"That's correct. Mrs. Grey has been with us since early March. I'm sure you'll want to see her, so I've asked the floor supervisor to join us. She'll take you up to Mrs. Grey's room."

"Great. I'd appreciate that. Frankly, I didn't expect to find her here. I guess I thought she'd be out by now. Is she doing okay?"

"Oh my, yes. She's considerably better . . . quite well ... but we have been concerned about continued care. We can't release a patient who has no place to go. As nearly as we can tell, Mrs. Grey doesn't have a permanent address and she's never admitted to having any next of kin. We're delighted to hear that she has relatives living in the state. I'm sure you'll want to notify Mrs. Gersh and make arrangements to have her transferred to a comparable facility in Santa Teresa."

Ahh. I felt myself nodding. Her Medi-Cal benefits were running out. I tried a public-relations smile of my own, unwilling to commit Irene Gersh to anything. "I'm not sure what Mrs. Gersh will want to do. I told her I'd call as soon as I found out what was going on. She'll probably need to talk to you before she makes any decisions, but I'm assuming she'll ask me to drive Agnes back to Santa Teresa with me."

She and her assistant exchanged a quick look.

"Is there a problem with that?"

"Well, no," she said. Her gaze shifted to the doorway. "Here's Mrs. Renquist, the ward supervisor. I think she's the person you should properly discuss this with."

We went through another round of introductions and explanations. Mrs. Renquist was perhaps forty-five, thin and tanned, with a wide, good-natured mouth and the dusky, lined complexion of a smoker. Her dark auburn hair was pulled back in a knot shaped like a doughnut, probably supported by one of those squishy nylon devices they sell at Woolworth's. The three women seemed to hover about me like secular nuns, full of murmurs and reassurances. Within minutes, Mrs. Renquist and I were out in the corridor, heading toward the ward.

5

I heard agnes grey before I ever laid eyes on her. Mrs. Renquist and I had climbed the wide curving stairs to the second floor. We proceeded down the upper hallway without saying much. The character of the grade school was still oddly evident, in spite of the fact that extensive remodeling had been done to accommodate current use. The former classrooms had been quite large, with wide, multipaned windows stretching almost ceiling to floor. Light streamed in through glass embedded with chicken wire. The woodwork had been left in its original state, varnished oak aged to a glossy russet shade. Up here, the worn wood floors had been covered with mottled white vinyl tiles and the once spacious rooms had been partitioned into cubicles, containing two beds each. The walls were painted in shades of pale green and blue. The place was clean, if impersonal, the air perfumed with ultimate body functions gone sour. Old people were visible everywhere, in beds, in wheelchairs, on gurneys, huddled on hard wooden benches in the wide corridor; idle, insulated from their surroundings by senses that had shut down over the years. They seemed as motionless as plants, resigned to infrequent watering. Anyone would wither under such a regimen: no exercise, no air, no sunlight. They had outlived not only friends and family, but most illnesses, so that at eighty and ninety, they seemed untouchable, singled out to endure, without relief, a life that stretched into yawning eternity.