In "The Wych Elm" by Tana French. Penguin, 2018.
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[Narrator is recovering in hospital from a serious physical attack.]


p.50:

[NP] The pain wasn't the worst part, though, not by a long shot. The
worst part was the fear. ...
[NP]

Once the fear took hold, I was fucked. I'd never known anything like it
could exist: all-consuming, ravenous,a whirling black vortex that sucked
me under so completely and mercilessly that it truly felt like I was
being devoured alive, bones splintered, marrow sucked. After an eternity
(lying in bed with my heart jackhammering, adrenalin firing me like a
strobe light, feeling the last few threads that held my mind together
stretch to snapping point) something would happen to break the vortex's
hold -- a nurse coming in ... -- and I would clamber up out of it, shaky
and weak as a half-drowned animal. But even when the fear receded for a
while, it was always there: dark, misshapen, taloned, hanging somewhere
above and behind me, waiting for its next moment to drop on my back and
dig in deep. [EP]