Sofia Vasquez

The hospital room was a battlefield of beeps and shadows, the monitors’ green glow painting my skin in sickly light. Pain radiated from my shoulder where the bullet had grazed, but the real wound was deeper; my lungs, ravaged by cancer, gasping for air the machines forced into me. The IV dripped a cocktail of antibiotics and painkillers, keeping infection at bay but not the fear clawing my heart. Elena’s scream from Victor’s video, “No!”—still echoed in my skull, her ...