It’s a strange, strange feeling—coming back from the dead.

I’m not just talking about a religious thing here—though for all I know, that could be strange, too. I mean literally coming back from the dad. One minute it was all fire and screaming and unbelievable pain, and the next, I lay in a sterile white cube, hooked up to all manner of tubes and wires, and someone in a white face mask was saying “I think she’s coming around,” in an accent like nothing I’d ever heard before.

“Where am I?” I asked—or tried to around the tube in my mouth. The sounds that came out had no more definition than a moan—a hoarse, gravelly moan. I wondered how long it had been since I’d last used my voice.

“Did she just say something?&...

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