Five
This is what she said:
There is death, and then there are the things in life that kill us, and yet we do not die but live on in a liminal zone where pain gnaws at us, eating away at our trust, our joy, our hope, little by little, until nothing is left but our shell. And some see our shell and are attracted to it because they are also shells and so they want to be near us because we will demand no deeper substance from them, and they will demand no depth from us. The world is littered with shells, and surface-to-surface relationships. But shells are brittle and eventually shatter, disappearing into sand, long after the life in them has left.
When Tim entered the room it was dark except for the blinking pinpoints of light coming from the monitoring system. He could see Kathryn on a c
