CHAPTER 77
CALLIE
ENDURING IT ALL
Pressure changed shape when it stayed too long. At first, it was sharp, clean, almost surgical. Fear with edges. Pain you could catalogue. I could survive that. I knew how to catalogue pain. I’d been doing it most of my life. But after a while, pressure stopped cutting and started sinking.
It settled into my bones. My joints. The soft spaces between thoughts. It became weight instead of force, gravity instead of impact. It didn’t demand anything loudly. It just waited. I learned that quickly in the chair.
The room hadn’t changed. It was still cold enough to make my teeth chatter when I stopped moving. Still empty enough that my own breathing sounded intrusive. Still quiet in a way that pressed in on my ears until I almost missed screaming.
Almost. I
