He held out the bottle for Charlie. Again, she breathed lightly without response. In the war he had seen plenty of death, but never in all his years had he seen something as terrifying as this face before him now. All of its muscles had gone flaccid. The flesh was like jelly. Her chin pooled onto her neck; her cheeks flopped back near her ears. Even her nostrils had flattened. Physically, she had lost everything that had once defined her. He looked away, down at his own legs. His old brown pants billowed out like a skirt; the cuffs dragged on the ground. His belt, the leather worn thin on the first notch, was now fastened at the last one. Soon he would have to puncture a new hole. They were both adrift from their bodies. And without the body, what are we? Had he ever truly believed in a soul?

He shook the bottle hard and kept shaking until he heard her take a breath. It made him sneeze four times, reminding him of sunlight and pollen and dusty books, but it had no effect on her at all.

The summer her parents divorced, she’d walked from room to room complaining of boredom.

“Aren’t you bored in there, Charlie? Aren’t you horribly bored by this coma?”

The nurse reached over the bed and put a hand on his arm. “Don’t.”

“Am I not allowed to say the word ‘coma’? Is that a dirty word around here?”

“It could frighten her.”

“Well, she’s frightening me.” He hadn’t heard himself whine like that since he was a little boy.

“Maybe it’s time to go now.”

“No. Not for me. It’s not time for me to go.” He felt how fast his heart was beating and knew he had to calm down. He rummaged through the basket and found a bottle of blue liquid marked AFTERSHAVE. He opened it and breathed in dances when he was young: the bathroom of his parents’ house, his brother, Tom, hogging the sink, and the smell of his own cologne in the hair of a girl at the end of the night. He had never been religious, but he knew that if anything happened to Charlie, Tom would be waiting for her. They would be about the same age now. Tom was only twenty-four when he died. It seemed impossible that he had lived sixty-seven years without him.

He feigned another coughing fit and wiped his eyes. It was too much. There was too much unnecessary loss. There always had been. He held the aftershave up to Charlie’s flat nose. She took it in slowly, and opened one eye. The pupil rolled down and she looked straight at him. He was too dumbfounded to greet her. Here she was. He had done it.

“That happens,” the nurse said. “Only that one eye. Around and around.”