George stared at Pia as if she were an apparition, but she turned to look at Will. His breathing was being handled by a machine, there were tangles of wires and tubes enveloping him, and he was surrounded by banks of devices with illuminated readouts. Will’s face looked calm and peaceful and his color was normal. Except for all the medical equipment and the beeping and clicking, he might have simply been sleeping. A nurse hovered nearby. Pia looked around the room and caught her reflection in the unit’s large window. She looked terrible, like something the cat dragged in. She turned her attention back to George.

“George, I’m so sorry I got you into this. Please forgive me,” she said. “If I had listened to you, then this would have turned out differently, I know that.”

“Pia, I feel as terrible as you do about this. I was sleeping while you were waiting for me at the station. I slept through your calls. I should have come to you. It should be me lying there.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better. Will had no idea what was going on and I didn’t say anything. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me so there’s a couple of things I want to say while I have the chance.

“I want to say thank you for going out of your way to help me. I don’t really understand why you’d do that for someone without her asking, and without her appreciating what you’re doing. But there are a lot of things I don’t understand.

“I guess the main thing I don’t understand is myself. I think you do know yourself, which is why you’re able to say you love someone, like you did to me. And I’m sorry for not listening then either. I’m jealous that you can do that, and I wonder why I can’t. I think there’s something broken in me or something that was never there, and it’s taken until now for me to see that. For a lot of reasons, I find it very difficult to trust people. As if I need to tell you that.... But I don’t know how to love someone either, or how to accept their love. It’s a big responsibility, being loved, and you should think hard before rejecting someone’s love.