the blizzard morning: the body leaking at dawn
I was still producing excess saliva, and my one pillow was moist in a way I didn’t want to turn on a light and investigate. I didn’t feel good at all. A sort of nausea of the head. [...] I’d felt for almost a week as if I needed to cry for some reason but the tears were somehow stopping just millimeters behind my eyes and staying there.
Context
The withdrawal physiology registering first as body-symptoms Hal itemizes clinically: "excess saliva," the moist pillow, "a sort of nausea of the head," worst before dawn. And the stalled tears, "stopping just millimeters behind my eyes and staying there" for a week. The disturbance shows up in the flesh before it has a name — the machine leaking and misfiring at the margins, the boy reading his own malfunction like a symptom-list.