She’s so pale, but her spirit is rich and wild. Her heart beats strong and true.
It’s hard not to stare at her. Hard not to imagine touching her. Feeling her warmth. Kissing her.
She takes out the computer tablet and studies the screen, tapping it now and then. I’m grateful she’s not looking at me—my eyes are anything but vacant. I imagine pulling her to me and burying my nose in her neck—that’s where her clean spicy scent comes from. Mostly from the left side of her neck. I imagine putting my nose there and sucking in her scent, of taking just that one thing for myself. Like everything might be worth that one moment of holding her.
I want to do it so badly, spots appear before my eyes.
I haven’t felt sunlight on my skin since that brief race for freedom some months back. If I ever want to feel sunshine on my skin again, I need to ignore her. I tell this to myself over and over.
I manage dull eyes just in time for her to look over at me.
“We’re going to do blood pressure first. What do you think?”Rrrrip. Velcro. “Please be low,” she whispers. “Please just be low.”
Desperation. Weariness. What happened?
My blood pressure won’t be low. Her distress is ruining my calm.
Ignore her!
It would be better if Nurse Zara sent a different nurse to manage me, but I think I would die if I couldn’t see Ann again.
Electricity slides over my skin as she takes hold of my arm. With gentle movements, she fits the cuff around my arm. The sweetness of her touch kills me, even through the gloves. What would it be like if she touched me skin to skin?
She sighs the way she sometimes does before she speaks.
Every fiber in me strains toward her. She mumbles something unintelligible about counting, then, “Fucking antiseptic.” More mumbling. Then, “If I just didn’t smell it at home. If I could go an hour without it in my nose. Like particles of smell are stuck in there. Or is it some hallucination? Fuck. Sorry.”
She rips off the cuff and repositions it. My mouth goes dry.
“Maybe I should wear that stuff mortuary workers wear, you know? Under their noses? To mask the smell? That menthol. What do you think? That menthol. A little menthol…lotta menthol.” She sighs.
Her sad sigh makes me want to rip the clouds down. She repositions the cuff and pumps. She won’t like the number.
“I should do that, huh? Anything’s better. If I could go a few days without the smell, I could sleep. It’s just the smell. It’s the smell. Of course it’s bothering me. Who wouldn’t be bothered?” She checks the numbers. “Fuck.”
You get a lot of self-control living wild. I could stay hungry for days. I could catch and kill prey with my bare hands. I could sit in a snowy glen for hours and melt the snow around my skin long before I felt cold. I used to be able to control my blood pressure here, once I’d realized that a higher number meant more attention, sometimes more drugs.
Try harder. Fight for the sunshine. Fight for your life.
She sighs. Everything about her is beautiful.
My desire to touch her twists my heart.
Chapter Six
Ann
The problem withbeing sleep-deprived is that you lose your center, your ballast. I feel like I’m drifting in a boat at the mercy of wind and waves.
I tell myself that people go without sleep for days on end all the time. I tell myself it’s fine.
It’s not fine, though.
I’m tired. Mentally fragile as a tissue. I cried on the way driving here because of a Tom Petty song on the radio. Fucking Tom Petty, right?
It doesn’t help that Donny was out in the parking lot when I arrived. He popped up out of nowhere and scared the shit out of me.
It was pretty clear that he was waiting for me. Thank goodness I had my keychain in my hand with a mini-canister of mace attached. I smiled and twirled it on my finger, then clasped it, making sure he saw it. A silent threat.