Page 67 of Nightwatching

“No,” she told them, “I didn’t see how he fell. I was asleep. Showering. Getting dressed. I didn’t think he was still home.”

She walked next to her husband as they lifted the board, headed for the ambulance.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, you can’t come with us.”

“But—”

“It’s policy. Not even family in the ambulance. They’re not going to let you into the hospital, either. No visitors.”

“Can I—”

“We have to move.”

“Please! Let me say goodbye.”

She reached for her husband’s hand, soft and pale and bound to the gurney. Squeezed it.

“I love you,” she said. “I love you!”

Her husband exhaled a small bubble of bloody saliva that popped like chewing gum. And then hedisappeared.

22

She woke up in a yellowed room. Everything was dulled and flat.

Someone told her she was safe. She knew from the pain this was a lie, and closed her eyes.

There was sunlight through a window, and agony. The person talking wore blue scrubs covered by a yellow paper gown, his face disguised under a mask and plastic shield. He, or someone who sounded like him, kept coming and going, repeating the same things, words that ran over her body and washed down a drain, easy to forget.Orbital fracture, basal, swelling, surgery, drained, edema, frostbite, stitches, scar, nutrition, sprain.

The room swung side to side.

“Where are my children?” she heard herself say, voice slurred.

“I don’t know.”

“Can I see them?”

“There aren’t any visitors allowed right now.”

She pulled at the tube in her hand.

“Hey—ma’am, hey! Don’t do that!”

“I need to find them,” she tried to say.

“Ma’am, stop! You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Where are they?”

Pull, pull, pop, pop.

Then there were hands, and beeping, and darkness.

—

She woke again to find the sergeant sitting in a chair next to the bed, staring at the muted TV mounted in the corner. She clutched the blanket and pulled it up over her chest, feeling his hands under the fur coat.

“Where are they?”

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