Chapter 123

Claim 

Hospitals have their own kind of silence; not real silence, not what most people understand at the word. 

There are machines beeping, rubber soles squeaking against polished floors, curtains being pulled around bays and nurses speaking in voices deliberately calm enough to hold everyone together. 

But beneath all of it is the silence of people waiting. Waiting for blood results. Waiting for drugs. Waiting to find out whether the thing making them sick is killing the thing trying to kill them. 

Locke sits beside me with his long legs stretched beneath the chair and one hand wrapped around a paper cup of coffee he hasn’t touched. He’s been holding it for twenty minutes. 

“You know that’s going cold,”‘I say. 

His eyes move immediately to my face. “I know.”