he had sat in the visitor 's chair , watching and waiting as her respiration long , sighing exhale , grew more and more pronounced-the the flat , moveless chest , the growing certainty that the last breath had indeed been the last breath , that the watch had run down , the train arrived in the station to take on its single passenger ... and then another huge , unconscious gasp would come as she tore the next lungful out of the unfriendly air , no longer breathing in any normal sense but only lunging reflexively along from one gasp to the next like a drunk lurching down a long dark corridor in a cheap hotel .