The Infinite Sea (The Fifth Wave 2)

I opened the med kit and took out a pair of tweezers and surgical scissors. Small, but they seemed huge. I clicked on the penlight and stuck the butt end between my teeth.

I handed Evan the washcloth reeking of pine. He pressed the cloth over Megan’s nose and mouth. Her body jerked, her eyelids fluttered open, her eyes rolled to the back of her head. Her hands, folded primly in her lap, twitched, became still. Evan dropped the cloth onto her chest.

“If she wakes up while I’m in there . . .” I said around the flashlight, sounding like a very bad ventriloquist: Eh chee wecks uh . . .

Evan nodded. “A hundred ways it can go wrong, Cassie.”

He tilted her head back and forced her mouth open. I stared down a glistening red tunnel the width of a razor and a mile deep. Tweezers in my left hand. Scissors in my right. Both hands the size of footballs.

“Can you open it any wider?” I asked.

“If I open it any wider, I’ll dislocate her jaw.”

Well, in the grand scheme of things, a dislocated jaw was better than being able to pick up our pieces with this pair of tweezers. But whatever.

“This one?” Touching the tonsil gently with the end of the tweezers.

“I can’t see.”

“When you said right tonsil, you meant her right, not my right, right?”

“Her right. Your left.”

“Okay,” I breathed. “Just wanted to make sure.”

I couldn’t see what I was doing. I had the tweezers down her throat but not the scissors, and I didn’t know how I was going to stuff both in the tiny mouth of this little girl.

“Hook the wire with the end of the tweezers,” Evan suggested. “Then very slowly lift it up so you can see what you’re doing. Don’t yank. If the wire disconnects from the capsule—”

“Dear Jesus Christ, Walker, you don’t have to warn me every two minutes what happens if the freaking wire disconnects from the freaking capsule!” I felt the tip of the tweezers catch on something. “Okay, I think I’ve got it.”

“It’s very thin. Black. Shiny. Your light should reflect—”

“Please be quiet.” Or, in penlight speak: Pweez be qwiwet.

My whole body was shaking but my hands, miraculously, had become rock steady. I forced my right hand into her mouth by pushing against the inside of her cheek, maneuvering the tips of the scissors into position. Was that it? Did I actually have it? The wire, if that was the wire shining in my light, was as thin as a strand of human hair.

“Slowly, Cassie.”

“Shut. Up.”

“If she swallows it—”

“I am going to kill you, Evan. Seriously.” I had the wire now, pinched between the tines of the tweezers. I could see the tiny hook embedded in her enflamed flesh as I tugged. Slow, slow, slow. Make sure you cut on the right end of the wire. The claw end.

“You’re too close,” he warned me. “Stop talking and don’t breathe directly into her mouth . . .”

Right. So instead, I think I’m going to punch you directly in yours.

A hundred ways it could go wrong, he said. But there’s wrong ways, really wrong ways, and really really wrong ways. When Megan’s eyes flipped open and her body bucked beneath mine, we went down a really really one.

“She’s awake!” I yelled unnecessarily.

“Don’t let go of the wire!” he shouted back, necessarily.

Her teeth clamped down hard on my hand. Her head whipped from side to side. My fingers were trapped inside her mouth. I tried to hold the tweezers still, but one hard tug and the capsule would pull free . . .

“Evan, do something!”