The Awakening of Sunshine Girl (The Haunting of Sunshine Girl, #2)(4)

But before I can help him, I feel something else. Another spirit. A woman this time, Kimberly, who’s only a few years older than I am. She’s standing beside the driver’s side door waiting for me. Her injuries don’t look as traumatic as Matt’s, but blood is dripping from her ear. A head injury killed her, mostly hidden by her hair.

Two spirits this close to me, this quickly, is overwhelming. Even though heat is blasting from the vents behind the steering wheel, it’s suddenly so cold in here that I can see my own breath coming out in hyper little pants because my heart is pounding, beating faster than it ever has before.

Another spirit is near. I gasp at what I see and look away as quickly as I can. His wounds are horrific. No one told me I’d see spirits in such graphic detail. But then again, I’ve been avoiding my mentor, the one person who can tell me things like that. Before I have time to process what’s happening, another spirit is here, waiting for my help. I can’t see Matt anymore, the man whose bald tires caused this tragedy. I want desperately to help him move on, but I can’t find him. I can only feel the overwhelming cold from all of them at once. I sink into the gray upholstery of my seat as though someone has placed an enormous weight around my neck, pressing me down, down, down.

I’ve never known cold like this before. I should have zipped my jacket before I got in the car, should have put on the multicolored crocheted hat and gloves that are sitting uselessly in my backpack in the backseat. I should have put on boots with thick socks instead of my sneakers when I got dressed this morning. I should have borrowed Nolan’s ridiculous hat.

I manage to focus on my fingers, still gripping the wheel, and I’m not surprised when I see they’re turning blue at the knuckles. I try to catch my breath, but it’s run away without me. I can’t keep my eyes open; I’ve been deprived of oxygen for too long, and I’m about to pass out. Mustering whatever strength I have left, I press down on the horn as hard as I can, like I think I can scare the spirits away.

Mom opens the door on the passenger side, and my overworked heart leaps. “Didn’t want to run out in the snow to pick up your poor old mom so you just honked the horn?” she says with a smile that fades away the instant she sees the state I’m in.

“Sunshine!” she shouts, reaching across the car and putting her warm fingers on my neck. When she feels my pulse, she pulls back for a second in shock. But then she goes right into nurse-mode. She unclicks my seatbelt and pulls me across the car and onto my back on the snowy ground. She starts performing CPR and somehow manages to get the attention of the EMTs across the lot at the same time. The next thing I know, I’m on a gurney being wheeled into the hospital, my mother squeezing one of those airbags I’ve only ever seen on television, trying to breathe air back into my lungs.

If I could talk, I’d tell her it’s no use. The doctors can’t help me; they’re not qualified to treat this kind of thing. Thanks to Nolan’s research, I know that a luiseach like me can’t be killed by a dark spirit, but I find myself wondering whether an onslaught of light spirits can kill me. I’m panting so hard that my lungs ache. The doctors and nurses are shouting around me as I’m wheeled into the ER and hooked up to their tubes and machines.

“We need to stabilize her heart!”

“We need to raise her body temperature!”

“We need to figure out why the heck an otherwise healthy sixteen-year-old girl just got wheeled into the ER with hypothermia and cardiac arrhythmia.”

Okay, maybe they didn’t shout that last one. But it’s not difficult to guess it’s what they’re all thinking.

In all the chaos, as I drift in and out of consciousness, I can feel the warmth coming from my mother’s touch. Her hand on my arm is a tiny source of heat keeping me connected to the world of the living, a small flame in the darkness. Suddenly I have a better understanding of what it must be like for the spirits who find me after they pass.

And then, it all stops. Not the flurry of physicians around me but the pounding in my chest, the freezing of my extremities. The sound of the heart monitor they’d hooked me up to shifts from a screeching wail into a steady beep. The warming blankets they’d packed around me feel too hot; in a snap I go from shivering to sweating.

The weight on my shoulders lifts. The spirits have vanished. My tunnel vision fades, and everything is bright again. Mom slips out of nurse-mode and back into mom-mode. She shoves the machines aside and leans down over me, wrapping me up in a tight hug.

“Mom,” I gasp. “I just started breathing again. I don’t think smothering me is the best idea.” I expect her to laugh at my joke, but instead she goes on hugging me, her cheek pressed against mine. I can feel that her face is wet with tears.

“I’m okay,” I say, and she finally releases me. She turns to face the doctors surrounding my bed, each of them looking more baffled than the last.

“What happened to my daughter?”

“We don’t know, Kat,” someone answers. I look at his ID tag and see his name is Dr. Steele. The same last name as Lucy from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Apparently with my vital signs back to normal—I think—I’m back to relating my life to the stories of my favorite writer. At least some things never change.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Mom stands, looking confused. “There has to be an explanation for an episode of this magnitude.”