She lay on her side of the bed and stared at the wall and thought about bread.
This was not a metaphor. She had been hungry since dinner, which had been adequate but not generous, and the cold soup she had noticed in the kitchen pot during the evening's brief tour through the lower floor had been sitting in the back of her mind ever since.
She listened for Val's breathing. It had the shallow, controlled quality of a man managing pain, She knew for sure He had not applied the medication tonight or even the previous night. She didn't care but she was in deep thoughts as to how busy he could have been to not be able to change a bandage.
She waited another few minutes. His breathing did not change. She eased back the cover, set her feet on the floor, and stood without the boards creaking, She crossed to the door on the balls of her feet and pulled it open the three inches needed to slip through and closed it again with barely a sound.
