The Air Estranged

Suffocation in slow motion.

He noticed it first in the way the room thickened around her. Not heat exactly, but a quiet saturation — as though the air itself had begun to forget how to move. When she spoke, the words seemed to travel through water. He would watch her mouth form the sounds, watch them fail to reach him in time.

She had been tired for months. That was the word she used: tired. It covered everything — the grey skin beneath her eyes, the unfinished sentences, the small silences that widened between them. At night she slept on her side, knees drawn up, one hand under the pillow as if bracing for impact. Sometimes she twitched, a pulse through the body like an electric fault.

He told himself it was stress. Work, hormones, weather, the steady erosion of their marriage. But some mornings, while she showered, he would stand outside the bathroom door and feel his own breath stutter, uninvited. The steam slipped under the gap, carrying a faint metallic scent — not soap, not heat, something denser, human. He breathed it in and felt a slow dizziness settle behind his eyes.

By day she moved carefully, as though each gesture had to be earned. The small tasks — boiling water, opening mail — were done with ceremonial focus. He admired that at first. Then he realised it was not mindfulness, but the management of depletion.

The results hovered — not sick, not well — a grammar of uncertainty written in blood. Bloodwork that hovered between normal and not. Nothing urgent, nothing nameable. A word that left her stranded in the middle of the sentence.

He read about fatigue, about cellular energy, about the slow betrayal of the body by its own chemistry. The language was clinical, but something in it spoke to him. He began to recognise the same rhythms in himself — the late-afternoon tremor, the heavy pulse before sleep, the mind fogged as if by fine mist. When he exhaled, he could feel her breath returning, faintly sweet, like memory.

She would say, It feels like I’m breathing someone else’s air. He would laugh softly, say nothing. But one night he woke and found himself turned toward her, counting the gaps between her inhalations. There were too many. Each pause stretched until he felt compelled to breathe for her. He did not know if she noticed. He did not know if she was the one dreaming him.

Days grew porous. He found her mug on the counter, still half-full, the tea cooled to skin temperature. He drank it without thinking, then sat down quickly, heart unsteady. The light from the window trembled, vibrating slightly at the edges, as if something invisible had entered the room and refused to leave.

He began to mirror her gestures — the rubbing of temples, the shallow exhale before standing, the hand pressed flat against the sternum. He caught his reflection one evening and saw her posture grafted onto his body, the same tilt of the head, the same weariness etched in miniature. He touched his face to verify the boundaries; they felt uncertain.

They spoke less. When they did, their voices overlapped, phrases finishing before they were formed. He felt himself slipping into her syntax, borrowing her pauses. The air between them carried an untraceable charge, like static before a storm.

Once, at dinner, she reached for the salt and froze mid-motion. Her fingers trembled above the table. He caught her hand, felt the pulse — rapid, shallow, irregular. In that instant, the room narrowed. Sound flattened. It was as if his own blood had adopted her rhythm.

He heard himself say, Breathe, but the word fractured, repeating inside his skull. For a moment he thought the lights had dimmed, but it was only his vision thickening. She looked at him strangely, as though he were the one fading. Then she smiled, small and exhausted, and said, You see? It’s catching.

After that, he began to wake in fragments. Sometimes at dawn, he would find himself standing by the window, unsure how he’d got there. The glass misted with condensation, their breaths from the night crystallised and drying. The city beyond looked suspended, colourless. He imagined every building exhaling at once, the collective fatigue of a species mistaking exhaustion for progress.

Her condition improved slightly, then worsened again. The numbers on her tests fluctuated like the weather. He stopped checking his own. There was no line dividing them anymore — only gradients of the same decline.

One evening, she fell asleep on the sofa. He watched her chest rise and fall. He matched his breath to hers, precisely, rhythm for rhythm, until he could not tell who was leading. The air thickened, turned luminous, then thin again. He felt weightless, and frightened, and very calm.

When she stirred, she whispered his name — not question, not greeting, just sound. He answered, or thought he did. The syllables hung there, unclaimed.

In the dark, their breathing merged into a single uneven cadence, two halves of one machine remembering how to fail together. Outside, the wind pressed against the windows, soft but insistent, as if testing for cracks.

He listened. The room seemed to pulse. Somewhere between them, the air shifted — a slow, unseen exchange. He could no longer tell which breath was leaving, and which was his to keep.

–––

These stories aren’t rare.
They’re just rarely told early enough.
Most decline begins in silence —
a skipped check-up, a cough you dismiss, a breath you pretend is fine.

She didn’t need saving.
Just a warning sooner.

––– Pause Here –––

If this feels familiar, you’re not alone.
Most illness doesn’t start with a bang.
It starts when silence becomes habit.

Lingzhi isn’t a miracle.
It’s a habit.
A quiet, daily way to care for the body —
before silence becomes suffering.

Advisory
Lingzhi is a traditional food, long used to support balance and general well-being.
It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
Individuals with existing medical conditions or those taking medication should consult a qualified healthcare professional before use.

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