Chapter 25 The Scars We Carry

• The sterile white of the CDC mobile unit’s medical bay was a different kind of white. Harsh, bright, and humming with purpose. But as I tightened a blood pressure cuff around Vivian’s pale, trembling arm, the smell of antiseptic triggered a memory, sharp and visceral.
• *The white of the holding room was dull, tinged with yellow from the wire-reinforced windows. The smell wasn’t clean; it was the cloying, cheap scent of industrial disinfectant trying to mask fear and urine. The cuffs they used weren’t velcro; they were cold, hard leather, biting into my wrists as I struggled, my protests diagnosed as "paranoid ideation." A nurse with bored eyes noted my "agitation" on a chart, her pen scratching a verdict that felt more permanent than any judge's. The door clicked shut, the lock echoing in the sterile silence. Not to keep the world out, but to keep me in.*
• I blinked, the memory receding as quickly as it came. Vivian’s pulse thrummed under my fingertips, rapid and thready. Real. Present.