“Someone might want to tell her about the news cameras outside, in case she wants to shower or something. She’s about to be the most famous girl in Chicago. A first impression is a lasting one. Just saying.”

I wipe my face free of emotion, denying him the reaction he’s looking for. Both Cullen and the media can go to hell.

Dr. Marshall leads me away, and I let him. As much as I despise Cullen Henking for deliberately humiliating me, my thoughts are preoccupied. We walk through the foyer, past some weird, ostentatious sculpture, and up a wide staircase, as I fixate on one alarming certainty: I’ve never been a good swimmer. Even without a head injury, there’s no way I could’ve swum a mile by myself.

Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

My left eye twitches. I press my palm against it. Closing it stops the throbbing tics, but every time I do, I hear the man’s screams as the Swarm pummels him. His echoes rip through me, shredding my stability.

I clutch a fistful of blanket from my lap and ground myself in its plush fabric. I concentrate on the steady buzzing of my nebulizer, the cool mist of meds billowing around my face, brushing my cheeks. I inhale deeply and release, over and over and over again, until the sounds of Navy Pier are stifled.

After my dad’s attack, nightmares of his death haunted me wherever I went. In the rare, worthwhile moments of therapy, Dr. What’s-His-Name showed me how to self-monitor my recurring dreams and catastrophic thinking. He taught me about mindful meditation and how to rein in my panic attacks, so I could appear like a sane person in public. I got plenty good at it when I was around people. Being alone was harder. That’s when my defenses crumbled. Eventually I figured out that if I spent my evenings at the coffee shop down the street, the constant commotion would distract me from imagining every graphic detail of my dad’s final moments.

If I survived that, I can survive this too—despite whatever Dr. What’s-His-Name would think. He used to overanalyze triggers. Knowing him, he’d insist that today’s attack would set me off and require intense therapeutic intervention. That there’d be no way I could handle this on my own. But he never understood my resolve, and I refuse to be that girl again—unable to function—which of course I vow while sitting on the living room couch, chained to a nebulizer pumping a cocktail of Prednisone and Albuterol mist into my nose.