She doesn't open her eyes, taking slow deep breaths against the pillow. "Have you never heard of letting people dream?" It's laughed out, rattling along her throat and shoulders. Like the sick are capable of. The slow way people die now. An adjustment of hours.

Perhaps she is just the same. If she were anyone else, she'd let it linger, feel the bite, feel the sickness, drag herself down to level of the living, hang there at the very edge, almost dead. "Besides, you know time has nothing to do with it."