Later that day, she sat beside him in the dark, her hand resting on his back. “What are you so afraid of?” she whispered. The dog didn’t move. His eyes stayed fixed on Lily’s chest, where the faint rise and fall of her breathing matched the rhythm of his own.
A storm swept over the city that night, the kind that rattled windows and swallowed power lines. The lights flickered once, twice, then died. In the sudden dark, alarms wailed across the ward. Lily gasped, her body tensing as her monitors blinked to black.