Deterioration

She reaches for me. Her gnarled fingers graze the nooks in the bedsheet. Her arm is covered in thin skin pulled taut like cellophane wrap over bones that look fit to snap. She searches with jagged nails at the ends of spiderleg fingers.

I want to crawl away but I can't. I will my muscles to move, to pilot my body away from her. But I'm paralyzed.

I know she is searching for me. What will happen when she finds me?

--

I have told James about her. "It's those new damn pills," he says over eggs and toast one morning. He peppers his buttered plate while I have just the toast dry because my stomach has begun to mutiny against anything with flavor as of late. "I told you that physician was a quack. He's making you see things so he can leech off our insurance. What a joke."

I don’t bother telling him that she'd appeared long before my first appointment with the fellow. The first dream occurred even before my first symptom several months ago. She hadn't yet arrived at my bed. Her fingers had only parted the door, barely catching her cellophane skin on miniscule splinters. The first ache struck me that morning after I had woken up.

"It's only been a few days, dear," I tell James about the pills. My stomach clenches instinctively, not from the toast but the words coming from me. I have grown to dislike the sound of my own voice because I can no longer recognize it. It sounds hollow and croaky, another woman's howl instead of mine from my own mouth. Despite this, I press on. "We shouldn't see changes until a week after the first dose, you remember. It'll take some time."

"Time that we don't have," he snorts after slugging back the last of his coffee. "Did the supermarket get back to you yet?"

"No.”

It's not the answer he wants.

“Why the hell not? You’re one of their best vendors.”

“They’re busy.”

“You’ve been there for years. Surely they can spare a phone call for you.”

“I can wait.”

"I can't keep up the house on my own. It’s ridiculous. If I have to march down there and talk to your supervisor myself-"

"It’s not a big deal, dear. Really. I’m not in the most professional state anyway– ”

“What on earth are you staring at?”

I haven’t realized that my gaze had drifted. James’s question snaps my attention back into focus. My vision clears and I understand that, to my poor husband’s eyes, his ill wife has been rattling off unspecific answers to his questions while her eyes bulge at the windowsill behind him. There is nothing there.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

I hope the deliberate meekness in my voice signals James to drop it. To drive the point in I take a bite of toast so large my jaw cracks. The crunch feels like brittle bones between my teeth.

Not long after, the silence grows debilitating.

James reaches for my free hand.

“I’m just worried about you. Everything is happening so fast. You’re so distant now. You’ve never been away from work this long. We still don’t know what’s wrong with you.” His voice is soft as his fingers grazing my knuckles. “But I’m not giving up. You have to get better. We’ll do everything we can. We’ll call the doctor again. We’ll tell your supervisor you’ll be back before they know it. We need you at your best again.”

I nod and say nothing because he has already said everything I’m thinking.

--

Each encounter begins the same. I shut my eyes to the linens James has wrapped around me and I open them to a different bed. The room is far smaller, a cramped box with nondescript walls and a notable lack of other personal furniture. Every inch is painted a deep bluish-black to match the room’s consistently dark lighting that the eye sees after flicking the lamp off late at night. I have never been to this place, and yet I feel a nudging familiarity to it.

The bed is centered and positioned so I can only face the singular doorway on the opposite wall. By recent nights it is yawning open, the void beyond so vast and so empty. A danger I have never seen or nothing at all could be lurking in that dark.

I am sat up, rigid like a doll, my body unreceptive to my commands as though someone other has invaded and shut down my neural messengers. I cannot twitch. I cannot so much as blink.

Every night, I open my eyes, register the dark infinity, and see her. Her hand creeping gingerly over the tucked sheets as if seeking something tiny and fragile. She never reaches past her forearm’s length, but she underlines each touch with cracked mumbling.

I have never seen her face. I’ve also never woken up screaming before. Until the night that I blink – for a gasp of a second, whether my free will returns without my awareness or a black sheet is pulled over my eyes, the box disappears as the dark engulfs my vision.

And my eyes open and a wrinkled pair of sockets stare back inches from my face and James catches me before my flailing body crashes off the bed.

I sob and James cradles me as if I should break. He kisses my head and mumbles into my hair that I’m okay, he’s here now, it was just a dream, I was safe. But I can’t tell him the real reason I’m terrified.

Much like the room that the dreams trap me in, I recognize her eyes.

--

Frequent exhaustion. Nausea. Skin dryness. Heart palpitations. Muscle weakness. Infrequent bowel movements.

The list has grown longer since the quack's last visit.

"We're still uncertain on diagnosis," he says as casually as if describing the afternoon weather. “None of your tests came back conclusive. It’s more an… amalgamation of tangentially related symptoms.”

Without looking at him I know James is itching to smack the multisyllable language out the man’s mouth. He sits beside me on the living room couch, his posture rigid and attentive while my eyes are trained on the carpet.

