Indexing: Reflections (Kindle Serials) (Indexing Series Book 2) by Seanan McGuire

Author:Seanan McGuire [McGuire, Seanan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-08-11T04:00:00+00:00

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It was reasonably easy to scavenge a chair for myself. That’s one thing I’ll say about modern hospitals: they always have plenty of seats. Seats for patients, seats for physicians, seats for the people who inevitably accompany patients out of the darkness of ignorance and into the darkness of knowledge. My first doctor hadn’t even kept a practice. He would come to your house if you had money, or you could come and see him in his parlor if you didn’t. Mama used to pay him with vegetables from the garden, or with whole chickens, plucked and ready for the fire. He hadn’t been married by the time I was near to coming of age, and I knew she’d been considering paying him with my hand.

It wouldn’t have been a bad match, all things considered. He’d been a kind man, and he’d always smiled for me. I could have made him happy. He could have made me happy. Too bad we’d never been given the chance to find out.

Dr. Pierson stirred, groaning. I kicked him in the head. He stopped stirring.

“You’re boring, and I don’t want to listen to you talk, so stay down,” I snapped. “Where the fuck are those guys with the rope? I’m getting old here, I’d like to leave.”

My phone rang.

I pulled it out of my pocket, warily eyeing the display screen—“unknown number”—before sliding my thumb along the screen to answer the call. I raised it to my ear. “Hello?”

“Sloane? What’s your status?” Ciara sounded slightly out of breath, like she hadn’t been expecting me to answer. She didn’t sound worried, though. If anything, she sounded relieved.

It was the relief that did it for me. “When did she wake up?” I asked.

There was a long pause before Ciara said, “About fifteen minutes ago. It’s taken this long for us to get her cleared by the doctors. They say she’s transitioned into normal sleep, and is breathing fine.”

“Wait—I thought she was awake.”

“She’s not in a coma anymore. That’s basically the same thing.”

But it wasn’t, not for a Snow White. Henry should have gone from deepest coma to perfect wakefulness in an instant, with no pause for recovery in between. Hell, the shock of waking up sometimes caused the sleeping princess archetypes to get the narrative equivalent of the bends, becoming disoriented and time-displaced while they readjusted to having a body.

I didn’t say any of that. Something was wrong, and until I knew what it was, I was going to take things slow and careful. Instead, I said, “Our man’s down. Andrew and Demi are fetching rope, and we should be ready to leave here in less than twenty.”

“That’s a negative, Agent Winters. I want you to remain where you are until the cleanup crew arrives to take Dr. Pierson to Childe. He’s already displayed violent tendencies, and if this is going to get out of control again, it’s not going to happen on my watch.”

I opened my mouth to reply. Then I stopped and counted

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