the body running on pure need
Poor Tony was post-seizure, infirm, not to mention Withdrawn; his breath came in stitches and half-sobs; he could barely stay on his toes; he had not consumed food since before the library’s men’s room stall, which was how many days
Context
Withdrawal itemized as the engine of the entire crime: a body days past a seizure, unfed since the men's-room floor, running a footrace it has no fuel for — the theft driven not by greed but by the flat physical arithmetic of a habit that has to be paid. The purses are already spent on the relief the ruined body is sprinting toward.