“Yes,” Mason says, his green eyes back on me.
“Tell me what happened,” I say, mostly because I want to know, but also because I need a distraction. I’ve been stung by bees before, but it’s never been this bad. It’s like having PMS bloat throughout my whole body instead of just in my midsection; I have to wiggle my fingers so they don’t go numb from losing circulation. That, coupled with the itchy, burning pain of my body rejecting the venom, is making me feel like I’m going to freak out.
Mason looks at me wearily; he can tell I’m not feeling well. “You need your rest,” he says.
“Tell me what happened,” I command.
“Okay, Daisy,” he says, patting my hand, but not hard enough to take away the itch. “Okay.” He pauses and leans closer to me so I can hear him despite his low tone. “Matt told Megan that he heard you say something about Cassie—”
“He heard that?” I interrupt, remembering lying on the concrete. Dying.
“Apparently so,” Mason says softly. “Anyway, Matt relayed that to Megan, who in turn got David involved. David tracked Cassie’s cell location and recent calls, which led him to God’s location. He sent teams after both and focused on you.”
“But Cassie cleaned out the Revive,” I say. “And no one was around to administer it.”
“David grounded my plane in the middle of a field and had a car waiting for me,” he says.
“I bet that was scary.”
Mason makes a so-so gesture with his hand. I pat, pat my cheek. “The civilians were frantic,” he says. “They thought it was terrorists. I got an in-flight message from David, though, so I knew what was happening. It’s a good thing, too; God had something planned for me when I landed in Washington.”
“How long did it take you to get to me?” I ask, shifting to a more comfortable position.
“Thankfully, the flight path took us east, so I was only about twenty miles away.”
“That’s too far out,” I say, shaking my head. Surprisingly, I can’t feel the stings this time. “You couldn’t have brought me back from that.” Suddenly I feel spacey, like I’m watching the scene from outside my body. I realize that nothing else is bothering me anymore, either. I move my head again to make sure.
“Did the nurse give me something?” I ask.
Mason nods. “We’ve been sedating you to keep you calm,” he says. “You were stung more than a hundred times.”
My head falls back to the pillow but I fight sleep; I need to know what happened. I shake my head more forcefully to clear the fog.
“How long was I dead?”
“Twelve minutes,” Mason says seriously.
“Wait, what?” I ask, my eyelids drooping. “But you said you were…”
“Shh,” Mason says. “Get some rest now. I’ll explain later.”
I refuse to close my eyes. “Explain now,” I demand, but it lacks conviction.
“Daisy, you died, but Revive didn’t bring you back,” he says.
“What did, then?” I ask, finally closing my eyes, barely hanging on to consciousness.
“Blah, blah, blah,” I hear Mason say, except I’m pretty sure that’s not actually what he said. I force open my eyelids one last time.
“What saved me?”
This time, because I can see his lips, I get it.
“CPR.”
forty-two