“You forgot to cough!” he said.“Sorry.” She coughed.“Your sneakiness is dangerous. Next time that chisel will lodge itself in my head.”“Now, Peder, there’s plenty of stone around here for carving. No need to practice on your own face.”He stroked his chin. “You’re right, my jaw is already chiseled to perfection.”She agreed, but she felt too silly to say so aloud.”

“Sophie was fine up until the point where she fell flat on her face when she got a look at my delicious abs,” he said and pulled up his shirt rubbing his chiseled stomach.I blushed and then mocked him, “Delicious huh?”“Oh yeah,” he said jokingly. “My basement floor is now flooded with your drool.”-Caeden and Sophie”

“I want the freedom to carve and chisel my own face, to staunch the bleeding with ashes, to fashion my own gods out of my entrails...”

“See the man they are fitting into the bottom slot. He is coughing badly. No, not pneumonia. Not tuberculosis. Nothing so picturesque. Gently, gently, stretcher-bearers… he is about done. He is coughing up clots of pinky-green filth. Only his lungs, Mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawington. He is coughing well to-night. That is gas. You’ve heard of gas. Haven’t you? It burns and shrivels the lungs to… to the mess you see on the ambulance floor there. He’s about the age of Bertie, Mother. Not unlike Bertie, either, with his gentle brown eyes and fair curly hair. Bertie would look up pleading like that in between coughing up his lungs… The son you have so generously given to the War. Cough, cough, little fair-haired boy. Perhaps somewhere your mother is thinking of you… boasting of the life she has so nobly given… the life you thought was your own, but which is hers to squander as she thinks fit. ‘My boy is not a slacker, thank God.’ Cough away, little boy, cough away. What does it matter, providing your mother doesn’t have to face the shame of her son’s cowardice?”

“Are you all right?" he said.Water dripped down his face and long nose.He's talking to you! her mind yelled. He's talking to you! Say something clever! Say something clever!Azalea said, "Mffloscoflphus?""The water is rather cold," he said. He pulled her to the bank. Azalea chattered and shivered and coughed, and he continued asking her if she was all right. She wasn't.She was morbidly embarrassed,that's what she was.”

“I love you,” she whispered.He stroked his hand down her back. “Yep, you do.”“You’re supposed to say it back,” she said, pretending to be offended because the silliness kept the fear/hope at bay.“Why?” He scowled down at her. “You know you’re my heartbeat.”