She was barely aware of what he was doing; as soon as he set her on the bed, she tried to steel her spine to keep her upright, but kept slipping into a slump every time she let her guard down - which was frequent. She kept seeing things she didn't understand, feeling sensations, emotions that weren't hers -- but were. The nausea was second only to the head-splitting pain that accompanied these flashes of memory; her hands pressed into the bed, the memory foam conforming to the curve of her fingers even through the bedspread. She'd been looking down until he'd come back, trying to regulate her breathing. But her every heartbeat felt as though it were beating against her chest, her skull.
When he returned, she took the water and the pills. She closed her eyes, suddenly overwhelmed by the urgent need for him not to leave. In the hopes of alleviating that irrational thought, she put the pills in her mouth, then chased them with the water, then reached over to the nightstand with a trembling hand, setting the glass down with a shuddering breath.
She nodded then, unable to speak, unable even, it seemed, to open her eyes. The nausea would subside. So would these flashes. These elegant flashes of other lives.