“Totally,” agreed Lucy Gund in a small voice. “It’s like having a United Nations summit at EPCOT.” “There’s something perverse about throwing publishing parties here,” she said.īoth women worked as editorial assistants at Forrester Books, and tonight was the office holiday party, held every year on the second floor of a dark bar called The Library, where the theme was literary kitsch. Florence Darrow, in front, dragged her hand along the blood-red wall. Two young women climbed a narrow set of stairs toward the sound of laughter and music. Then the light withdrew and sleep descended. Until then you should rest, Madame Wilcox.” He left, trailing the white-robed nurse behind him like a veil. “I will return this afternoon to assess your condition, but I do not foresee any reason to keep you past tomorrow. The nurse, as if waiting for her cue, presented a Dixie cup of water and a white pill the size of a molar. We often see injuries like these caused by airbags. I was told you had been in a car accident. I was on call when you arrived last night with two fractured ribs, a broken wrist, and hematomas across your face and torso.
“I am glad you are awake.” He spoke English with more precision than most native speakers, each syllable demarcated crisply from the next. The nurse had returned with a different man. She shut her eyes again.Ī few moments later-or perhaps it had been hours-the curtain opened again. The information seemed significant, but she couldn’t place it within any meaningful context. She looked back at the empty chair the man had sat in. That’s when she noticed that she was in pain. She tried to push herself up to a sitting position but found herself hindered by a cast on her left wrist. The nurse either didn’t hear her or didn’t heed her. The young woman in the bed turned to the nurse, but she too was leaving. He smiled coldly and pushed the curtain aside.
He stood up, holding out his palms in appeasement. Then she turned to the man at the bedside and said something to him in a sharper tone.
She said something in a foreign language and smoothed out the thin blanket. A nurse? She leaned over the bed and smiled warmly. A woman in a white headscarf and white jacket stepped through. Then the curtain on her left swished open. “Madame Weel-cock,” he said for the fourth time. His face had the puffed, plastic curves of a baby doll. A man in what looked like a military uniform sat in a chair pulled up to the bed, leaning forward onto his thighs and watching her intently. She was lying in an uncomfortable bed flanked by two dirty curtains. She shut her eye.Ī shrill beeping sounded from somewhere. Her vision was crossed by a blurred figure in white.
Her left eyelid wrenched open, and warm yellow light flooded into the crack.
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