“What have I done?” Veena whispered. “Why did she have to wake up?”

At last breaking free from her psychologically induced paralysis, Veena turned and raced from the room. Without even thinking of the consequences, she ran headlong down the hall, only vaguely aware that the nurses’ station was still empty. During the day there was always at least a ward clerk, but not in the evening and not at night.

In the elevator Veena was only dimly aware that she was alone. She kept seeing Mrs. Hernandez’s face in all its twitching horror. There were people in the hospital lobby, even a few ambulating patients and their family members, but no one gave Veena a second look. She knew what she had to do, and that was to get away from the hospital as soon as she possibly could.

Outside, the doormen opened the glass doors for her when they saw her coming. They said good evening as she rushed out, but she didn’t respond. Originally, she had planned on leaving through the staff-and-delivery entrance, but now, in her mind, it didn’t matter. As far as she was concerned, whether people saw her or not did not make any difference.

Out in the street Veena hailed one of the yellow-and-green auto rickshaws, which were nothing more than three-wheeled covered scooters with bench backseats and open sides. Veena gave the bungalow’s address in the swank Chanakyapuri section of the city and climbed in. With a sudden jerk the driver took off as if he were joining a race, sounding his horn intermittently, despite the lack of need. Since the traffic had now lessened considerably, they made good time, especially when they reached the residential area of Chanakyapuri. Staring straight ahead during the journey, Veena tried not to think, yet she couldn’t get the violent contortions of Mrs. Hernandez’s face out of her mind’s eye.

At the mansion, Veena was unable to convince the driver to enter the driveway to take her to the porte cochere. He argued that he didn’t believe she lived there and didn’t want to get in trouble with the police. Since a similar episode with an auto rickshaw driver had happened twice before in the little less than a month she’d lived there, Veena didn’t try to argue. She paid the man and hustled through the gate into the walled and fenced property. Reaching the front door, she didn’t go immediately to the room she shared with Samira, but rather went directly to the library in the hope of finding Cal still there. When she didn’t find him there, she looked for him in the formal living room, where Nurses International had added a large flat-screen TV. She found Cal and Durell absorbed in a rebroadcast of one of the previous day’s American football games. Both were draped across respective formal sofas with bottles of Kingfisher beer in their hands.

“Ah!” Cal exclaimed, catching sight of Veena. He let his legs fall from the sofa’s arms. “That was fast! Is it done?”