Drowning in Thin Air
The call came on a Tuesday. Diana Everly stared at her agent's name illuminating her phone screen and felt a nervous flutter—the kind that had become rare in recent years. At forty-three, the calls came less frequently. The roles went to younger women. The industry had been slowly but deliberately forgetting her.
"Macias Long wants you for his new project," her agent Vivian said without preamble. "It's the lead in a biopic. Nester Winifred."
Diana sat up straighter, her fingers tightening around the phone. "The pianist? The one who—"
"Had a psychotic break after her daughter drowned, spent years in an asylum creating those haunting compositions, then murdered two journalists who tried to interview her? Yes, that Nester Winifred." Vivian couldn't hide the excitement in her voice. "This is your Monster, Diana. Your Black Swan. The kind of role that brings an Oscar."
Diana knew the name Nester Winifred, though only vaguely. A brilliant classical pianist whose experimental compositions, created during her institutionalization, had achieved cult status after her death. There had been rumors of a film for years, but the subject matter was considered too dark, too challenging.
"Macias specifically asked for you," Vivian continued. "Said there's a... resonance between you and Nester. His words, not mine."
That night, Diana pulled up everything she could find about Nester Winifred. The photographs showed a woman of striking intensity—dark eyes that seemed to look through the camera rather than at it. Her final public performance, just weeks before her daughter's drowning accident, showed a musician at the peak of her abilities. The compositions from her years at Blackwood Psychiatric Hospital were different—fragmented, discordant, yet strangely beautiful, like listening to someone's mind fracturing in real time. Her most famous piece, "Drowning in Thin Air," had achieved cult status in experimental music circles—a haunting composition that critics described as "the sound of lungs struggling for oxygen at great heights, of suffocation that comes not from absence, but from insufficiency."
Three days later, Diana sat across from Macias Long in his minimalist office. At fifty-five, he had the intensity of a man half his age, with penetrating eyes that seemed to dissect her as they spoke.
"To play Nester," he said, leaning forward, "you need to understand her from the inside out. I've arranged something unprecedented. Blackwood still exists. They've preserved her room as something of a macabre museum piece. You'll spend three weeks there, living with her journals, her piano, her possessions."
"You want me to live in an asylum?" Diana asked, unable to hide her discomfort.
Macias smiled. "It's been converted to a research facility. There are still patients, but in a separate wing. Think of it as the ultimate preparation. Method acting taken to its logical conclusion."
"I don't know—"
"Your career needs this, Diana," Macias said softly, the gentleness in his voice somehow more unsettling than if he'd been harsh. "When was your last significant role? Three years ago? Four?"
The truth hung in the air between them. She was fighting against time in an industry that worshipped youth. This role could change everything—if she was willing to take the risk.
"Three weeks," she agreed finally. "No more."
Blackwood Psychiatric Hospital sat on fifty acres of heavily wooded land, remote enough that the city lights didn't penetrate the darkness. The main building was Victorian Gothic, all imposing stone and narrow windows. Dr. Bennett, the facility's lead psychiatric historian, met Diana at the entrance.
"We've prepared Ms. Winifred's room exactly as you requested, Mr. Long," he said, leading them through corridors that smelled of antiseptic and something older, more ingrained. "Our staff has been instructed to treat Ms. Everly as a research resident. She'll have access to the common areas, the music room, and of course, Nester's personal archives."
Diana's room—Nester's room—was on the third floor, at the end of a long hallway. It was larger than she'd expected, with high ceilings and a bay window overlooking the grounds. A baby grand piano dominated one corner. Bookshelves lined the walls, filled with music scores and journals. The bed was narrow but looked comfortable enough.
"Nester spent nine years in this room," Dr. Bennett explained. "After the... incidents with the journalists, she was moved to a more secure area, but she always maintained this was her true space."
"Incidents," Diana repeated. "You mean the murders."
Dr. Bennett's smile tightened. "Yes. Though some of our staff have alternative theories about what happened."
After Dr. Bennett and Macias left, Diana explored the room, running her fingers along the piano keys without pressing them. A stack of leather-bound journals sat on the writing desk. She opened the top one, finding pages filled with musical notations interspersed with dense, cramped handwriting.
They think the music is simply composition, but it's much more. It's a door. Emily understands. She's waiting on the other side for me to perfect the key that will unlock her prison.
