This seemed so disastrous to me that I began to cry. The woman in the yellow sweater sat down next to me and wiped my eyes, since I was having trouble moving my arms. The fingers on my right hand were in splints, but both my arms were so sore it seemed like too much work to lift them to wipe my eyes.

“We’ll do everything we can to get your watch back to you. Now that you’re awake I want to see if you can drink something. You’ll recover faster if you can start to eat on your own. As soon as you drink a bit of this, I’ll call the hospital about your watch.” She cranked the bed up, and I swallowed something sweet.

I croaked again.

“You’re in the Grete Berman Institute. Recovering from your injuries.”

I knew I had heard of the Grete Berman Institute, but I couldn’t remember what it was. I went back to sleep, puzzling over it, but after that I began recovering, drinking more each time I woke, staying awake for longer intervals. Sometimes the man who called me “cookie” was there, and I finally remembered it was Mr. Contreras. I tried to smile and say something so that he’d know I knew him and appreciated his being there; I could just manage to say “Peppy,” which made him start to cry again.

Once when I woke, the woman in the sweater handed me my father’s watch and helped me strap it onto my wrist. I was relieved to have it back but still felt upset, as if I were missing something of even greater importance. The woman in the sweater urged me to drink miso broth. I was getting stronger—in a few days I’d be able to have rice, and then I’d be strong enough to remember what was troubling me.

I was too tired to think. I gave up worrying about the watch and drifted between waking and eating and struggling upright: the wound in my abdomen made sitting up an exquisite pain. It was only three days, in fact, between my first waking up and my shaky progression from bed to chair and a tour of the hallway, but the pain and the painkillers stretched time’s passage in odd ways.

On the day that Mr. Contreras helped me into a chair so that I could eat my rice and watch the Cubs, Lotty came in. Sammy Sosa had just hit his forty–sixth home run, but Mr. Contreras muted the television and with rare tact left us alone.

When Lotty saw me out of bed and in a chair, she burst into tears and knelt with her arms around me. “Victoria. I thought I was going to lose you. Oh, my dear one, I am so thankful to have you back.”