The nurse walks over to me. She looks at a paper in her hand and says, “Just rest.”

I remember Tante Rose wanting Manman to rest. Then I ask again, “Where is my Manman?”

“I see you found your book,” she says. “It was inside your blouse when you came here. You were holding on to it so tightly.”

“Is my Manman well?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5

I asked the nurse what day it was and she told me. I hear church bells in the distance. Some of the patients who are able to get up walk back and forth through the louvered doors where the sun is coming in. Even though I feel as though I can walk fine, I have no desire to see outside. I just want to see Manman.

LATER

Another nurse spoke to me this afternoon. She asked me my name and where I live. I told her about Tante Rose and where she works.

“So your head is fine,” she said. “You know who you are. We were afraid you wouldn’t. Your family is probably looking for you. People who survived that explosion were lucky.”

“An explosion?” Even though I had heard that bang, I thought it was a collision, that a bigger camion had hit ours from behind.

“It was a pipe bomb,” the nurse said, “something to do with the elections.”

She said there was a shooting in the capital at the same time, also related to the elections. Gunmen wounded five people at a bus depot.

“You are safe here,” she said. “There will be no explosions and no shootings here.”

Even as she was saying this, she didn’t look or sound very certain.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 6

I can sit up in bed now if I try. I ask the nurse about Manman every time she brings me food. She simply tells me to rest. I do not remember Tante Rose’s telephone number. I don’t think I ever knew it. Manman and Moy always made all the calls to her house from the Teleco in Léogâne.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7

Why haven’t Tante Rose and Manman and Moy found me yet? Have the nurses let Tante Rose know I am here?

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8

I will not let myself think the worst about Manman. Dear, sweet little book, if I could hold on to you so tightly that you are now here with me, why couldn’t I have done the same for Manman?

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9

Tante Rose and Moy look like visions when they arrive, like the animal forms that clouds sometimes take in the sky. I never realized that happiness could make people appear so airy and light. Tante Rose and Moy seemed to be floating, like sheets in the breeze. Was I dreaming them again? If so, why weren’t Manman and Papa standing there with them the way they were in all my dreams?

Tante Rose held my hand and cried.