Diana shivered, closing the journal. Emily—Nester's daughter who had drowned at age seven. The catalyst for her breakdown.
Later that evening, a young woman brought her dinner on a tray. "I'm Lily," she said brightly. "I'll be assisting you during your stay. Mr. Long asked me to give you this." She handed Diana a small digital camera. "He wants you to record your process. For the behind-the-scenes documentary."
Before leaving, Lily hesitated at the door. "Will you be playing tonight? Sometimes we hear piano music from this room. They say Nester wrote 'Drowning in Thin Air' right there." She nodded toward the baby grand in the corner.
Diana forced a smile. "No plans to play yet. I'm still... absorbing."
That night, she dreamed of a little girl running down Blackwood's corridors, leaving wet footprints behind her. When Diana tried to follow, the hallways stretched impossibly long, the child's laughter echoing until it morphed into something like sobbing.
She woke to find herself sitting at the piano, her fingers hovering over the keys. She had no memory of leaving her bed.
By the end of her first week, Diana had established a routine. Mornings were spent reading Nester's journals. Afternoons, she practiced the pianist's compositions, trying to understand the fractured genius behind them. Evenings, she recorded her thoughts for Macias, describing how she was beginning to understand Nester's psyche.
What she didn't record were the increasingly strange occurrences. The sheet music that rearranged itself when she wasn't looking. The melody she sometimes heard playing when she knew she was alone. The face she occasionally glimpsed in the mirror—not quite her own, the eyes darker, more knowing.
On her eighth day, she received a text from Rachel, a makeup artist friend who had worked with her on several films.
Weird thing. Just got called to do tests for the Winifred project. Thought you already had the role? They're seeing a bunch of younger actresses. Call me.
Diana stared at the message, her hands shaking so badly she dropped the phone. She'd been here, isolating herself, diving into Nester's tortured mind, while Macias was secretly auditioning replacements?
She tried calling Vivian, but the call wouldn't connect—something about poor reception at Blackwood. She tried Rachel next, and then several other industry contacts. Nothing. It was as if she'd been cut off from the outside world.
That night, she confronted Dr. Bennett in his office.
"I need to speak with Macias. Now."
Bennett frowned. "He's currently in production meetings in the city. Is there something I can help you with?"
"You can help me by telling me why he's holding auditions for my role when I'm already cast."
Bennett's expression was carefully neutral. "I'm not privy to Mr. Long's casting decisions, Ms. Everly. But I'm sure there's an explanation. Perhaps these are for the younger version of Nester? The film will cover her early career as well, correct?"
It was a plausible explanation, but something in Bennett's eyes made Diana doubt him. Still, without the ability to reach Macias directly, she had little choice but to continue her work.
She returned to her room and opened the next journal in the sequence. The handwriting had changed, becoming more erratic, the words occasionally trailing off into spirals or abrupt lines that cut through the paper.
They brought another one today. Young. Beautiful. Ambitious. They think I don't see what they're doing. Replacing me piece by piece. But I won't let them. Some roles can only be played by those who have lived them.
Diana closed the journal, unsettled by how closely Nester's paranoia mirrored her own current fears.
That night, she dreamed she was playing the piano, but when she looked down, the keys were stained red, and the music that emerged was a child's screams.
On the tenth day, Lily brought Diana's breakfast with news. "Mr. Long is coming today. He's bringing one of the other actresses to experience Blackwood."
"Other actresses?" Diana kept her voice casual.
"For the younger Nester scenes," Lily explained, not meeting her eyes. "At least, that's what I heard."
When Macias arrived later that morning, he was accompanied by a woman who couldn't have been more than twenty-five—willowy, with delicate features and wide, innocent eyes. Everything about her seemed fresh, untouched by time or disappointment.
"Diana," Macias greeted her with an artificial warmth that set her teeth on edge. "You're looking... immersed. This is Eve Matthews. She'll be playing Young Nester in the earlier sequences."
Eve extended her hand, her smile tentative. "It's an honor, Ms. Everly. I've admired your work since I was a child."
The unintentional slight landed like a slap. Diana forced herself to shake the younger woman's hand, noting how soft it was, how unmarked by time.
"Eve is going to spend the day here," Macias continued. "I thought it would be valuable for her to absorb the atmosphere as well. Perhaps you could show her Nester's archives?"
It wasn't a request. Diana nodded stiffly, watching as Macias excused himself for a meeting with Dr. Bennett, leaving her alone with her replacement.
