Chapter 5

The stairs shouldn’t have been a problem. 

I’d walked them a thousand times in three years. I knew 

every step but my body wasn’t the same body it had been a 

week ago. The hemorrhage had taken more than blood – it had taken the steadiness out of my legs 

My foot caught the edge of the fourth step from the bottom. I 

went down hard and fast. 

Soon, I was at the bottom. The pain that exploded through me was a different kind from anything I’d felt recently. It was