The Vampire Inside Me

At twenty-one, Lucia Farris is graduating college and looking ahead to graduate school, believing her future to be bright and secure. But life comes to a painful halt when she is admitted to the hospital and rushed to several emergency surgeries. The doctors diagnose her with two new autoimmune diseases: pulmonary arterial hypertension and lupus. Lucia doesn't know what to expect, but she knows her life is forever changed-nothing she's diagnosed with is curable, not that her life expectancy is more than six months, anyway. Her dreams, including working at the International Monetary Fund, seem grounded for good. In the present, told in an alternating timeline three years later, Lucia is lucky to be alive, but life will never be what it was. Yet, when she meets Oskar, an Austrian graduate student, her body is painfully aware of her reaction to him (and how long it's been since she hit her last O). From date one, sparks fly. When lips meeting becomes hips meeting, both find their bodies as dangerously compatible as their minds. As feelings shift toward more, Lucia's all too aware that her disease was "too much" for boyfriends in the past. And Oskar doesn't plan to stay in Atlanta forever. Still, there's a pull they just can't resist. **ownvoices, chronic-illness**