Then he opened them, those narrow eyes, kind of like a fox peering out of a safe place. But a big lamp shining in them. Face no wider than a broomstick. Not a pretty one, not an ugly one. A feather of a man too, just might not stay in one place.

“Vous parlez français!” she said.

“Vous aussi,” he said carefully, as if he did not quite believe anyone did.

“Bien sûr.” She smiled. There was something else now. Bad worry, she felt. Fear, too; it had been there awhile. She concentrated and said in French, “Tell me.” She pulled back a little, to let him ease back if he found her too close. But he sank back entirely, and she could see he was ashamed. She put her hands in her lap and sat half of herself on the side of the bed.

“I thought I was dreaming,” he said in French. “I thought you were someone else.”

“Your wife?” She didn’t know if he had a wife. He had just arrived from the burn unit and she had not yet read his file. He looked no more than a teenager, but one who had seen what a man knew by forty, at least. Could be he was born that way, because it didn’t come from what she could see of him. Baby skin on that forehead, not a line.

He looked down.

“Girlfriend?”

Silence.

There was that bell again.

“I’ll be back, I promise,” she told him, and pulled close again to take his hand and hold it a beat.

He watched her, a thick-waisted woman with white-stocking calves thin as a schoolgirl’s. Such a walk she had—a glide—and fast, yet quiet as a cloud. She smelled of plums. He wanted to tell her everything, he felt he could tell her. Mad longing, not thinking, he scolded. Think and wait and see and listen. He was already a mile farther down the road because she had held him. Something about her had slipped under him. He couldn’t give her gniin; no, his lies would have to be true in some way, not hopping and light and false.

After the patient who needed her, she came back to the nurse’s station and looked. XAVIER RICCO: AGE: 27. Married. WIFE: Linda Ricco. SISTER: Heather Montrose. OCCUPATION: Day laborer. So there was a wife.

He was admitted unconscious with lacerations to the head. Robbed and beaten outside his apartment in Everett. Second-degree burns on entire left foot, third-degree burns on metatarsal and toes of right and left feet. Wife and sister believe burns received on day job, construction site unknown. He had gained consciousness briefly yesterday. Gave his name.