"This place is incredible," Eve said, wandering around the room. "So atmospheric. I can almost feel her presence here."
"Yes," Diana said flatly. "It gets under your skin."
They spent an uncomfortable hour reviewing Nester's materials. Eve asked intelligent questions that only heightened Diana's resentment. The girl was talented—that was obvious. And young. And beautiful. Everything Hollywood valued.
"I'd love to see the rest of the facility," Eve said finally. "Mr. Long mentioned there was a music room where Nester recorded her asylum compositions?"
Diana led her through the winding corridors to a large room dominated by a grand piano. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over Blackwood's overgrown gardens, the glass distorting the view slightly, making the outside world seem unreal.
"This is where she recorded 'Drowning in Thin Air,'" Diana explained mechanically. "Her final composition before she killed the second journalist."
Eve ran her fingers reverently over the piano's surface. "Do you play?"
"I've been learning her pieces," Diana admitted. "It helps me understand her mental state."
"Would you play something?" Eve asked. "I'd love to hear your interpretation."
Diana hesitated, then sat at the piano. She began Nester's most famous asylum composition, "Drowning in Thin Air." The piece started simply, almost childlike, then gradually devolved into crashing discordant notes that somehow still maintained a haunting melody beneath the chaos.
As she played, Diana felt a strange dissociation, as if she were observing her hands from a distance. The music flowed through her with a familiarity that went beyond the week of practice. It felt remembered rather than learned.
When she finished, she looked up to find Eve staring at her with an odd expression—part admiration, part fear.
"That was..." Eve seemed to search for the right word. "You became her. Just for a moment."
Diana felt a chill run down her spine. "It's called acting."
"Of course," Eve said quickly. "It's just—I've studied recordings of Nester playing that piece. Your hand positions, the way you tilted your head at the bridge section—it was identical. You couldn't have seen those recordings. They're not public."
Before Diana could respond, she caught a movement in the garden through the window. A woman in a white dress, standing perfectly still, looking up at them. Her face was obscured by dark hair, but something about her stance was disturbingly familiar.
"Do you see her?" Diana asked, pointing.
Eve followed her gaze, frowning. "See who?"
When Diana looked again, the garden was empty.
That evening, after Eve and Macias had departed, Diana tried once more to call Vivian. To her surprise, the call connected.
"Diana? Where have you been? I've been trying to reach you for days!"
"I've been at Blackwood, like we discussed," Diana said, confused. "The reception is terrible here."
"Blackwood?" Vivian sounded genuinely puzzled. "What are you talking about? The Winifred project was put on hold two weeks ago. Funding issues."
Diana felt the room tilt around her. "That's impossible. I'm here now. Macias arranged everything."
"Diana, listen to me. I haven't spoken to Macias Long since our initial meeting. He never confirmed you for the role. In fact, his office stopped returning my calls altogether."
"But I'm at Blackwood," Diana insisted, her voice rising. "I've been living in Nester's room. Macias was here today with another actress."
There was a long pause. "Diana, honey, you're scaring me. Where exactly are you right now?"
Before Diana could answer, the line went dead. When she tried to call back, the "no service" message returned. She stared at the phone, a horrible suspicion forming in her mind.
She went to the desk and pulled out the journal she'd been reading earlier. She flipped through it frantically, looking for the entry about the "replacement." When she found it, she froze.
The handwriting wasn't Nester's. It was her own.
She dropped the journal as if it had burned her, backing away. Her eyes fell on the small mirror above the dresser. The face that looked back wasn't quite her own. The eyes were different—darker, wilder.
"No," she whispered. "This isn't possible."
She ran to the door, only to find it locked. She pounded on it, shouting for help. When it finally opened, Dr. Bennett stood there with two orderlies.
"Ms. Everly," he said calmly. "Is everything alright?"
"I need to leave," she said. "Now. Something is very wrong here."
Bennett exchanged a look with the orderlies. "I understand you're feeling distressed. Method acting can sometimes trigger emotional responses. Perhaps a mild sedative would help?"
"I don't want a sedative! I want to leave this place!"
"Of course," Bennett said soothingly. "In the morning, we'll make arrangements. But it's nearly midnight, and the roads from Blackwood are treacherous in the dark. For tonight, why don't you try to rest?"
Diana wanted to argue further, but exhaustion suddenly overwhelmed her. Had she really been up that late? She allowed herself to be led back to her bed. Bennett offered her a small pill and a glass of water.
