Gemotions

The news hit her like a physical blow. Her breath caught in her throat. The orderly, a young man with a kind face, was speaking, explaining the situation, but the words seemed to bounce around her head, failing to penetrate.

She gripped the edge of the hospital bed so tightly her knuckles whitened. Her mind was a whirlwind of anxieties, calculations, and disbelief. She felt a strange tingling in her fingertips.

She tried to speak, to form a coherent sentence, but only a small, choked sound escaped. She’d always been a person of routine, of order. Now, everything was chaos.