Chapter 1
The light above my bed buzzed and didn't blink. I lay under the light blue blanket and felt how cool it was against my arms, and the plastic of the cannula tugged at my nose every time I breathed. I held up two fingers on my right hand and didn't put them down. My wristband pressed into my skin. Across the room the red EMERGENCY sign glowed over the glass double doors and the whole room smelled like cleaner and cold air.
Everyone stood around me like I couldn't see them. The nurse in navy scrubs held my left arm with her gloved hand, her RN badge catching the light. Behind her the man in Navy camouflage stood by the doors with his mouth open, and the two doctors in white coats looked down at me, one of them holding a small white box with a blue and yellow label. My grandma and my little cousin stood behind the rail of the bed. All their faces were tight and I was the only one not talking.
My name is Maya and I was ten years old in that hospital bed.
It was somewhere after midnight and the ER was too bright to be night. The fluorescent panel over me hummed and the blanket's metal rail was cold where my elbow touched it. I kept my two fingers up because three one three was the only thing I could make my hand say without my voice. I tried to count it slow. Three. One. Three. But my fingers shook and the nurse's hand was around my wrist like she was trying to hold me still.
She lifted my left arm and opened her own hand wide. Four fingers. I watched her eyes. She turned her hand to three fingers, then to two, copying me. Her blonde bun had slipped and her stethoscope swung when she leaned in. She didn't look at the doctors when she said it, she looked at my fingers like they were a problem to solve. "She's delirious, she doesn't know what she's doing." Her voice was low and sure, the way grown-ups sound when they want other grown-ups to agree. I wanted to say I did know. My chest hurt and the cannula made my nose sting but I wasn't confused. I was counting.
I kept my two fingers up. I breathed through my mouth so the plastic wouldn't move. I thought if I didn't change, she would see it wasn't shaking, it was holding.
Then her face changed. Her eyes got wider and her mouth came open a little and she stopped counting. She stared at my hand and at her own hand and whispered, "Wait, that's a signal."
One of the doctors behind her frowned. He had a light blue shirt and a dark tie under his white coat and his stethoscope hung around his neck. He leaned forward and said, "What signal?"
The nurse didn't answer him right away. She was still holding my arm, her gloved left hand warm against my skin, and her other hand still held up two fingers to match mine. She looked off toward the doors and then back at me, and her voice was quieter but urgent when she said it.
May you like
"She's trying to tell us something."
Nobody moved for a second. The Navy man by the EMERGENCY doors shifted his weight. The doctor with the medication box tightened his grip on it and the cardboard made a soft crinkle. My grandma's hand found my cousin's shoulder. I felt the blanket under my back and the wristband on my right wrist and I kept holding those two fingers up because if I put them down they would decide for me. The doctor with the box stepped a half step closer to the bed and thumbed at the corner of the label like he was about to peel it open. The nurse's eyes flicked to that sound and then back to my face.
