THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Nancy showed me how to help my mom out of bed and sit her on the toilet. She peed, which was progress, and Nancy showed me how to lift her off the bowl. After, my mom was tired, and slept. I counted my Xanax, found three pills left, swallowed one. I sat in the blue chair and watched TV, my phone, the door. I moved around my mind, routine. I was fine, we would be fine. I would wait and she would wake and we would walk to the nurse’s station and back, my arm around her.

It happened just like that, my mother’s body in mine, our synched-up steps. “I’m so much better,” she said as we shuffled. I squeezed her waist a little, which was soft where I held it, and warm. The man, or men, their hands had been dry. It was impossible to tell her how they’d felt. “I’m almost there,” she said as we neared the nurse’s station. “I’m coming back,” she said when we turned and retraced our steps. Nancy waited at the door and clapped. Together we got to the bed, velcroed on compression socks, untangled wires.

“I’m going home, kissing my kids, watching The Bachelor and sleeping,” Nancy said, and told me to go, too. I followed her orders like a test. “I’m coming back,” I told my mom before I left. But she was already asleep and didn’t answer.

FROM THE DRIVEWAY, the cottage looked braced for weather, shuttered and dark. I walked to the door with my house key held out in front of me. I considered the lock as I turned it. Inside, I went room to room, checked closets, turned on every light. I was alone, but showered with the curtain open, watching the door, watching the water spill out. The spray tan I’d received for the party was peeling. I turned the tap all the way toward hot and scrubbed with my acrylics. Orange flakes melted off and I kicked them down the basin to the drain. No, I couldn’t tell my mother what happened. Away from her, I could hardly breathe. I got dressed, packed my stuff into her purse, got back in the car.

“She’s so much better today,” I texted Leah. She replied My mom, when I returned to her room, was as I’d left her: sleeping. I put myself beside her, eyes on the door, keeping watch.

THE BLUE RECLINER was like a safe zone in a child’s game; its embrace turned me untouchable, so sleep took me away again. To a familiar nightmare, that collective dream of girls and women: faceless men hunting us, finding us where we hide. I ran, but my feet were weighted. I screamed, but no sound came out.