A dog barked close behind them. She strained to move her neck, to lift her face from the creature’s vile back.

“Buttons.”

Her beagle, her baby, followed them. When he saw her, his tail wagged, though he was whining – wishing, she gathered, that she would stop moving away and let him cuddle her.

He won’t attack it because he knows we’re one and the same.

“Go back to Daddy,” she said. It was a chore to speak with her midsection draped over the beast’s massive shoulder. “Go on. Go to Daddy.”

Buttons didn’t pause or break his stride. He was going with her no matter where this ended. In a way, she was grateful. If these were her final moments, she wanted to pass in the presence of unconditional love. As much as she craved Andrew’s touch, she hoped he stayed away. If the creature hurt or killed him, she would die a tortured soul. She couldn’t think of a worse way to leave this world.

A fresh, lancing pain radiated from the center of her chest.

The beast stumbled, smashing its shoulder against a tree, forcing it to slow down.

Not sure how many more of these I can take. Not sure how many more I want to.

When she couldn’t draw a breath, the creature stopped, its own lungs seized.

If I die, will it die too? Or will I take my diseases with me, leaving it to heal and grow?

It fell to its knees. Kate slipped off its shoulder, her face in the mulch. Buttons yapped, sniffing around her head.

“I’m all right, But-But. Mommy’s all right,” she said without conviction. Buttons knew she was lying. He whined, pawing at her back, willing her to get up. She wasn’t sure she had the strength to do something as simple as roll over. If she didn’t soon, she would suffocate on moldy leaves and dirt.

I’ll be in the dirt soon enough.

She planted her palm on the ground and pushed herself up, her ruined shoulder a fireworks display of agony. It must have been really bad for it to steal the spotlight from the pangs in her heart and all of the other burning pains in her body.

Every muscle trembled, both from exhaustion and from going cold turkey off her meds. Her pain doctor had once told her that with all of the highly addictive opioids she was on, the thought of going cold turkey should never enter her mind. The shock to her fragile system would kill her. This he had said the day she’d lamented about the treatments for her conditions and a wish for a future without need for pills or patches. He’d said he had many patients who felt the same way, and some simply decided to stop taking them. It always ended in disaster.