Harper had to look away, heat coursing up her neck, threatening to burn her down. How embarrassing. How shameful.
She couldn’t keep it together. Couldn’t do the one thing she was supposed to accomplish.
Dr. Ren gave Harper another wary look before pulling her into a stiff but kind hug. She let Harper go quickly and moved back into the lecture hall.
Harper moved through the school with a thrumming numbness, her hands shaking and her steps clumsy. How many exams had she taken during school? Thirty a year? Forty? How many quizzes and practicals and competencies had she conquered, always prepared?
But not anymore. She didn’t know this person. This distracted, humiliating person who thought she could actually pull off this career without giving it every ounce of herself.
Her pulse pounded at her temples as wave after wave of shame and panic threatened to drown her. She was letting all that pain of her past be for nothing. She was supposed to do one thing, and she was fucking it up.
She somehow made it to the school’s atrium, her breaths coming in ragged bursts. She couldn’t get her heart to slow, couldn’t get her body under control.
Then her eyes landed on Dan, her biggest distraction, sitting on the bench in front of the building’s exit, forearms resting on his knees, head hanging in tiredness or resignation—Harper couldn’t tell which. She wasn’t sure she cared.
Harper didn’t want to deal with what was coming. She didn’t want to say what needed to be said. She wanted to run, but her body had her cemented to the floor. It felt like she couldn’t get enough air, like she’d choke on the words she needed to say.
Dan’s head lifted, and, seeing her, he stood and walked to her, cutting off her exit path.
“Hey. What happened? What did the professor say?” He reached out a hand to her, but she flinched away. She’d crack if he touched her. Cold sweat prickled across her skin like sharp needles while a high-pitched humming filled her ears.
Say it. Say goodbye. Say the words, you stupid failure.
She squeezed her eyes shut then opened them, little black stars floating in her vision.
“Harper? Talk to me.”
I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to explain. I don’t want to need you like this. I just want to breathe. Why can’t I breathe?
“I don’t want to see you anymore.” Harper felt the recoil of her words reverberate through her body. Hurt and confusion flooded Dan’s features, but Harper couldn’t focus on them, her vision swimming in and out, darkness creeping in at the edges, while that incessant humming grew louder and louder.
“What?” Dan said, the word pushing through Harper, disrupting her center of gravity until her stomach flipped, and the world started to sway.
“I have to get out of here” was all she managed to say through her closing throat and the tingling of her lips, her vision tunneling to the point that she felt blind. Lost.
She tried to take a step, then another. But the floor was on the ceiling, and the walls were closing in.
Then everything went black.
CHAPTER 32
HARPER
Harper didn’t know that pain could come in the form of noise. But a rhythmic beeping hammered a stake through the right side of her brain, dragging her out of the darkness and into a piercing light that pressed through her closed eyelids.
Slowly, she opened her eyes. She felt violently disoriented as she stared up at a white-tiled ceiling she didn’t recognize, the murmur of unknown voices starting to carry over that annoying beeping. She looked down, seeing her body wrapped in a paper gown and a thin, blue blanket, a pulse oximeter pinched on her forefinger.
Harper jolted to sitting, looking around wildly to try to figure out where she was.
“Hey, easy. You’re okay.” A warm hand curved around her shoulder, and she followed the arm to Dan sitting in a chair next to her, his face lined with worry. Her eyes locked with his for a moment, and their last interaction slammed into her chest.
She looked away, trying to get her bearings. A pale pink curtain circled around her bed, and an EKG machine sat on her left, wires snaking from it and diving below her hospital gown to attach to her chest.
“What the hell is happening?” she managed to ask, still not looking at Dan. A wave of mortification swept through her as she guessed the answer.
“You … well, you passed out. And when you fell, you hit your head. They brought you next door to the hospital to make sure you were okay.” Dan reached for her hand, closing his long, cool fingers around hers. “Are you? Are you okay?”