Dead Heart Witch

Pulse

Contrary to popular belief, cardiac ICU was, surprisingly, very quiet. All the machines I was plugged into — and there were a number of them — sent data to a screen above the nurses' station labeled with my name and date of birth. Mechanical beeps and pings were a thing of the past. The only truly annoying thing in my little, glass-walled cubby were the compression boots on my feet and calves. They kicked on periodically with a sound like a vacuum pump, a nuisance to be tolerated like the blood pressure cuff uncomfortably tight on my right arm.

Still, nothing compared to the breathing tube for sheer nightmare fodder. Why had I been awake for that fuckery?

It wasn't all bad, though, in the grand scheme of things. Sure my sternum felt as structurally sound as a kindergarten string craft and it hurt to breathe too deep, but it could have been worse. I could have been...not alive.

I swallowed heavily, my throat suddenly dry. Were my ears ringing, too? I lifted my head as far as I dared — there was something stuck in my neck with a good handful of hair glued to it with various bodily fluids — and couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. Even the nurses' station — wait. The readouts on the monitors had frozen. The readouts had stopped scrolling and nobody seemed to care.

Faintly, as though from several yards away down the hallway, came the low sound of a cello.

I shivered; something tiptoed on the edge of my witchsense.

The cello grew louder and there was something behind it I strained to hear. It was a sort of creak, like old, old wood.

My heart thudded uncomfortably hard and fast in my chest.

"Anna?" Tracy, my personal ICU nurse, appeared in the doorway. "Are you having trouble breathing? Any pain in your chest?"

Yes to both, though I was sure it was mostly anxiety and whatever was at the edge of my witchsense. "There's — can you hear it? The cello?" I raised my right arm, IV lines trailing from the inside of my elbow, and gestured to my ear. "Do you hear it?"

Frowning, Tracy came fully into the room. Behind her, illuminating part of the main desk, was something warm and flickering. Like candlelight. The cello grew louder still.

Dully, as though from a distance, a set of monitors went off with a shriek.

More nurses and people in white coats piled into my tiny room. My breath hitched in my lungs, my eyes fixed on the lantern — it had to be a lantern — light as it swung back and forth on the wall and floor. Whoever held it remained well out of sight; I craned my neck to better see between the people around the bed. The creak of old wood, of a ship at sea years ago, came again.

"Anna!" Tracy pinched the back of my hand and I didn't flinch. "I need you to look at me. Look at me."

I never looked away from the door even as blackness rolled from the edges of my vision inward, a smooth, unstoppable tide. Stinging pain, like someone had pressed a live wire to the skin over my new scar, erupted in the middle of my chest.

The lantern swung wildly. With what was left of my wits I pushed at whatever was hidden out of sight with my witchsense, and it pushed back.

Time seemed to stop. And, so I realized later, so did my recently repaired heart.