Aziz looked at her again, willing her to know everything he wanted to say.

Lord, he’s in love with me, Osana thought. Her hands went to her throat, then back on her hips.

“Child, you are not Xavier.” She said this in English, to gain an upper hand.

“Xavier,” was the word he said, but the tone was You know.

“Not Ricco either.”

“Either,” but really, I know.

“Let me take a look at your feet.” She looked right at them, and he moved as if to peel the blanket back. She pulled over a stool and sat at the foot of the bed. Without her asking, he turned on his side, so she would be able to see the soles of his feet. His ankles were wan and the black hair of his legs seemed out of place, a man’s, not a boy’s, and this was only a boy, she told herself, one she could have mothered. She began unraveling, and then took the scissors, and then, when he did not flinch or speak or even move his hands, as so many she had done this for before had been unable to stop themselves from doing, she became careful on her own. But she didn’t look up at him. She was afraid to, really, and that was out of her experience. She put down the scissors and looked at the last layer. It was good that whoever had cleaned and bandaged him last had been like her. Someone who was not stingy with the Silvadene, so that the flimsy grids of the bandage were not sunk into the raw of him. There was a whipped and glimmering froth still, and that meant she could take off the last of it without getting him more codeine or Demerol or both.

Gently, she lifted up the gauze on his left foot, the heel first. The salve came up with it, and she knew the moment the air hit his skin he would have to draw back. But he didn’t. Those were second-degree, the most painful, because the nerves were intact. He was motionless. She got a shaky feeling then herself, and she could hear her mother back home saying, He is not of this world. She kept going and lifted the gauze at the arch, which was uninjured, and then the last, the worst, the ball of the foot and the toes. The salve was slick, put on with a ladle. God bless the one before her. God bless that one. She could not see through the white cream of the salve.

“Can you tell me,” she heard him say in French, “why my toes have no skin?”

It was then she looked up at him, his cheek against the sheet, his hospital gown riding up his thigh.

“They do have skin,” she said.

“They do?” His eyes were on hers.

“Yes.”

“Why does it feel that they don’t?”

“Wait here.”