“Thanks,” I say, managing to talk even though my lips are stuck together. “Did you…” I whisper to Mason. He shakes his head and glances at the nurse. She does something behind me, then writes on my chart. Mason waits for her to leave before he answers me.
“Matt saved you,” he says. “He called nine-one-one. And…”
“What?”
“He also contacted Megan.”
I stare at Mason for a second, realizing that he knows I told Matt about the program. But breaking the rules might have also saved both of our lives. Mason’s not saying more about it, so I decide to gloss over it, too.
“How?” I ask. Pat, pat.
“Through the blog,” Mason says. Pat, pat.
“That was so smart of him,” I say, amazed. I wipe at nothing under my right eye, and it’s then that I realize what’s blocking my vision: skin. My own swollen skin.
“Yes,” Mason says, bringing me back, “it was clever.”
“Cassie…” I say, shaking my head in disbelief. When I do, I feel the sting wounds on my scalp rubbing against the pillow. Aware of them now, I pat my head.
“I know,” he says. “I can’t believe that she was watching our every move all this time. Plotting with God. I can’t fathom how or why….” His voice trails off and, for a second, he looks distractedly out the window.
“So did I die?” I whisper, because who knows where the nurse went.
“Yes,” Mason says, his green eyes back on me.
“Tell me what happened,” I say, mostly because I want to know, but also because I need a distraction. I’ve been stung by bees before, but it’s never been this bad. It’s like having PMS bloat throughout my whole body instead of just in my midsection; I have to wiggle my fingers so they don’t go numb from losing circulation. That, coupled with the itchy, burning pain of my body rejecting the venom, is making me feel like I’m going to freak out.
Mason looks at me wearily; he can tell I’m not feeling well. “You need your rest,” he says.
“Tell me what happened,” I command.
“Okay, Daisy,” he says, patting my hand, but not hard enough to take away the itch. “Okay.” He pauses and leans closer to me so I can hear him despite his low tone. “Matt told Megan that he heard you say something about Cassie—”
“He heard that?” I interrupt, remembering lying on the concrete. Dying.
“Apparently so,” Mason says softly. “Anyway, Matt relayed that to Megan, who in turn got David involved. David tracked Cassie’s cell location and recent calls, which led him to God’s location. He sent teams after both and focused on you.”
“But Cassie cleaned out the Revive,” I say. “And no one was around to administer it.”
“David grounded my plane in the middle of a field and had a car waiting for me,” he says.
“I bet that was scary.”
Mason makes a so-so gesture with his hand. I pat, pat my cheek. “The civilians were frantic,” he says. “They thought it was terrorists. I got an in-flight message from David, though, so I knew what was happening. It’s a good thing, too; God had something planned for me when I landed in Washington.”
“How long did it take you to get to me?” I ask, shifting to a more comfortable position.
“Thankfully, the flight path took us east, so I was only about twenty miles away.”
“That’s too far out,” I say, shaking my head. Surprisingly, I can’t feel the stings this time. “You couldn’t have brought me back from that.” Suddenly I feel spacey, like I’m watching the scene from outside my body. I realize that nothing else is bothering me anymore, either. I move my head again to make sure.
“Did the nurse give me something?” I ask.
Mason nods. “We’ve been sedating you to keep you calm,” he says. “You were stung more than a hundred times.”
My head falls back to the pillow but I fight sleep; I need to know what happened. I shake my head more forcefully to clear the fog.
“How long was I dead?”
“Twelve minutes,” Mason says seriously.
“Wait, what?” I ask, my eyelids drooping. “But you said you were…”
“Shh,” Mason says. “Get some rest now. I’ll explain later.”
I refuse to close my eyes. “Explain now,” I demand, but it lacks conviction.
“Daisy, you died, but Revive didn’t bring you back,” he says.
“What did, then?” I ask, finally closing my eyes, barely hanging on to consciousness.
“Blah, blah, blah,” I hear Mason say, except I’m pretty sure that’s not actually what he said. I force open my eyelids one last time.
“What saved me?”
This time, because I can see his lips, I get it.
“CPR.”
forty-two
When I’m feeling better and looking less like Frankenstein, instead of taking me back to Omaha like I want him to, Mason flies with me to Washington State. That same day, he boards his second plane in a week bound for Washington, D.C. Even though God and Cassie are in custody, Mason wants me under a watchful eye until he’s sure it’s all over. Still jumping at shadows, I’m okay with being watched.
For two weeks, Mason checks in on the phone or through email every night, but he never says very much. I try to keep it light and enjoy my time with Megan, but I have questions that need to be answered before I can fully move on.
And there are things to say, too.
My second to last night in Seattle, I dial Matt. I’ve spoken to him twice since the accident, but both times it was too brief and stilted: Mason was in the room the first time, and Megan was hovering the second.
“Are you alone?” I ask. It’s late; Megan and her mom are sleeping.
“Yeah, just listening to some music,” he says. “How are you feeling?”
“Pretty good,” I say. “I’m back in regular clothes, and the scabs don’t itch as much. My tongue doesn’t feel like I pierced it anymore.”
“That’s good.”
“I still look like I got beat up.”
“At least you’re feeling better.”
I listen to Matt inhale and exhale; it makes me shiver.
“Listen, Matt,” I begin. “I want to say thank you.”
“You’re welcome… again,” he says with a little laugh.
“I’m serious,” I say. “I don’t know how I can ever thank you enough. You saved my life. I owe you—”
“Naw,” Matt interrupts gently. “We’re even.”
“For what?” I ask.
“For… you saving me, too,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“I just don’t think I’d have gotten through Audrey’s death without knowing you were there for me. Even though we didn’t talk much, having you in my life… That was enough. It helped. It was huge. I know I’m never going to get over it completely—I wouldn’t want to—but now I feel like I can actually deal, and I owe that to you.”
We’re quiet for a few seconds. I think about how odd it is that after Audrey died, when I didn’t hear from Matt, I spent a lot of time wondering if he was slipping away. I didn’t know it, but he was holding on for dear life.
“I was about to tell you something right before everything happened in Hayes,” I say. “Right before you clicked over to the other line.”
“What’s that?” Matt asks in a low tone.
I take a deep breath and decide to go for it.
“I was going to say that I love you.”
I hear a quick exhale on the other end of the line.
“And if you had,” Matt says, strong and sexy, “I would have said that I love you, too.”
Two weeks and one day after Mason dropped me off, he’s back. He says we’re flying out the next day, back to Omaha. I bounce with excitement until he slams me back to earth.
“We’re being relocated again,” he reports.
“But why?” I ask. “God and Cassie are in custody. And I died in Texas. Everyone in Omaha thinks I’m out sick.”
“Not everyone,” Mason says, looking at me pointedly.
I stare at him, confused.
“The director is aware that Matt was the one who called nine-one-one,” Mason continues. “That someone you went to school with in Omaha knows you died.”