Free The Brokenhearted by Amelia Kahaney Page B

hiss. “Get your hands off me right now!”
    “She’s ferocious.” She grins at the jogger, seemingly impressed. Her bloodshot blue eyes shine with evident pride as she writes something down on a clipboard. “A very good sign.”
    “Where am I?” I demand. “And why am I tied up?”
    “I’ll get those. Sorry about that. You kept trying to pull out the IV.” The jogger starts to unbuckle the restraints binding my wrists to the table. “We didn’t know if you were going to make it.” His ears turn red as he releases the last of the straps pinning me down.
    “What happened last night?” I whisper, struggling to sit up. The effort makes the room spin. I instinctively reach my hands to my throat. The necklace is still there, the flat gold heart cool in my hand.
    “Three nights ago, actually,” the woman chirps as she presses a stethoscope to my chest.
    “Three nights?” The blood drains from my face, and I will myself not to pass out. The boy rests a hand on my back to steady me, and I don’t have the strength to shake him off.
    “Easy now, take it slow. You don’t want to lose consciousness again,” the doctor murmurs. Through my dizziness I notice a large tattoo on the inside of her forearm. It’s a double helix, two curved strands of DNA. Surrounding it is a complex series of interlocking hexagons and pentagons dotted with letters and numbers. I think back to last year’s bio lab, where we were always drawing symbols like this. Nucleotides. The basic elements of genetic reproduction. A second tattoo near her wrist is of a small heart, encircling a name in delicate script. Noa .
    “You remember falling into the river, right?” the jogger says, a guilty, pained expression on his face.
    I nod, wishing I could forget the icy water flooding my lungs, the instant freezing of my limbs, the polluted kerosene stench of the Midland, the certainty that my life was over.
    “Sorry about that. I shouldn’t have asked for a reward.” He pauses for a moment, and I notice his eyes are a clear brown but red rimmed and tired-looking. “I don’t know what I was thinking.
    “Anyway,” he goes on, “you were carried down the river, but I jumped in after you. When I finally reached you, I took you straight to Jax’s lab. I’m Ford, by the way, and this is Jax. She saved your life. Jax, this is . . .”
    “Anthem.”
    Ford’s cheeks redden a little, and he nods. “We, uh, actually already know your name.”
    I look from one to the other, my chest suddenly skipping like a broken hard drive. “You do?”
    “You’ve been in the papers,” Ford says carefully, avoiding my eyes. “The whole city is looking for you.”
    “Oh my god.” I picture my mother and father being interviewed on Channel Four Roundup, and goose bumps rise on my forearms at the realization that they probably think I’m dead. Then a thought occurs to me—maybe they’ve found out about Gavin, maybe somehow the kidnappers have changed their plan. “Did the news mention a kidnapping?”
    Ford eyes me curiously, but shakes his head. “Just you.”
    “I . . . the reason I was on that bridge so late is because my boyfriend was kidnapped and I was going for help. Have you heard the name Gavin Sharp in the news at all?”
    “Sorry.” Ford shakes his head. “About everything. Really.”
    “It’s an honor to meet you, Anthem,” Jax jumps in, her fingers closing around mine, pumping them up and down a little too enthusiastically. “Ford used to be a boxer before he got on the wrong side of a few fights. It may have made him into the reckless idiot he is today. He didn’t tell me he was responsible for your death until later. I was furious when—”
    “My death ?” I look down at my paper gown and notice something black and wormlike swimming beneath it, near the center of my chest. I start to lift the hospital gown, but Ford lifts my chin up, his eyes carrying a warning.
    “Better not look just yet.”
    “Why not?” I manage,