"Just to help you sleep," he assured her.
Too tired to resist, she took it.
As consciousness faded, she thought she heard a child's laughter somewhere in the distance.
Diana woke to find Lily setting a breakfast tray beside her bed.
"What time is it?" Diana asked, her mouth dry, her thoughts foggy.
"Just after nine," Lily replied cheerfully. "Dr. Bennett thought you might want to sleep in after last night."
Last night. The phone call. The journal.
Diana sat up abruptly. "I need to leave today. Can you arrange for a car?"
Lily's smile faltered. "I'll have to check with Dr. Bennett. Oh, and Mr. Long left this for you." She handed Diana a sealed envelope before quickly exiting the room.
Inside the envelope was a note in Macias's distinctive handwriting:
Diana— Eve's screen test was extraordinary. The chemistry between your mature Nester and her younger counterpart will be the heart of the film. We're expediting production. The crew arrives tomorrow to begin shooting the asylum sequences. —M
Relief washed over Diana. So the project was real. Vivian had been mistaken or misinformed. Everything was proceeding as planned.
She spent the day practicing Nester's compositions, finding that they came to her with increasing ease, as if her fingers remembered them. When she closed her eyes, she could see the notes not as they were written in the sheet music, but as they should be played—corrections to Nester's published works that somehow felt right.
That evening, she recorded her daily video for Macias, then took a long shower. As steam filled the bathroom, she wiped condensation from the mirror and froze.
Written in the fog were words she hadn't written:
They're lying to you.
She backed away, her heart racing. When she looked again, the words were gone, the mirror clear except for normal condensation.
That night, she dreamed she was sitting at a piano in a room she didn't recognize. A little girl sat beside her on the bench, her hair still wet, water dripping onto the keys.
"You have to finish it, Mommy," the girl said. "You promised."
Diana woke with a start, finding herself once again seated at the piano in her room, her fingers poised above the keys. A sheet of music sat before her—handwritten notes for a composition she didn't recognize. At the top was a title: "Emily's Return."
The paper was still wet, the ink fresh.
The next morning, the atmosphere at Blackwood had changed. Staff moved purposefully through the hallways, carrying equipment. Diana recognized the familiar chaos of a film set being established.
Lily brought her breakfast along with a shooting schedule. "Mr. Long wants to begin with the sequence where Nester first arrives at Blackwood," she explained. "You'll be in the East Wing. Hair and makeup will come to your room at eleven."
Diana nodded, relief coursing through her. This was familiar territory—a film set, a schedule, a role to play. The strange occurrences of the past days seemed less threatening in the harsh light of production reality.
At eleven, there was a knock at her door. Instead of the makeup team, Eve Matthews stood there, dressed in a simple white garment that looked unsettlingly like a hospital gown.
"Diana," she said, her voice softer than Diana remembered. "May I come in? There's something I need to tell you."
Diana hesitated, then stepped aside. Eve entered, her eyes scanning the room nervously.
"What is it?" Diana prompted when Eve remained silent.
"I don't think I'm who you think I am," Eve said finally. "I don't think any of this is what you think it is."
A chill ran down Diana's spine. "What are you talking about?"
"Last night, I heard you playing. That piece—'Emily's Return.' It's never been published. Never been recorded." Eve's eyes were wide with a fear that seemed genuine. "Only one person has ever played it."
"Nester," Diana whispered.
Eve nodded. "The real Nester Winifred."
"I'm preparing for a role," Diana insisted. "Method acting. It's intense, but it's still acting."
"Is it?" Eve asked gently. She moved to the desk and picked up the journal Diana had been avoiding since her discovery. "These entries—they go back months. Years. Long before any film project was announced."
"That's impossible."
"Look at the dates," Eve urged.
Diana reluctantly took the journal. The entry she'd seen before, about the replacement, was dated three years earlier. Other entries stretched back further—five years, seven years, a decade. All in her handwriting.
"This is some kind of trick," Diana said, her voice shaking. "Macias is testing me. Pushing my boundaries for the role."
"There is no role," Eve said softly. "There is no film."
"Of course there is! The crew is here! They're setting up right now!"
"What crew, Diana? What have you actually seen?"
Diana opened her mouth to answer, then hesitated. She'd seen people moving equipment. Heard voices. But had she actually seen cameras? Lights? The specific trappings of a film set?
