Page 104 of Ghost Ribbon

In.

Out.

The pressure persisted.

I carefully extracted myself from his arms.

He stirred, his breathing changing pattern, but he didn’t wake. His face in sleep was even more beautiful, the permanent tension around his eyes smoothed away. For a moment I just looked at him, my chest hurting in an entirely different way.

Then I turned and slipped out of bed.

The floor was cold under my bare feet. My nightshirt hung loosely around my frame, and I clutched at the hem as I made my way to the bathroom.

The bathroom light was too bright. I blinked against it, one hand pressed to my chest, and looked at myself in the mirror.

Pale.

Too pale.

My curls were a mess, wild and tangled from sleep and from his fingers.

I leaned over the sink, gripping the edges, and tried to breathe through it the way the doctors had taught me.

I coughed.

My whole body jerked with the force of it, shoulders hunching, hands white-knuckled against the porcelain. The coughing tore through my chest like it was trying to pull something up from deep inside.

When it finally subsided, I was trembling.

I spat into the sink without thinking.

Then I looked down.

And my whole world tilted.

There was blood.

My hand started shaking. I stared at it, at the evidence of my body failing.

No.

Not now.

I reached for the cabinet above the sink with a trembling hand, yanking it open too hard, making the bottles rattle against each other. My fingers found what I needed.

Three pills.

I put the pills in my mouth, filled the cup beside the sink with water, and swallowed them down in one gulp. They caught in my throat, then slid down, leaving a bitter residue I knew would linger for hours.

I rinsed my mouth.

Spit.

Rinsed again.

Made sure there was no trace of red left in the sink, no evidence that anything had been wrong. The mirror showed me a face that looked almost normal again, if you didn’t know where to look.

I breathed in.