The Flower That Grew from Ashes novel Chapter 194

At 4:40 in the morning, the lights downstairs flickered on.

Annelise pulled the dark blue scarf tightly around her neck and pushed the front doors open.

Yves was already standing at the bottom of the steps holding two hot coffees, his breath forming white clouds in the frigid air.

"Right on time." He handed one to her.

"You're even earlier." Annelise took the cup, her fingertips pulling back slightly from the heat before settling into the comforting warmth.

"Couldn't sleep," Yves shrugged. "I'm more anxious about that batch of ranunculus than you are."

Annelise smiled.

The two of them climbed into her secondhand delivery van and drove toward the floral market on the outskirts of the city.

The rain had stopped, but the roads were still slick, and the sky was as dark as midnight.

Meanwhile, in a hospital across town, it was an entirely different scene.

Hackett lay in a hospital bed, having burned with a fever all night.

The thermometer read a dangerous 103.6 degrees, stubbornly refusing to drop.

The night-shift nurse frowned as she hooked up his third IV bag of fever-reducing medication.

"Where is this man's ID?" the nurse asked the janitor standing near the bed. "When they brought him in last night, he didn't have a single piece of paper on him, and his phone is locked."

"No idea," the janitor shook his head. "The paramedics brought him in. Said he passed out in the rain on a street in Grünerløkka."

The nurse sighed and took Hackett's blood pressure again.

The man in the bed looked ghastly pale, his lips cracked, entirely trapped in a haze of severe fever.

His eyelids twitched, and a series of slurred, indistinct sounds escaped his throat.

The nurse leaned in closer to listen.

It was a name.

A name she didn't recognize, repeated over and over in a feverish, broken whisper.

"Anne."

"Annelise."

The nurse had no idea who he was calling for.

Assuming it was just the delirious rambling of a feverish patient, she tucked the edges of his blanket in and turned to check on the next bed.

Hackett sank deeper into the blistering heat of his delirium.

He dreamt of that operating room from three years ago.

The blinding white surgical lights, the freezing metal instruments, and the woman lying on the table, eyes wide open but unable to make a sound.

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