I stir awake with a strangled scream in my throat and the residual image of a dead man on the floor, his body still trembling as the life leaves him. My hands are damp, pillow moist beneath my neck, shirt soaked through with cold sweat.

Shifting myself up to my elbows, I shake away the nightmare and glance bleary-eyed around the dim room, no idea where I am or how I got here. The sudden movement makes the room shift and sway. Thin carpet ripples near the legs of a battered chair. The musty air coming from the broken AC vent is stifling, a thick layer of dust on every surface. My eyes find my shoes, my duffel bag in the corner.

Time stops for just a moment. Then I remember why I’m in this hellhole.

Nate. Kicking me out.

My stomach tightens. I close my eyes and feel the heavy ache in my chest. I can’t tell whether this is truly physical pain or just a figment of my imagination.

I lift my phone from the pillow and check the time. Five after seven. I slept for three hours, but my body feels heavy, like there are days missing from my memory.

I try to move, pull myself up from the bed, but I’m immediately pulled back down. My head is spinning, all the feeling in my body stalled for a few moments. I close my eyes and take several deep breaths. I can feel the blood rushing to my head, then to my arms, my legs. Once I feel like I can stand without collapsing, I pull back the covers and swing my legs over the edge of the bed, which only makes things worse. My stomach convulses. I drop to my knees on the broken bathroom tile as my chest heaves, but all that comes up is pale, watery bile.

The weak spurting that comes out of the rusted showerhead is the color of whiskey and stinks of sewer water, the smell almost pungent enough to compete with the stench of mildew the proprietors obviously thought they could mask with the copious amounts of mothballs scattered around the tiny space. I twist the handle and stop the water without letting a drop hit my skin.

I wash up the best I can and brush my teeth in the gas station bathroom ten blocks away, then pull on clean underwear. I turn in to the bodega on the corner, grab two packs of Cup Noodles, a bottle of water and order a sandwich at the counter. I hold my breath when I hand over my card, and just when I think I’m in the clear, he looks up at me with a telltale look of pity in his eyes.

“Mami, you have another card?”

I shake my head, humiliated. “Can you just take the water off?”