Emily's POV
I wasn't in the waiting room.
I was in a bed.
The ceiling was white and too bright and my head felt like something had come apart inside it and been put back together incorrectly and my mouth was dry.
There were tubes in my arm. I could feel the cool drip of something moving through the cannula before I even looked.
I turned my head as saw Karen.
She was asleep in the chair beside the bed, folded into herself at an angle that was going to hurt her when she woke up, her coat still on, her bag on the floor with the strap twisted. Her eyes were swollen. Not just tired-swollen. The kind of swollen that comes from hours of crying.
She had been here all night.
Something knotted in my throat.
I tried to say her name. What came out was barely a sound, just a scratch of air, and it surprised me so much I stopped.
Karen's eyes opened.
