When we left the nurses’ station, Steve explained that the ward used to be open, but that they had built partitions around the beds a few years ago. “It’s not a great system—the walls are so close in you can’t make the beds, and the patients don’t have any way to attract someone else’s attention if they need help. But the county board decrees and we try to make the best of it.”

When I saw Mrs. Frizell my stomach turned cold and I felt faint. Even on Monday night, when she’d been lying half naked on her bathroom floor, she had looked like a person. Now her head was cocked back on the pillow, her eyes staring blankly, her mouth open, and the skin drawn taut across her bones a faint gray. She looked like a corpse. Only her restless, meaningless movements showed she was still alive.

I glanced fearfully at Steve. He shook his head, his lips compressed, but squeezed in between the bed and the partition wall. I moved to the other side of the bed.

I knelt next to the bed. Mrs. Frizell’s eyes didn’t seem to track either me or Steve. “Mrs. Frizell? I’m V. I.—Victoria. Your neighbor. How are you?”

It seemed like a foolish question and I felt rewarded for my stupidity when she didn’t answer. Steve made a sign that I should go on, so I plowed painfully forward.

“I have a dog, you know, that red-gold retriever. We run by your house some mornings and you and I sometimes talk.” Sometimes she snarled at me, I amended in my head—maybe she’d never really noticed me. “And I found you on Monday night. With Marjorie Hellstrom.”

I repeated the name a couple of times and made myself keep talking, but I couldn’t bring myself to mention her dogs, the one thing that might have caught her attention. My knees were starting to ache from the cold, hard floor and my tongue felt like a furry clapper in a bell. I was starting to push myself standing when she suddenly turned her cloudy eyes to look at me.

“Bruce?” she croaked hoarsely. “Bruce?”

“Yes,” I said, forcing a smile. “I know Bruce. He’s a wonderful dog.”

“Bruce.” It looked as though she might be patting the bed, inviting a nonexistent dog to jump up and join her.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “They don’t let dogs into hospitals. You get well fast, and then you can go home and be with him.”

“Bruce,” she said again, but she seemed to have a little more color in her face. A few seconds later she’d fallen asleep.

13

Filial Piety