shortbreathed

The cry echoing and shifting from room to room in the great house and he could never find it, wanting to see the child and hold the child and rushing through the shadows and hearing the cry and he would grow rattled and shortbreathed and the cry would begin to fade as if floating away on some soulful wind and then he would be alone in the empty house and then he would wake alone.

2021, Michael Farris Smith, chapter 22, in Nick, New York; Boston; London: Little, Brown and Company, page 124