She lay very still and waited for it to calm down. It took longer than it should have. It always took longer than it should have, these days. One week out from the estate and her body was behaving like it had been fundamentally altered....like they'd changed her settings and no one had given her the manual for the new version.
It's psychosomatic, she told herself. Firmly. Your body went through an extreme experience and it's processing it. That's all this is. It'll pass.
The ceiling crack offered no opinion.
It'll pass, she repeated.
She almost believed it.
She stayed in bed for a full hour.
Not sleeping....just existing. Letting her heart rate return to something normal, letting her body stop its nonsense, staring at the ceiling and making herself think about practical things. Her mother. The hospital visit today. Whether she had enough food in the apartment for breakfast or if she needed to stop somewhere on the way.
Normal things. Real things.
