Neither of them had any feel for the passage of time. It could have been days before he regained enough strength to go to the faucet in the bathroom. He drank until his stomach could hold no more and returned with a glass of water. Lifting her head with his arm, he brought the edge of the glass to Gail's mouth. She sipped at it. Her lips were cracked, her eyes bloodshot and ringed with yellowish crumbs, but there was some color in her skin. "When are we going to die?" she asked, her voice a feeble croak. "I want to hold you when we die."
"Are they… the disease. Is it talking to you?" He nodded. "Then I'm not crazy." She walked slowly across the living room. "I'm not going to be able to move much longer," she said. "How about you? Maybe we should try to escape." He held her hand and shook his head. "They're inside, part of us by now. They are us. Where can we escape?" "Then I'd like to be in bed with you, when we can't move any more. And I want your arms around me." They lay back on the bed and held each other.
Buried in some inner perspective, neither one place nor another. He felt an increase in warmth, a closeness and compelling presence.
Edward Gail? I can hear you- no, not hear you Edward, I should be terrified. I want to be angry but I can't.
They fell quiet and simply reveled in each other's company. What Edward sensed nearby was not the physical form of Gail; not even his own picture of her personality, but something more convincing, with all the grit and detail of reality, but not as he had ever experienced her before.
Edward and Gail grew together on the bed, substance passing through their clothes, skin joining where they embraced and lips where they touched.
— Blood Music, Greg Bear
