Hospitals. Cemeteries are more pleasant. There at least things are real—the ground beneath your feet, the sky above, the trees, the grass . . . but in a hospital nothing is for sure, nothing certain. Everyone is a victim, patients and visitors alike, at the mercy of those people called doctors. People she does not trust.

Asa looks pitiful. It saddens her more than she thought it would, more than she thought it could, to see him here. A light-skinned man all his life, now his skin appeared ashen, sickly, frail. He had been there in bed when they entered, his eyes closed, trembling with every breath, one tube stuck up a nostril, another tube jabbed into his arm—one green, one red. He wheezed as he breathed, and the green tube gurgled like a straw does when you’ve finished a drink. And the smells—disinfectants, ammonia, soap, urine, and that smell she knows so well, sickness. It has its own smell, sickness, like a dog with its tail betwixt its legs, its head held down, an old dog with droopy eyes and a worn-out tongue. That’s the smell of sickness. It is here, in the air, in the sparkling white, hard bedsheets, there, surrounding the gleaming metal railing of the bed, and even about them fancy gadgets and whozits ablinking and abuzzing.

When Asa opens his eyes they are bright white, and she almost forgets that he is here in this place where sickness breeds, where women dressed in white wearing funny white shoes look at you as though you should be in bed. When she sees those eyes she remembers when they were both young, she a new bride, he a cousin of her husband and the best-looking thing she had ever laid eyes on. Is that when it went bad? When she realized she was not content? Was it her first sight of Asa with his broad face and round cheeks, his full lips and smiling white eyes? Now Asa’s eyes are rheumy and dark-ringed; they seem to call out in pain, and at the same time betray embarrassment. He had jumped when he opened his eyes, looking puzzled and lost, unfamiliarity surrounding him in an unfamiliar place, feeling, probably, unfamiliar himself, though she figures the feeling of coming death is probably a very familiar feeling, one we begin to acquaint ourselves with the moment we take our first breath. He had opened his mouth, saying something so low no one, not even he, could have heard it; his bottom lip descended, trembling, trembling as though he would burst into tears at any moment. Slowly, shakily, he lifted one hand, to no one of the three in particular, clearing his throat, and said:

“What time is it?”