Free Sanctifying Grace (Resurrection) by Elizabeth Davies

or whether it was the natural progression of the tumour, I couldn’t tell. I suspected, though, that each time I travelled, I was causing more injury to my already damaged brain.
    I shrugged mentally; I was going to die soon, anyway. The pressure and destruction the tumour was causing inside my head was inevitably going to escalate. If the headaches hastened the process, then so be it. I couldn’t prevent myself from ‘visiting’ Roman, even if I wanted to. And one thing was abundantly clear – I didn’t want to, in spite of the knowledge I was not as important to him as I once was.
    A thought occurred to me; as the time he was living in became closer to the present day, Roman was bound to realise my visits must surely cease soon. And although I appeared to him as I always had, full of life, health and vitality, I hadn’t held back when I told him the state of my body and mind in my own world.
    He knew I didn’t have long to live. Perhaps he was merely preparing for my death, naturally distancing himself from me and his feelings towards me. And I knew he felt something, even if it wasn’t the same intensity of the love I held for him. He had known me almost all his vampire life and I hoped it would be a wrench for him when he understood I was finally dead. Would I simply stop time travelling once my illness progressed and the essence of me was subsumed by the morphine and brain damage? Or would I cease to travel when the past caught up with the year of my birth? I had no idea how this would play out and I thought there was probably no one else on the planet who knew, either.
    Of course, if Roman wanted to stop seeing me, all he needed to do was to stay away from Brecon. So far he hadn’t shown any inclination to do that. In fact, the opposite was true: he had admitted that for the past few hundred years he had found it difficult to say away from the area, in spite of the obvious risks to himself.
    My head hurt, mostly from thinking too much and not from the tumour, although the pain from that little alien in my head was ever-present. I wanted to sit up and get moving. I didn’t want to lie here with so many questions and theories whirling through my mind. I tried to push up off the bed and had a moment of pure panic when my arms and legs failed me. I didn’t have the strength or co-ordination to manage even this simple task.
    I caught the look on my mother’s face and it almost tore my heart in two.
    I flopped back onto the pillows and closed my eyes. I could feel my death moving closer and suddenly I just wanted it all to be over. No more pain, no more dreadful awareness of what was happening to me, no more suffering.
    For the first time since the appalling diagnosis, I considered suicide. I had known the pain both myself and my family was going to go through (physical, as well as emotional for me) was going to be horrendous, but until I was actually living it, I could never have guessed just how awful the reality was. Understanding what was going to happen was altogether different from the experiencing it. I could simply end it here and now, put everyone out of this misery my life had turn out to be. Dying was becoming more and more of a way out than something to be fought against at all costs. It would be a welcome relief for both me and my family. It was horrific that they had to watch the person that was me slowly disappear and fade away before their eyes. The only question was – had I left it too late?
    My hand was sore and I lifted my arm weakly to stare at the canula.
    ‘I’ll take it out for you,’ my mother offered. ‘Hilary said that once you are awake and taking fluids, I could remove it. She showed me how. It’s only saline.’
    With a minimum of fuss, she withdrew the offending needle. The back of my hand throbbed and a vivid bruise stained my skin. When I examined my hand I couldn’t believe how frail it had become; I could see the shape of the bones underneath and blue-green veins were