails.

In the ambulance, paramedics checked his vitals, decided whether his life was salvageable. My tears and pleas meant nothing.

Adam’s blood was dried, caked on his skin like scales, a desert dryland. It worsened beneath the harsh emergency room lighting where they pulled us apart. I screamed and thrashed until they strapped me to a bed with Velcro and inserted plastic tubing to pump oxygen into my veins. A guy in scrubs, with cold hands and a baby face, pushed something into my IV. “To help you rest,” he said in a voice that was calm and irritating. My fingers stiffened into claws, but I was trapped, tied down like a lunatic and pulled away from the only good thing in my life.

Ryan eases off my bed and sits in a chair in the corner of my room. He leans over his knees, clasps his hands together. The blue glow makes his skin look ghostly.

“How did I get here?”

“You came home a couple hours ago. Your mom carried you inside.”

I glance at the door, surprised she had the strength to bring me upstairs. Her thin arms. My dead weight. Especially after spending the last twenty-four hours with me at the hospital, where doctors insisted on near-constant monitoring. I slept through most of it, but she didn’t. My eyes flash to the door. If she heard us talking, my machine buzzing . . .

Ryan picks up on what I’m thinking. “She took something to help her sleep. I don’t think she rested much in the ICU.”

“How did you get here?” We speak in hushed, emotionless tones. Like we know we’ve been defeated.

The corner of his mouth lifts. Not quite a smile. “Through the basement. I still have a key.” Ryan’s face bends in anguish. Guilt. He rubs his forehead. “I’m sorry I left. I couldn’t . . . with the ambulance and the cops . . .”