Vathana retched. She covered her mouth, forced the vomit back. She paused, leaned against the wall of her apartment building looking up at seemingly swaying concrete and glass. She panted. The pain eased momentarily. I should have stayed at the pagoda, she thought. I must get home.
Ever since the incidents with the border children and the dead boy on her barge she had spent an hour each morning at the wat in prayer. Even as she’d left the apartment for the quarter-mile walk she’d felt ill, but nothing compared with this horrible, nausea-producing cramping pain—at once constant and throbbing. She breathed slightly deeper. Her vision cleared. She stepped through the main door into the small courtyard and toward the stairs. Again she paused. The proximity of her apartment pulled her. The sta
