There Are Lines

She started to put on the cashmere coat — blue as her eyes — he’d given her for Christmas , but at his head shake , switched to her parka . At least he didn’t quibble about the cashmere scarf she wrapped around her neck . He helped her shoulder her backpack. “Can you handle it?”

She made a fist, bent her arm at the elbow . “I’m an urbanite who uses the gym . Or used to.” With it , she picked up her purse, put it on cross – body .

“Lana , you don’t need — ”

“I’m leaving my food processor, my Dutch oven , my worn exactly once Louboutin over – the – knee boots , but I’m not leaving without my purse.” Rolling her shoulders to adjust the pack, she gave him a steady, challenging stare. “Doom or no Doom, there are lines, Max . There are lines.”

“Were those the boots you walked into my office wearing — with one of my shirts?”

“Right . That makes worn twice.”

“I’ll miss them as much as you .”

It was good , she thought, good they’d made each other smile before they left their home .

Year One (Chronicles of The One) by Nora Roberts

Medical Exorcism

Without warning , the patient leans forward slightly in her bed . With her eyes still closed , she spews green and black bile out of her mouth, splattering her hospital gown and hair. She falls back against her bed . Her sister grabs tissues off a table in the room and begins wiping around the patient’s mouth. My mouth opens and won’t close . My heart is galloping. I feel like I just witnessed an exorcism.

“Should I call someone?” Like a priest. I have no idea what just happened, but it looked bad .

“No, no.” Dr . Brown calmly waves me off . “It’s a reflex . She has done that frequently now for the last month and a half .”

I can’t believe it . She’s been like this for a month and a half ?

“It’s horrible to see, I know,” the sister says , now tearful. She caresses the woman’s forehead with her hand. “But I just can’t pull the plug. Not now. I don’t think she’d want that. That’s not what she wanted, and I couldn’t live with myself if I did that.”

There are so many machines that can keep people alive indefinitely. The thought terrifies me . Everyone’s narcissistic , that’s the problem. That’s why death isn’t as naturally accepted as being born. I want to bolt out of the hospital and drink, but I know I can’t. I want to be a doctor, but I question whether I can stand all the physical ugliness of it .

-Manic Kingdom: A True Story of Breakdown and Breakthrough by Dr. Erin Stair

Losing Home and Letting Go

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Amazon.com

Other items were so precious that the children clung to them even as they rowed. Fiona kept a pot of wormy garden dirt pressed between her knees. Millard had striped his face with a handful of bomb-pulverized brick dust, an odd gesture that seemed part mourning ritual. If what they kept and clung to seemed strange, part of me sympathized: it was all they had left of their home. Just because they knew it was lost didn’t mean they knew how to let it go.

-Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Wild Boys, Witches and Roast Squirrel

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Amazon.com

Sarah visited the boys every day, and although at first she was worried about them being out on their own in the Forest, she was impressed by the network of igloos they built and noticed that some of the younger Wendron Witches had taken to dropping by with small offerings of food and drink. Soon it became rare for Sarah to find her boys without at least two or three young witches helping them cook a meal or just sitting around the campfire laughing and telling jokes. It surprised Sarah just how much fending for themselves had changed the boys—they all suddenly seemed so grown up, even the youngest, Jo-Jo, who was still only thirteen. After a while Sarah began to feel a bit of an interloper in their camp, but she persisted in visiting them every day, partly to keep an eye on them and partly because she had developed quite a taste for roast squirrel.

Septimus Heap, Book One: Magyk by Angie Sage