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CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Glasgow

Six months later—November 2024

CLEM

Clem sits alone in the changing room, taking a moment before she replaces her jeans and shirt with the hospital gown and slippers provided by the nurse. She has envisioned this moment for years, anticipating the terror she’d feel, the crushing sense of dread…But now that she’s here, about to have her heart operation, confronting the moment of her possible death…she feels calm. And although she’d never say it out loud, she feels grateful.

After all, Erin survived. She retained her sight, and her mobility. Her recovery is slow and frustrating, and she was heartbroken when they told her that her fingers could not be recovered. But her thumbs were okay, and she has adapted to the prosthetics very well. Youth is on her side. It will help her bounce back before she knows it.

She has Freya to raise. And Senna is still her friend. Loyal to the very end.

And now that Clem sits in this changing room, looking back over her almost fifty years of life, she feels angry at herself for allowing fear to take up so much of her energy. So much of her time, nursing terror. What is there to fear, really, when death is the only certainty?

A knock on the door.

“Are you ready?” a nurse asks.

Clem looks up and smiles. “Yes,” she says. “I’m ready.”