5/21/2023 0 Comments Middle game seanan mcguireThey twist and bite and require too much attention. Numbers are simple, obedient things, as long as you understand the rules they live by. He knows the words that apply to this situation-exsanguination, hypovolemia, hemorrhage-but they don’t reassure him the way the numbers reassure her. The math would be true, and that’s all she’s ever asked from the world. She’d think she was being comforting, even if the number she came up with meant “I’m leaving you.” Even if it meant “there is no coming back from this.” She’d calculate the surface area and volume of the liquid as easily as taking a breath, and she’d turn it into a concrete number, something accurate to the quarter ounce. If Dodger were awake, she’d happily tell him exactly how much of her blood is on the floor. And when she stops breathing, so does he. She doesn’t, no pun intended, have it in her. Each breath is a clear struggle, but she keeps fighting for the next one. Her chest rises and falls in tiny hitches, barely visible to the eye. This blood belongs inside the body where it began, and yet here it is, and here he is, and everything is going so wrong.ĭodger isn’t dead yet, despite the blood, despite everything. It seems impossible, ridiculous, a profligate waste of something that should be precious and rare-and most importantly, contained. Roger didn’t know there was this much blood in the human body. TIMELINE: FIVE MINUTES TOO LATE, THIRTY SECONDS FROM THE END OF THE WORLD.
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