My heart was thudding painfully in my chest, beating against the confines of my rib cage like a sledgehammer, like a bird that was being held captive. It felt like I could barely breathe, like every lung full of air came at a costly expense.
Every single atom in my body had attuned itself to the way that his fur felt beneath my hand, between my fingers, and I had no choice but to keep it there, to continue standing that way and to suffer—something that was surely to blame on the fact that my eyes were closed. I read somewhere that when you lose the use of one of your senses—either willingly or unwillingly—your other senses become heightened.
I believed that in this case, my sense of touch, of feeling, was the sense that had been heightened.
I was doing my absolute best to keep my han