"This isn't happening," Diana whispered.
"I need you to listen carefully," Eve said, taking Diana's hands in her own. "My name isn't Eve Matthews. It's Dr. Elizabeth Matheson. I'm a psychiatric therapist specializing in identity disorders. I've been working with you for three years."
"No." Diana pulled her hands away. "You're an actress. You're trying to take my role."
"Diana Everly died seventeen years ago," Eve—Elizabeth—continued relentlessly. "She came to Blackwood to interview you for a magazine article about your music. You killed her, just like you killed the journalist before her. But after her death, something changed. You began to believe you were her."
"This is insane," Diana hissed.
"Your name is Nester Winifred," Elizabeth said. "You've been a patient at Blackwood Psychiatric Hospital for twenty-two years, ever since your daughter Emily drowned. The compositions you created here made you famous in avant-garde music circles. Journalists and filmmakers sought you out, wanting to tell your story. Two of them died."
Diana's head pounded. Images flashed through her mind—fragmented, distorted. A young woman with a recorder, asking questions that cut too deep as "Drowning in Thin Air" played in the background. A crystal paperweight shaped like a piano, heavy in her hand. Blood on sheet music, spreading across the notes of that haunting melody.
"No," she whispered again.
"For the past decade, you've lived primarily as Diana Everly," Elizabeth continued. "The delusion was complete. Traditional therapy was ineffective. Three years ago, Dr. Long—Malcolm Long, our chief psychiatrist—proposed a new approach. Instead of fighting the Diana delusion, we would work within it, gradually reintroducing elements of your true identity until the walls between the personalities thinned."
"Macias," Diana said weakly. "His name is Macias."
"You named him that. In your mind, you cast him as a film director because that fit the narrative you'd created. Just as you cast me as a younger rival. And Dr. Bennett as a psychiatric historian. We've been playing along, guiding you back to yourself."
The room seemed to waver around Diana, reality shifting like a mirage. "If what you're saying is true, then everything—my career, my life in Los Angeles, my friends—"
"Constructs," Elizabeth said gently. "Built from fragments of memory, things you learned from the real Diana before her death, and years of elaborate fantasy."
Diana stood abruptly, backing away. "I don't believe you. I can't believe you."
"Look around you, Nester," Elizabeth said. "Really look."
Diana's eyes darted around the room—Nester's room. The piano she'd been inexplicably drawn to. The journals filled with her handwriting spanning years. The compositions that came to her fingers as if remembered rather than learned.
"The camera," she said suddenly. "Macias gave me a camera to record my process. For the documentary."
"Dr. Long gave you a journal," Elizabeth corrected. "You've been writing in it daily. There is no camera."
Diana moved to the dresser where she'd placed the digital camera each night. In its place was a leather-bound journal identical to the others. She opened it with trembling hands, finding page after page of her own handwriting, documenting her "preparation" for a role that didn't exist.
"This is a trick," she insisted, though her voice had lost its conviction.
"There's one more thing you should see," Elizabeth said, pulling a folded newspaper from her pocket. "This arrived today. It might help you understand."
Diana unfolded the paper. It was dated the current day. On the arts page was a small headline: "Nester Winifred Biopic Shelved Again." The brief article mentioned that the project, long in development hell, had been canceled following the death of its attached star, Diana Everly, seventeen years earlier. "The role remains uncast," the article concluded, "as the project seems perpetually haunted by tragedy."
Diana's legs gave way, and she sank to the floor. "I'm not... I can't be..."
A knock at the door interrupted them. Dr. Bennett—or whoever he really was—entered, followed by Macias/Dr. Long and two orderlies.
"How is our patient today?" Dr. Long asked, his eyes kind but assessing.
"The integration is progressing," Elizabeth answered. "The barriers are thinning."
"I'm not Nester," Diana insisted, but her voice sounded strange even to her own ears. "I'm Diana Everly. I'm an actress."
"Of course you are," Dr. Long said soothingly. "And you're here researching a role. The role of a lifetime."
"You just said..." Diana looked between them, confusion clouding her thoughts.
"Your process is your own," Dr. Long continued as if she hadn't spoken. "If you need to maintain the Diana persona to access Nester, that's perfectly valid."
Something in his tone made Diana's skin crawl. She looked at Elizabeth, who was watching her with an expression of clinical interest rather than the empathy she'd shown moments before.
"You're experimenting on me," Diana realized aloud.
