encountering the nexthighest crossboard, and Jessie suddenly found herself in a position she had strongly come to suspect she would never attain again: standing on her own two feet, beside the bed which had been her prison... almost her coffin.
A feeling of enormous gratitude tried to wash over her, and she pushed against it as firmly as she had pushed against the panic. There might be time for gratitude later, but the things to remember right now were that she still wasn't free of the goddamned bed, and her time to get free was severely limited. It was true that she hadn't felt the slightest sensation of faintness or lightheartedness yet, but she had an idea that meant nothing. When the collapse came, it would probably come all at once; shoot out the lights.
Still, had standing up-only that, and nothing more-ever been so great? So inexpressibly wonderful?
"Nope," Jessie croaked. "Don't think so."
Holding her right arm across her chest and keeping the wound in her inner wrist pressed tightly against the upper slope of her left breast, Jessie made a half-turn, placing her bottom against the wall. She was now standing next to the left side of the bed, in a position that looked almost like a soldier's parade rest. She took a along, deep breath, then asked her right arm and poor stripped right hand to go back to work.
The arm rose creakily, like the arm of an old and badly cared-for mechanical toy, and her hand settled on the bed-shelf. Her third and fourth fingers still refused to move at her command, but she was able to grip the shelf between her thumb and first two fingers well enough to tip it off its brackets. It landed on the mattress where she had lain for so many hours, the mattress where her outline still lay, a sunken, sweaty shape pressed into the pink quilting, its upper half partially traced in blood. Looking at that shape made Jessie feel sick and angry and afraid. Looking at it made her feel crazy.
She shifted her eyes from the mattress with the shelf now lying on it to her trembling right hand. She raised it to her mouth and used her teeth to grip the sliver of glass poking out from beneath the thumbnail. The glass slipped, then slid between an upper canine and incisor, slicing deeply into the tender pink meat of her gum. There was a quick, penetrating sting and Jessie felt blood spew into her mouth, its taste sweet-salty, its texture as thick as the cherry cough-syrup she'd had to swallow when she had the flu as a child. She paid no attention to this new cut-she'd made her peace with much worse in the last few minutes-but only reset her grip and drew the sliver smoothly free of her thumb. When it was out, she spat it onto the bed along with a mouthful of warm blood.
"Okay," she murmured, and began to wriggle her body in between the wall and the headboard, panting harshly as she did so.
The bed moved out from the wall more easily than she could have hoped for, but one thing she'd never questioned was that it would move, if she ever managed to get sufficient leverage. Now she had it, and began to herd the hateful bed across the waxed floor. Its foot slid off to the right as she went because she was only able to push on the left side, but Jessie had taken this into account and was comfortable with it. Had, in fact, made it a part of her rudimentary plan. When your luck changes, she thought, it changes all the way. You may have cut your upper gum all to shit, Jess,but you haven't stepped on a single Piece of broken glass. So just keepmoving this bed, sweetheart, and keep counting your bl-
Her foot thumped against something. She looked down and saw she had kicked Gerald's plump right shoulder. Blood pattered down on his chest and face. A drop fell in one staring blue eye. She felt no pity for him; she felt no hate for him; she felt no love for him. She felt a kind of horror and disgust for herself, that all the feelings with which she had occupied herself over the years-those so-called civilized feelings that were the meat of every soap-opera, talk-show, and radio phone-in program-should prove so shallow compared with the survival instinct, which had turned out (in her case, at least), to