Try Not to Breathe Read Online Free Page A

putting them on, or taking them off.
    Alex didn’t feel ashamed anymore, it was too commonplace to keep reacting. As long as she was correctly “managing” herself, no one would be in her bed, so there were no reflections of disgrace to worry about.
    The morning routine of stripping the bed, binning the DryNites pad, bundling everything into the washing machine, double-dosing the fabric conditioner, padding naked back up to the bathroom to flannel wash her legs…it was normal now. Autopilot.
    Before she could talk herself out of it, she pulled her running things over still-damp skin, grabbed her water bottle, tucked her key into her bra and ran out the door.
    Putting one leg in front of the other, then the other leg in front of that. If she could do it once then she could do it for half an hour.
    As the morning grew in front of her, she jogged slowly and steadily along the narrow pavements of her quiet corner of Tunbridge Wells. Little dogs skittered out of her way and she jumped into the road to avoid pushchairs dangling with changing bags and other weaponry.
    She’d done 5Ks, 10Ks, even half-marathons. Never a full marathon though. Those deserved respect. Sobriety. On jogs and races she ran slowly and steadily, competing against no one but the desire to stop. Her name was listed on hundreds of race results. Alexandra Dale, unaffiliated senior woman.
    —
    Back home and showered, Alex made poached eggs on toast for breakfast. Lunch would be liquid, and dinner would be light. Sometimes, dinner was whatever she could tear with her hands and shove into her mouth, swaying in the kitchen.
    —
    At 10:20 a.m., Alex pulled her Polo into the Tunbridge Wells Royal Infirmary car park and found a space in the farthest corner, under the shadow of an old oak tree. Still seated, she dug around in her bag, enjoying the smell of rich leather that rushed to greet her.
    She controlled her condition fairly successfully now but the divorce two years ago had thrown her from the wagon and straight onto the center of the tracks, where she stayed for three or four weeks.
    Several spending sprees had ripped through the last of her savings before she finally grabbed the reins back, although the Chloe Paddington handbag was one drunken Harrods purchase she didn’t regret so much, it was beautiful.
    Alex blanched as she flicked the driver’s mirror down to reflect her gray face. She rubbed a palm’s worth of moisturizer into her sallow skin and painted on a complexion. She added a rosy blusher glow along her sharp cheekbones and used a pink and brown eye shadow palette to fool the mirror that she had warm, sparkly eyes rather than black holes.
    Lip gloss, powder and paint, she was ready to do her job.
    —
    “Alex, thank you so much for your patience, I’m sorry we’ve had to break arrangements the last couple of times.”
    More like five times,
thought Alex, as she smiled warmly and shook Dr. Haynes’s hand.
    His hands were perfect doctor’s hands: cool and soft.
    “No problem, I know you’re very busy.”
    Dr. Haynes, the leading expert on vegetative states, closed the door softly, and gestured to a battered leather chair in front of his paper-strewn desk.
    Alex sat down, jumping as a rush of air trumpeted its way out of a hole in the upholstery.
    Dr. Haynes’s office was the professional equivalent of a teenager’s bedroom. On a sagging office chair in the corner lay a pile of abandoned, crumpled clothes. A CD player perched precariously on a shelf, its drive drawer open like a yapping mouth. Various certificates and awards were dotted around the walls, the crooked frames taking the edge off any gloating.
    On the dark wooden desk sat a dusty laptop with a tangled cable and a photo frame with its back to Alex. Piles upon piles of paper teetered like jerry-built skyscrapers.
    Aware that she had been staring while Dr. Haynes sat waiting, Alex hurtled into her prepared spiel.
    “Dr. Haynes—”
    “Call me Peter.”
    She smiled.