Most nights, Delphine doesn't sleep.
She sits at the edge of the bed, listening with bated breath for each wheeze from Cosima's dying lungs. She watches Cosima's chest rise and fall, rise and fall, and her heart skips a beat when the rhythm stops- but it picks back up again soon enough.
Delphine slides under the covers and laces Cosima's cold, shaky fingers with her own, leans over to place soft kisses against her clammy forehead. She places a hand against Cosima's chest, wanting, needing to hear the satisfying thump-thump of her heart. She can feel the way Cosima's lungs rasp with each intake of breath, and she can tell when a fit is coming; that sound, she knows all too well.
Delphine pulls Cosima up by her shoulders, rubs her back soothingly as she coughs violently and stutters for air. She presses the cannula to Cosima's face, keeping it in place as she shudders, finally inhaling a clean breath. Delphine lowers her back down to the bed, stroking her cheek and whispering promises she doesn't know that she can keep.
Delphine supports Cosima's trembling form over the toilet bowl, wincing as she retches and gags. "I'm here, ma chérie," Delphine murmurs, and she patiently waits for the shaking to stop as she holds Cosima's frail body against her own. "S-" Cosima coughs, splattering red across Delphine's chest. "So-sorry," she stutters, crying, and Delphine kisses away the apologies and the tears and the blood.
Delphine holds the cell phone to her ear with a trembling hand, her other hand against the pulse point on Cosima's neck, to make sure her heart is still working, even if her lungs won't. Cosima convulses on the floor in slow motion. The wheezing has stopped. "Cosima," Delphine breathes, "please, try to hold on." She watches as Cosima's eyes roll back into her head and the sirens are too loud and the medics are too rough and Cosima's delicate body is carried away by arms that aren't Delphine's.
Most nights, Delphine doesn't sleep.
She sits at the edge of the bed, her head in her hands, feeling as if her heart was carried away with Cosima. She lies on Cosima's side of the bed, staring at her glasses on the nightstand until her eyes sting and her vision is blurred by tears and she can't control the choking sob that rips from her throat. Hours later, her eyes swollen shut and her body exhausted from grief, she sighs softly.
And for the first time in months, Delphine sleeps.
Only to be jarred awake by the rasping cough that haunts her in her dreams.
