Read Chapter 29: — WHEN THE CITY BREATHED AGAIN

Spring arrived quietly.

Trees budded along the lakefront. Restaurant patios reopened with fewer tables. Children returned to parks. Trains resumed limited service.

Lakeshore carried visible scars.

Memorial photographs appeared outside hospitals. Families held delayed funerals. Some survivors struggled with fatigue and breathlessness. Some health workers could not sleep without hearing monitor alarms in dreams.

The city held a remembrance ceremony for those who died during the outbreak.

Peter attended with Rachel.

Olivia and Daniel stood nearby with their baby.

Martin came from Toronto.

Helen arrived separately and somehow ended up sitting beside him.

Neither moved.

Lena noticed.

Adrian noticed her noticing.

“Don’t interfere,” he whispered.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were absolutely going to.”

She smiled.

Ben appeared at the edge of the crowd. He and Lena saw each other from a distance. He raised one hand.

She returned the gesture.

That was enough.

When the names of hospital workers who had died were read, the entire crowd stood.

Lena thought of the first patient she could not save.

Of the taxi driver.

Of George Nolan.

Of engineers, drivers, cleaners, clerks, paramedics, nurses, physicians, cooks, technicians, and strangers who had passed food through doorways.

Heroism, she had learned, was often a word applied afterward to work that had felt mostly like exhaustion while it was happening.

Adrian’s fingers closed around hers.

The city inhaled.

For months, everyone had listened for breath as a sign of danger.

Now the sound felt like life itself.