It didn’t flash before her eyes. There was no slide show that exploded onto her internal projector, no display of sepia-toned images of childhood highlights like homemade rhubarb juice and tetherball and camping trips along the North Sea. No regret over unfulfilled dreams or roads she had chosen not to travel.

It was just totally quiet.

I’m dying now, she thought.

Then everything went black.

CHAPTER

29

HELOISE HAD TO struggle to pull herself out of sleep. She slowly opened her eyes a crack and tried to figure out where she was, but she couldn’t see anything other than blurry contours in the darkness. Her tongue was dry and rough, and she tried to swallow. The motion cut through her windpipe and neck muscles like a knife.

Where am I?

Her heavy eyelids kept slipping shut, and she rubbed her face to wake up properly. Her hand smelled strangely pungent, like ethanol, and that triggered a wave of nausea that rose through her body.

She tried to stand up. Then she sensed something that made her hold her breath as short bursts of adrenaline pumped through her arteries.

She wasn’t alone.

There was someone there in the darkness with her, slowly breathing somewhere behind her.

Heloise slowly turned around. “Who’s there?”

She heard the sound of footsteps. Then she felt a hand on her shoulder, a voice she recognized, deep, rasping.

“Heloise.”

She quickly pulled away from his hand, trying again to stand up, but the sudden movement made her dizzy.

“Martin? What … what have you done?’

She felt drugged, poisoned.

“What did you give me?”

Heloise fumbled for something to hold on to, and he grabbed her by her right upper arm.

Then everything around her vanished, and she fell deep into the darkness again.

CHAPTER

30

WHEN HELOISE WOKE up again, the room was bright. Many hours had passed while she had slept, and the night’s cloud cover had vanished, as had the fogginess in her mind. The room she was lying in was so clear in the morning sunlight.

There was a machine by the headboard, and she was connected to it by electrodes. It was beeping slowly and steadily. A tube connected to her nostrils was sending oxygen to her lungs, and fluid from an IV drip was running into her left hand through a soft rubber tube.

Martin was holding her right hand firmly.

He was leaning over the bed with his eyes closed. He must have felt Heloise looking at him, because he suddenly raised his head and looked right at her.

He jumped when he saw that she was awake.

“Hey,” he said cautiously and let go of her hand, afraid of scaring her again. “How are you doing?”

“I’m thirsty,” Heloise whispered.

He got up and took a glass from the table by her bed. He held it to her face and positioned the white straw sticking up out of the glass between her lips.