Disclaimer: I don't own Jam & Jerusalem.
Ragged breaths broke through the bedroom's hazy stillness, and she stifled her sobs with a pillow as her own battle for air dragged her into uncertain consciousness. Heaving against the bed, she wondered, yet again, how it was that she didn't wake the entire village, but goodness knew how much time it had been now, she'd lost count, it was so hard to keep track of anything these days, and she remained alone in the knowledge of her affliction. Even her husband had not stirred once. She couldn't claim that it was altogether surprising, but it disappointed her, nonetheless, to know that she was wasting away, slowly but surely, until, eventually, she would be gone, forever; nothing but a soulless body and an empty heart, and no one even would have noticed.
As she blinked furiously, her eyes adjusted to a murky gloom, rather than total darkness; the bedside lamp was still on, she insisted on it these days, said it was her nerves, and try as she might to pull herself together, she simply couldn't seem to get a steady grip, and sanity escaped her, once again. She could still see it all, when she squeezed her eyes shut, tight, over the tears, she could still feel it. All those shattered dreams and twisted memories; those whispers of broken promises still rang in her ears. Golden hair tumbling from a wayward clasp. Tear-stained cheeks, a broken glass. The moonlit terrace softly swaying. The gardener's unwelcome touch, grasping, indelicate, which still made her shudder with revulsion, and yet which she had succumbed to, regardless, already irrational, already afflicted. White knuckles gripping iron railings, and the heady scent of lavender, and she pressed a hand to her brow, almost recoiling as it burned to the touch, and how many months had it been, now that she came to think of it, that she had been so afflicted? More than three, fewer than ten. She stuffed the same hand in her mouth, the free one clutching at the sheets. Far too long to make it conscionable, and part of her wondered if she hadn't been afflicted all along, if it hadn't only been her refusal to believe it that had kept it at bay until now.
Her tears had begun to subside, and still she kept her eyes closed, praying to sleep once more, to sleep forever, she didn't care, anything to escape the horrors of the waking world. She yearned to dream again of the hair, and the terrace, and the lavender, to immerse herself in what might have been. It was no good. What might have been was not, and was not to be. She was wide awake, and, sighing, she realised that there was nothing else for it. She swung her legs out from under the covers, not bothering to tiptoe, for if they had slept through all that, a hurricane couldn't have roused them, let alone her disaffected footsteps, and stole through the house, heading for the kitchen.
It wasn't as if the symptoms were unrecognisable, even to the untrained eye. Sleepless nights. Racing pulse. Headache, and heartache, and visions. Fever, and fervour, and being unable to think straight. It was what she was going to do about it that was the question, she mused, as she poured out the dregs of last night's Sauvignon, knowing all the while that she'd find no refuge at the bottom of it, not really. The time had come to kill or cure, she decided, knocking it back in one, to fight this affliction, or to die trying. Because that was what it was. Nothing more, nothing less. It was an affliction, no matter what other guise it might assume, be it that of sickness, or madness, or love.