And that’s how I ended up in Bolt Street Clinic myself. It could have been the same room as the one I’d been in the day before, the one in which I’d watched a girl die. I don’t know; I hadn’t paid much attention to it then, and I wasn’t going to ask.

At Bolt Street, the medical hierarchy wasn’t any more elaborate than the law enforcement equivalent at Chrystoble Street Station. Anybody who knew how to handle a problem, handled it. I wasn’t, the staff assured me, much of a problem. I was attended to by the man who’d brought me water in the hall, the last time I’d been there. He sewed up the gash between my right eyebrow and my hairline, shone light into my eyes and ears, prodded my battered limbs and asked “Does this hurt?” (the answer was usually “Yes”), and told me I was going to be there for twenty-four hours, for observation, whether I liked it or not.

I told him I didn’t. I also told him I’d climb out a window sooner than spend the night, no offense meant.

“Good of you to warn me,” he said. He sounded tired. “How about if you stay away from the windows for eight hours, and we’ll renegotiate then?”

“I’ll try.” I didn’t really feel like standing up yet, but I wasn’t making an empty threat. The hospital surroundings were already making my nerves flutter. It had been four years since I’d lived in the World, since I’d lived with this ambience at second hand and come to associate it inextricably with everything that happened at home. Some things take more than years and distance to escape, I guess.

He cleaned me up and left, warning as he did that there was probably somebody waiting to see me; at least, there had been, on and off for a while. I propped my pillow and me against the headboard and tried to look competent and unfazed.

I don’t know why I was surprised when Tick-Tick came in. I was expecting her, of course; I just wasn’t expecting her first. Her back was very straight and her face was calm. She shut the door behind her and sat down in the chair beside the bed. She crossed her legs. She folded her long white hands, right over left, on her thigh.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t think I looked competent and unfazed.

“I know that.” Her voice matched the rest of her. “So?”

That was when I understood just how hard this was going to be. “Do you want me to promise never to do it again?”