Nightspire had donated blood twice, been thanked zero times, and was sitting in that chair with the composure of a man who understood that his contributions to this evening would be repaid in the currency of silence.
Somewhere during the second donation, Serena's body decided that dying was basic, and she was many things, but basic was never one of them.
Her color came back.
It happened slowly, then all at once, the way dawn replaces dark. The blue receded from her lips like a tide pulling away from shore. The flush in her cheeks shifted from fever-hot to warm, the kind of warm that belonged to a body whose blood was remembering how to circulate and was cautiously optimistic about the process.