We invited him to the house this time because the thought of walking into his office again makes my knees buckle. I can see the stares of other patients in the waiting area if I enter. Who wants to see a decrepit wraith while they wait for a check-up?

“Are you still taking your prescriptions?”

“If you mean the pills you gave her, yes. She is. Not much has changed.”

“Have you been sticking to the recommended dosage?”

“She never does more than one a day. Just as you said.”

“Any side effects? Have you noticed any new aches or pains since I last saw you?”

“She aches everywhere. She was like that before we saw you. I have to help her out of bed lately, it’s been so bad.”

I do not mind James answering the questions that the doctor is directing towards me. I feel ready to snap. Waking up today had felt Herculean. The morning’s coffee had tasted like chalk. I cannot so much as scratch my nose without my hand shaking. If I still try to scratch my nose, I fear my nail will catch and tear through my sallow skin. If I speak, I’m afraid I will collapse like a broken vase.

“…And who is this lovely lady?”

The doctor’s most unexpected question drags me back into reality. He leans over, looking at the line of framed photographs James and I have decorated the coffee table with. He picks one up and turns it to face us.

The posed headshot depicts a skinny woman with skin as pale and hair as black as mine.

Though I hate my own voice, I am honest.

“…My mother.”

“Really? Where is she now?”

“She died. Years ago.”

I almost add “She died in the same hospital I was born in.” My own shock stops me. What is wrong with me? Why even think of that morbid detail now?

“Ah. I see. Of what, if you don’t mind?”

“What?”

“How did she die? Do you recall?”

“Okay, what is the point of this?” James interjects. Without looking I know he has stood up, wringing his hands at the startled doctor. “I thought you were here to tell us how she can get better?”

“Oh no, I am. I was wondering if she had family history. Of her condition, that is. Only reason why I asked about her mother. Did she suffer the same symptoms? Is it possible her mother died because of them?”

I freeze. My mouth dries like I’ve swallowed sand.

“You’re ridiculous,” James barks. He can’t hold back his naturally righteous personality for this man anymore. “She isn’t dying. She’s just sick. Just help her get better. That’s your job.”

“Please, sir. I’m doing everything I can. I know you love your wife a lot.”

“It’s not about me, it’s about her. Why aren’t you doing more for her?”

“I just said, I’m doing all I can. The new pills aren’t a miracle cure. They’re supposed to reduce symptoms until we find the root of the issues.”

They continue like this but I’m no longer listening. I’m too busy recalling the day my mother died.

The room is a blinding white. Constant beeping invades my ears. The stink of sanitizer suffocates me. I’m far too young for this to happen. I want to look away from her still form but can’t. Her frail hand freezes in my warm one and it barely twitches anymore and she takes one more shuddering breath and I feel trapped with a ghost and her dark hair cradles her face like long oily fingers and when I remember the sunken pits her eyes became I am rescued by an alarm from my pocket.

I have never been so thrilled to answer the phone in my life.

I have also never stood up so fast in my life, muscle weakness be damned.

After excusing myself from my startled husband and doctor I retreat to the opposite end of the room and pound the Answer icon with as much force I can muster. For once I can withstand how I sound as I croak “Hello…?”

“Hello, Dearie.” My nickname in my supervisor’s trilling voice fills me with relief. “So sorry we haven’t been able to reach you yet.”

“It’s okay. Whenever you need me back I’ll be there– ”

“Actually, I’m here to talk to you about that. We have a new hire.”

And just like that, my world shatters.

“You know I love you, Dearie. We all do here. But we’ve seen your health records. It wouldn’t be right bringing you back in. I’m sorry. I hope you can understand.”

Her voice fades as my throat closes. I cannot hold my pieces together.

I become vaguely aware that James and the doctor continue arguing.

“And what about the nightmares? They’re scaring her to death!”

“That shouldn’t be a side effect. How frequent are they?”

“Every damn night! She looks like death when she wakes up!”

“…Is she okay? No, right now. Look. Excuse me?”

“Dear? Dear, can you hear me…?”

I collapse before James can catch me.

--

When I wake I almost believe I’m still at home. The bed I’m sat up in is familiar. The white walls box me in. The hospital has not changed much since I was born.

Almost against my will, I blink.

She has found me.

Her face does not startle me the way it should. Her eyes bulge, gray pupils locking with mine. Her sunken sockets resemble dark pits. She squats before me at the end of the sheet, every jutting bone threatening to tear out of her. Her fingers unfurl into the sheets. Her pallid skin and black hair resemble my own.

She stares. I stare back. My body is broken. I have no will to look away.

Then her face splits. Where her mouth should be a crack appears. Her eyes and her chin collapse and erode as her jaw unhinges. A million serrated teeth welcome me in.

I finally realize why she was looking for me as she swallows my head, crunching my skull into splinters.