PALE HORSE, PALE RIDER

Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter: Based on the author's personal experience, a young reporter in Denver has a brief romance with a soldier during the influenza epidemic of 1918, which sweeps through the city like an apocalyptic plague. She soon gets sick and lies on her deathbed for weeks while the solider takes care of her, risking his own life in the process.

First Sentence:
“In sleep she knew she was in her bed, but not the bed she had lain down in a few hours since, and the room was not the same, but it was a room she had known somewhere.”