WINNIE
I woke up gasping.
My whole body ached like I’d been run over by a truck, no, worse. My lungs burned, my throat was dry, and I couldn’t even sit up without pain shooting down my spine. I blinked at the ceiling above me. It was wooden. Low. Slanted. There was no hospital lighting, no beeping machines, no smell of antiseptic.
Where the hell was I?
I tried to sit up again, slower this time, and groaned. Every bone in my body felt like it had been shattered and glued back together wrong.
“Easy there, sweetheart.”
I froze.
A woman’s voice. Soft, kind, and trembling with age.
I turned my head slowly, every movement aching like my bones were made of glass, and saw her, an elderly woman, maybe in her late sixties or seventies, standing in the doorway.
She wasn’t scary or stern like some older people I’d seen. No, she looked gentle. Her wild grey curls framed her face like a storm that refused to settle, but her eyes… her eyes were bright, alive, and kind. They didn’t match the rest of
