Consciousness didn't return with a flood, it was a more gradual ebb and flow, like waves lapping on a shoreline. She heard sounds first - a creaking chair, the hum of a furnace or air conditioner, the sound of someone breathing. Then she faded out and when she surfaced again, her eyelids tried to open but didn't. They were stuck, she thought, glued together somehow. Before she could move a hand to rub her sticky eyes, she drifted back to sleep. The next time she woke there were both ...