I had been feeling wrong for five months before that afternoon.
It started as a tingle in my feet, the pins-and-needles sensation you get from sitting too long in the same position, except that I was not sitting too long. I was standing, walking, living my ordinary life, and the sensation was there regardless. Then came the fatigue, the crushing kind that made eight-hour shifts feel like marathons I had not trained for, that sent me to bed an hour after dinner and still left me dragging through the next morning. Blurred vision that came and went without warning, once in the middle of processing a claim, the screen going soft and strange for about forty seconds before resolving. My legs giving out completely in the shower one night, no warning, no stumble, just a sudden absence of structure beneath me, my hand catching the grab bar we had installed for Freya’s visits and my heart hammering against my ribs in the dark.