"It's revolutionary therapy," Dr. Long corrected. "Allowing a fractured personality to heal by bringing the fragments into confrontation with each other."
"And the film crew I saw? The production preparations?"
"Therapeutic theater," Dr. Bennett explained. "Physical manifestations of your internal narrative. Everything you've experienced has been carefully designed to guide you toward integration."
Diana—or Nester—felt a calm certainty settle over her. "And if I refuse to integrate? If I choose to remain Diana?"
"That's not really an option," Dr. Long said, his kind façade slipping slightly. "Diana Everly doesn't exist. She died in this room seventeen years ago. At your hands, Nester."
As he spoke, the room around them seemed to shift. The comfortable researcher's accommodations Diana had perceived faded like mist, revealing a starker, clinical space. The high-quality piano became an older, more worn instrument. The bay window she'd admired was actually a standard hospital window with subtle but strong security features.
Even the people changed before her eyes. The film crew she'd glimpsed in the hallway transformed into nurses and orderlies. Dr. Bennett's tweed jacket gave way to a white physician's coat. Elizabeth's fashionable outfit became the practical garb of a therapist.
Only Dr. Long remained essentially the same—watching her with the same intense, evaluating eyes that Macias had used when deciding if she was right for a role that had never existed.
"You've been recording everything," she said, the final piece clicking into place. "My 'process' videos. My breakdowns. My moments of clarity…"
"For the benefit of psychiatric science," Dr. Long confirmed. "Your case is unprecedented. A complete identity assumption followed by a guided reintegration. The footage and data will help countless patients."
"And make your career," Diana added bitterly.
"A secondary consideration," Dr. Long said with a thin smile.
Diana looked around at the room—her room for twenty-two years, not the ten days she'd believed. She saw the piano where she'd composed music that had defined experimental classical composition for a generation. She saw the journals that documented her gradual loss of one identity and assumption of another.
And in the small mirror above the now-institutional dresser, she saw her face—older than Diana Everly's should have been, the eyes darker, holding knowledge and pain that no actor could fully simulate.
Nester Winifred looked back at her.
"What happens now?" she asked quietly.
"That depends on you," Dr. Long said. "The treatment continues. The integration progresses. Or—" he paused, studying her with clinical interest. "You resist, and we document that process as well. Either outcome is valuable for our research."
"And if I agree to cooperate? To accept that I'm Nester, not Diana?"
"Then perhaps," Dr. Long said, "we might discuss the possibility of your story reaching a wider audience. After all, you did want to be the subject of a film, didn't you? Just not in the way you imagined."
The irony wasn't lost on her. The role she'd thought she was preparing for had been her own all along. The comeback she'd desperately sought was simply a return to her true self.
She looked at the piano—her piano—where Emily had once sat beside her, small fingers mimicking her mother's movements across the keys. Where, after Emily's death, she'd composed the pieces that had channeled her grief and madness into something transcendent.
"I'd like some time alone," she said finally. "To... process everything."
Dr. Long nodded. "Of course. Dr. Matheson will be available when you're ready to talk further."
They filed out, leaving her alone with the ghosts of two identities—the one she'd been born with and the one she'd stolen.
When the door closed behind them, she moved to the piano and sat down. Her fingers hovered over the keys for a moment before beginning to play "Drowning in Thin Air," the composition she'd created after Emily's death. Her fingers remembered the notes perfectly—not learned, but recalled from the depths of her own creation.
As the haunting melody filled the room, she felt the presence she'd been sensing all along. Not a ghost, not a hallucination, but a part of herself that had been waiting to be acknowledged.
In the reflection of the piano's polished surface, she saw both women—Diana and Nester—gradually merging into one. And seated beside her on the bench, visible just for a moment, a small figure with wet hair and solemn eyes.
"I'm ready to finish it now," she whispered, to the child, to herself, to whoever might be watching through the discreet cameras she now noticed in the room's corners. "The final composition."
The music flowed from her fingers—not a comeback performance, but a homecoming. Each note of "Drowning in Thin Air" was both a remembrance and a rebirth. She understood now why she'd named the piece as she had—the sensation of struggling for breath at great heights, where oxygen exists but is too diffuse to sustain life. She had been drowning in thin air all these years, even when she'd tried to breathe as someone else.
The woman in the mirror watched with dark, knowing eyes as the two became one, and the long-delayed curtain finally fell.
