Chapter 5: The Long Thread

The ER at Elmhurst smelled like floor cleaner and burnt coffee.

Danny sat on a plastic chair with a wad of brown paper towels under his nose.

There was blood down the front of his bike shop shirt, and on his hands, mixed with the grease.

He looked twelve again.

"Hey," he said through the towels. "You look terrible."

"You look worse."

"I'm winning, then."

I sat down beside him and took his free hand.

It was cold.

The nurse said the doctor would be out soon.

I knew this room.

I knew the chair with the split seat and the TV playing cooking shows nobody watched.

Seven years ago I'd sat in it for nine days while they told me what the numbers meant.

On the third day a woman in white had sat down beside me and asked what I wanted most in the world.

"Clary," Danny said. "You're crushing my hand."

I let go.

"I need the bathroom," I said.

The bathroom had a metal door with a sign about handwashing.

I locked myself in.

I felt very stupid.

I knocked three times on the inside of the door.

"Hades," I said.

Nothing happened.

I washed my hands, for something to do.

When I came out, the waiting room had gone cold.

Not air-conditioning cold. The cold of a church in winter.

The cooking show went to static.

A baby stopped crying and stared at the entrance.

Hades walked in through the sliding doors in his dark suit.

Every person in that room shifted their chair an inch away from him without knowing why.

He came straight to us.

"Who's this?" Danny said.

I opened my mouth.

"I'm with your sister," Hades said.

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