“I know, sweetie, I know, but you have to breathe, okay? Breathe.”
Gabi squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. She didn’t want to breathe. She didn’t deserve it.
“Come on, Gab,” Mathew pleaded. Sam gave her a little shake.
“Gabriela, your Gram has been taken up to the cardiac wing of the Care Center and is getting the best medical help possible. She needs you to be strong. I need you to be strong, okay? I can’t manage everything at once.”
Her father’s voice held a note of desperation that tugged Gabi up from the blackness. She’d done enough harm. The least she could do was spare her father more pain because of her selfish whims. She willed her legs to bear her weight, braced her hands on her knees, and dragged in a few ragged breaths.
“That’s my girl,” Sam said. “Mathew? I need you to look after your sister while I go upstairs. Take her back home for her medicine and get the two of you something to eat. I’ll call soon with an update.”
“No,” Gabi wheezed, “I’m not going.” She needed to see Gram now, to confess and apologize before security discovered her crime.
“Gabriela, you can’t miss your medicine,” Sam ordered. “Go home now.”
Gabi had already lost track of the lies she’d told that day. The next came as easily as if she were the gifted Messenger her father wanted her to be. “I have my medicine with me. I carry it in case I get held up at school or something. It was Gram’s idea.” This last part was true, at least. Grammy Low had tried several times to get Gabi to take her pills with her to school, to no effect. Gabi knew that to be seen with the pills would confirm her weakling status beyond all doubt and make her even more of a target for bullies.
“Brother Sam? We have a few more questions if you don’t mind.” Officer Katz looked at Gabi kindly over the rims of her reading glasses. “You okay, honey? We won’t keep him long.”
Sam drew off his own glasses and rubbed his face roughly. He didn’t just look rumpled, Gabi thought. He looked old.
“All right, Gabriela, you can wait in the lobby until I’m done with Officer Katz, then we can go up together once the doctors give the okay. Mathew, I’d still like you to go back to the house and get a few personal items for Gram and check on things. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir. But I can see her when I come back, right?” Mathew blinked a bright sheen of tears from his eyes.
“Of course you can, son. Come on up when you get back.”
“Brother Sam?” Messenger Nystrom had joined Officer Katz, hovering like a noxious vapor. “We need to confirm the cause of the breach and make a statement. People are very upset. They need to know if it’s safe to go home.”
The crowd had grown as it pressed in on the drama being played out in front of the Care Center. Sam turned to Gabi as Mathew set off toward Cambium Terrace.
“Wait for me inside, okay? I won’t be long.”
Gabi nodded, hating herself anew for the many ways she had violated her father’s trust that day. And the day was far from over.
Chapter THREE
THE CARE Center was as familiar to Gabi as her own house. She’d visited often with Gram, and to get checkups and oxygen treatments. Then there were all the rushed midnight trips when she woke up wheezing and couldn’t get her breath. The matrix of emotion within the Care Center was complex, as though the entire spectrum of human experience had been condensed into one building, then thinly clouded by an antiseptic veil. It gave the place an aura of mystery that the rest of the world, which constantly blared out its secrets at Gabi whether she wished to know them or not, sorely lacked.
There was more bustle than usual on the wards, with clusters of scrub-clad Care Center nurses and Minders collected in pockets along the halls, talking in whispers and shaking their heads. Gabi was surprised to see so many Minders on a floor where none of the Returned received care. She had seen at least eight of them roaming the halls with territorial vigilance since she’d stepped off the elevator. Two more were stationed outside a room that had to be Grammy Low’s. Nothing could mask the sweet spiciness that trailed Gram like a weather system, or the slow, deep life rhythm that pulsed out from her center. That rhythm was fainter than usual, though, with a small stutter to it that made Gabi’s blood ice over.
Just looking at the bulk of the Minders’ arms crossed over their chests like slumbering pythons was enough to set Gabi to wheezing, but there was no other way into Gram’s room. She might be denied entry or worse, caught in her deception at last. The council could discover that she was the one who had tripped the alarm at any moment and begin looking for her. Surely the camera footage would be the first place they looked for clues to the source of the breach.
Bursts of chatter came through the listening devices inserted into the Minders’ ears, and Gabby knew that if she hadn’t been identified as the perpetrator yet, she soon would be. She closed her eyes and tried to visualize her lungs, pink, healthy, and inflating like a pair of jolly birthday balloons the way Gram had taught her. She inhaled, her eyes flying open at the unexpected sensation of her chest straining against her cotton shirt. Her cells spun and jiddered in the wash of oxygen. There was a burning sensation along either side of her neck, but the discomfort paled beside the glory of such a breath. Taking courage from this new development, Gabi inched toward the Minders until
