A warm drop landed on my face.
Then nothing. Then another, and that one pulled me out.
My eyes stayed shut. Air moved somewhere close, a thin current from the shaft above the bulb, and under it a sound. Small pulled breaths, coming from below the level of the bed, too shallow to be rest.
Two more hits on my cheek. Warm. Thick. A few more landed lower—across my stomach, the top of one thigh—scattered, out of time with each other, as if whatever was producing them had no rhythm left.
Then a sound came up from the floor that started as a cough and broke on the way out into something wetter.
My eyes opened onto a blur with a light in the middle of it.
The bulb resolved first. Then the metal frame. Then the edge of the mattress and the dark drop beyond it.
She was on the floor beside the bed. Legs drawn up, knees held to her chest for a second, arms locked around them. Then the hold failed. Her legs went flat on the stone with a soft sound and stayed there, open, spent.
