When the firefly pixies came a little while later, Gideon, Sinclair, and Kara were still sitting with me. It was just as well because the conversation had become stilted. The tiny flying swarm made their own entrance into the hospital and crowded into the room just as the sun fell beneath the horizon in the west. Sinclair was lighting a candle near my bed to which I had returned, when a green cloud of flying pixies rolled into the room like an invulnerable force. The only sounds were the doctor gasping and the buzzing of the pixies.
I smiled. So did Kara. Gideon held very still. Sinclair started to freak out, waving his hands as if shooing them away. I said sharply, “Don’t hit them! They won’t hurt you. And they’ve never stung or bitten us.” Of course, I didn’t know that they wouldn’t, but the doctor was twitching as if he had stepped on a beehive. At any second he was going to bolt for the door. He froze into place, and his apprehensive eyes watched the circling multitude. I decided that he had never played catch and release with bugs as a child.
The pixies came about me and prattled anxiously. One came to rest on my arm and warbled at me in an edifying sort of tone. I said consolingly, “It’s all better now. Look, they fixed me.”
Prancing down the length of my forearm, she seemed to be saying, “We’ll just see about that, missy.”
More of them were circling Kara, and she was laughing a little as she held up a palm for one of them. Interestingly, several were hovering by Gideon and staring at him intently. The remainder were avidly inspecting me and the room and largely ignoring the doctor.
“If you want to leave, Sinclair,” I said carefully, “then go slowly to the door. They won’t hurt you.”
“What are they?” he whispered, not moving. The fear he felt had dispersed into keen attention.
“They’re the firefly pixies I was talking about,” I said.
Kara laughed. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“They left that mark on your cheek?” Sinclair asked numbly.
“Yes,” I said. “They healed me, too. Guess they were otherwise occupied this time.”
“You weren’t dying,” Gideon said. His teenage voice unnerved me. “That’s why they didn’t come to you. However, they were concerned. They had little watchers with you the whole time. I’ve seen them. I don’t think anyone else noticed. But you weren’t dying.”
“She wasn’t dying,” Kara said flatly. “She was dead.”
“They brought you back to life,” Sinclair said, awestricken.
“That was Zach and Kara,” I put in, irritated at the admiration in the doctor’s tone. He kept looking at the pixies and then at me as though I was somehow something new and extraterrestrial. “CPR classes did them a lot of good. Thank you, Kara and Zach.”
Kara shrugged cordially. “Nice to know some of the old training still is rattling around in my head.”
The pixie on my arm jumped up and down demandingly. I looked down at her, and she tilted her head at me expectantly. “Oh no,” I said with a wry smile.
“What is it?” Sinclair asked.
“Do you like to sing, doc?” I asked.
“I can sing,” he said with the unsaid part being, “Why would you ask that?”