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Distantly, Lorraine was aware that her lungs burned and that sweat prickled at the back of her neck. Something like rotting leaves whipped around her in the air – the air that beat on her face as her feet beat on the ground. The sun shone, dark and thick, in her eyes.
It all froze as quickly as it started. She saw her husband’s face as if he was inches away, his terrified eyes piercing through her, and his lips moving around her name. No sound came to her.
Her ankle jerked. Her foot slipped on stone. Her chest plummeted.
And then the quilt tightened around her legs. With a jolt, suddenly her pillow was against her face and the tangled sheets were under her again, as solidly as if she had smacked into a quarry of water.
Lorraine’s hands quickly grasped for whatever was closest. Her fingernails scratched and bent against the corner of her pillowcase and the edge of the bedspread by her chest. In the dark bedroom – it must have still been far from sunrise – she blinked as fast as her heart was beating, afraid of the rushing of blood in her ears and the noise of her panicked breath.
Startling awake so suddenly sent a dull cramp through her calf and she stretched her heel as far toward the foot of the bed as she could, before remembering the violent tug at her ankle on the cliffside. Her hands and feet scrambled at the sheet under her to pull herself up, propped back on the heels of her palms, eyes watery and unsteady. She scanned the room fearfully even though her lucidity reminded her she was safe.
Sometimes it wasn’t so easy to deeply, truly believe it.
Ed. She wanted to say his name, wake him up beside her, reach for him, but shattered sobs welled up buoyantly in her throat and her chin trembled while she tried to swallow them down. Ed. Please. Please. I’m scared.
Her hands covered her face. Tears fell down her wrists and she kicked her feet at the quilt, frustrated, suffocated by the awful memory her dream had forced her through. Overwhelmed sobs cut through her fingers. The darkness of the room was heavy on her and there wasn’t any way to break through it with only her own breath and touch.
Then the sheets beside her shifted, just a little at first and then in a hurry as Ed woke and registered the sound of her crying.
“Honey.” Desperation pulled on his sleepy voice. He pulled himself up and reached to switch on the light on his nightstand.
Lorraine felt his fingertips on her shoulder. She rocked forward and back, searching for his touch, wherever it was. More. Please.
“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
She felt his gaze as he looked her over as best he could, felt his heart pick up in the air. She shook her head. She felt secure enough with him beside her to curl her fingers away from her face, dropping her hands to cling to her shoulders, bare in the thin sleeves of her nightgown. When she looked at him through her wet eyelashes, his hands were hovering near her arm as if he was afraid of what might happen if he set them on her.
Dragging her knees up to her chest, she managed to swallow. Her voice sounded tiny as she told him, “It was the cliff again.”
Ed’s tense shoulders sank. Fear – the memory of it – flared in his eyes and then fizzled into the sadness that made him want to hold onto her and never let go.
When he had pulled her back up to safety, months ago now, she refused to let him stop touching her for nearly an hour. They sat, tangled up together, under a tree until she was able to breathe on her own again, without the help of him rubbing circles in her back.
Now, he reached for her with steadier hands. “Come here, hon.”
He slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her into his lap, leaning on the headboard so she could press her chest against his. She needed the stability, the sturdiness of his warmth and his neck to tuck her nose into. His arms and hands were big and tender around her and on the back of her head, where his fingers rubbed into her hair.
She still cried and sniffled but finally felt the safety of their home and bed, rather than having to cling to the faith of simply knowing it. Ed’s warm, rumbling breath, so close, made her wish she could burrow into his skin. But just feeling him hold her was comfort enough.
“You feel good.” The words shook a little. In her ear, he hummed.
“I’m sorry it keeps hurting you,” he told her, whispering. He kissed her temple. “I wish I could make it go away.”
Balling up tighter against him, Lorraine murmured, “You do make it go away.”
She heard him sigh out a laugh. He stroked the back of his finger against her cheek.
“You know what I mean,” he said. He reached for the quilt and pulled it back up around her shoulders.
“And I’m serious. You always pull me out of it. One way or another.” Eyes shut, she tightened her arms a little and then settled deeper into him. “Thank you.”
She didn’t see the tears that he blinked away after only a second.