Both Uses

hiatus
in
Misery, by Stephen King
(Auto-generated)

There was a feeling about her of clots and roadblocks rather than welcoming orifices or even open spaces, areas of hiatus.†
Chpt 1 *

hiatus = gap in time without activity
The word which defined it was catatonia, but what frightened him had no such precise word, it was, rather, a vague comparison: in that moment he thought that her thoughts had become much as he had imagined her physical self: solid, fibrous, unchannelled, with no places of hiatus.†
Chpt 1

Definitions:

(1) (hiatus)
a gap in time (when there is no or less activity)
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
Much less commonly, hiatus can have these specialized meanings:
- linguistics: the pause when adjacent vowels are in adjacent syllables -- as in reality
- anatomy: an opening, gap, or split -- such as the aortic hiatus or a hiatal hernia