On one level, Ruth registered Jono's presence in the room with her. On a totally different level, she was getting to be him.
There was a girl. Gayle...the thought was there in her head and she couldn't help projecting it as things continued to progress. Things were flipping back and forth between a sensational awareness, the touch of skin to skin, the thud of a heartbeat, whispered words too low to truly make sense, and flashes of actual images her brain was trying desperately to decode since her brain did little visual work on a regular basis.
The feeling of having swallowed a volcano only seemed to grow, looking for an outlet. There was a vice grip around her chest, refusing her lungs their chance to expand, the world was simultaneously very sharp and somehow fuzzy as the memories progressed but she slipped along the edge of passing out. It was still looking for a way out, the interior of the body too small for its needs.
She felt her chest disintegrate, her throat and jaw disappearing, even as the pain (both her own and that of the person nearest to her, the phantom Gayle) became so intense the world literally disappeared, no sensation but that of suffering.
That pain radiated outward from her, an inarticulate wave of suffering made up of a soundless telepathic scream.