As Lionel moves away, his breathing is loud, laboured by stress and fatigue, yet somehow reassuring, as for so long as Dahlia can hear his breath, she knows he is alive. She can hear her own heartbeat thudding between her ears. Hear her own breathing, louder than Lionel's, drowning his out. Try as she might to slow and quiet her breath, so that she can better hear his, it is as though through the act of focusing on it in order to quiet it, she merely makes her breathing more urgent. There is something frantic to the air. Perhaps it was in the motes of ash that flit about her gaze, thinner than in the hospital, but thick enough to fear. Ash that burned her lungs when she breathed it in.
The wheels make a soft creaking sound of rust and age, the broomstick softly brushing the linoleum, the water sloshing away, as he steers the trolley between two cabinets. To the left rises up a contraption of beakers and test tubes, bunsen burners and pippettes, while to the right lays a closed folder and a pencil case. It all has the manner of a chemistry classroom, rather than a laboratory. He
hears a raspy coughing sound coming from further within the cabinets and a voice that croaks out a word he can't quite make out, though it sounds so familiar, as does she.
Somewhere, within the room, a machine hums a soft tune.
