Page 154 of Dragon 7

Two more men followed in with more cots. They all had black suits on with black gloves. They lined the cots against the wall in a neat row and stood shoulder to shoulder with their hands folded at their belts, waiting.

What the hell is going on?

I kept reading. "One night, the wind came up strong. The paper lantern shivered."

The kids leaned forward. They knew what came next.

"Then, the paper lantern blew out."

A small gasp rose from three beds at once. The little girl at my knee pressed her hand flat to the blanket the way she always did when the lantern went dark.

A doctor at the far end took a call. He listened with his head bent. He wrote one line on the chart at the foot of the bed, capped his pen, and slid it into his breast pocket.

"The rabbit was very sad."

The doctor walked to the mother in the chair beside the bed and crouched to her level. He put a hand on her wrist and spoke three sentences.

She gasped, quickly nodded, and stood.

Huh?

The two men in black lifted her son onto a cot and wheeled him out.

I flipped the page. "Without his lantern, the fishermen would be lost at sea.”

Then, several more men in black suits entered with cots.

“And the travelers would be lost in the mountains.”

The new men began helping other injured out of their beds and placing them onto the cots.

Is the war over?

I cleared my throat. “And the children would be afraid of the dark."

The little girl at my knee tapped the back of my hand. "I’m scared of the dark."

My throat went dry. “Sometimes I am too.”

Three kids in front widened their eyes in shock.

Another phone rang, but this time it was one of the mothers. Then a fourth phone rang. Then a fifth from somewhere behind me.

And a sixth.

My hand tightened on the spine of the book.

What the fuck is going on?

The senior nurse—the one with silver at her temples—clapped her hands once, and every other nurse in the room turned toward her at the same instant. She pointed at three beds in sequence, and the other nurses peeled off toward them.

And then even more men entered as the earlier men pushed injured away.

They’re clearing the room. Why?

On the right, a doctor pointed at the IV pole beside me and made a lifting motion with her fingers, and the nurse closest untangled the line with her teeth in her lower lip and freed the bag in six seconds flat.

"So the rabbit climbed down from the moon on a long silver rope."