Willow woke in fragments. First came the light, a cold, flat strip across her eyelids that made her wince before she was even fully conscious. Then came sound—the quiet hum of machines, a distant beeping that rose and fell in an uneven rhythm, the hush of shoes sliding across tile floors. After that came sensation, and not the soft kind. A dull, dragging ache pulled across her abdomen, the kind that made her breath stutter the moment she tried to inhale too deeply. Her throat felt scraped raw, as though she had been breathing through sandpaper instead of an oxygen mask. There was pressure on her arm where a blood pressure cuff tightened and released. Everything felt distant, muffled, but her body knew before her brain caught up that something had been torn open, stitched, rearranged. She swallowed and felt the swallow burn.
