Chapter 2: Was she dead?
Hua Jing woke up with a start.
Her eyes flew open, and for a moment, all she could see was a blur of dim light.
Her body felt impossibly heavy, as though invisible weights were pressing her down into the softness beneath her.
She attempted to lift her arm, and to her surprise, her fingers obeyed, though sluggishly.
Her head throbbed in sharp pulses, the pain radiating from her temples and down her neck.
She winced, instinctively reaching up to touch her head, expecting to feel blood, shards of glass, or some other remnant of the crash.
But her fingers met nothing but warm, smooth skin.
"Where am I?" she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper.
Her mind raced back to the accident—the screeching tires, the blinding headlights, the deafening crash. The last thing she remembered was the taste of blood in her mouth and the icy cold seeping into her body as she lay slumped against the dashboard. She had been in her car. So why was she lying down now?
The air around her felt still, almost eerily quiet. No hum of traffic, no wailing sirens, no sound of falling snow. Hua Jing blinked, her vision finally clearing, and noticed something flimsy covering her face. It was soft, almost weightless, like a thin blanket.
Her first thought after feeling the flimsy covering was that she was in a morgue.