It wasn't just the shaking in her hands anymore. It was the tightness in her chest that came without warning, the sensation that she couldn't quite breathe deeply enough. It was the way her heart would suddenly race for no reason, then slow down to a crawl. It was the sensitivity to light and sound, the way the morning sun coming through her window felt like it was burning her eyes. The way a maid's footsteps in the hallway made her flinch.
It was the sweating. The constant, low-level sweating that made her clothes stick to her skin despite the cool temperature of her room.
And underneath all of that was something worse. A clarity that was almost painful. A sharpness to her thoughts that felt wrong after months of the medication's soft blur. It was like waking up from a long sleep and discovering that everything around you had changed while you were unconscious.
