The doctor examined me closely. “You are very lucky, Ms. Warshawski. The burns on the lids were not severe and are already healing. For the next few weeks, you’ll need to wear dark glasses with photochromic lenses whenever you are outside, whether the sun is shining or not, and anytime you’re in a brightly lit room. If you wear glasses, you need to get prescription sunglasses to use in front of a computer for the next month or two. And stay away from TV and computers altogether for two more days. That’s a serious order, okay?”

He gave me an antibiotic salve to put on and under the lids twice a day, and told me it was safe to wash my hair.

When they brought me back to my room, with a pair of those outsize plastic sunglasses they give people after cataract surgery, the resident came around to inspect the rest of my body. My arms were rough and red. I’d been wearing a linen jacket, since I’d dressed professionally for my meeting, and while the fabric had charred it had spared my skin from more severe burns.

My hands had suffered the worst damage. When the dressings came off next week, I’d need to wear cotton gloves anytime I went outside.

When I finally crept into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, I looked sunburned, but my face only had a few blisters along the hairline. I’d apparently buried my face in the throw while I tumbled Sister Frances out of her room, which also had saved me from serious burns. What made me look bizarre wasn’t my shiny red cheeks but the clumps of hair missing from my head. I looked like a dog with mange.

Even so, I had been staggeringly lucky to escape the full force of the fire. If only I’d pulled Sister Frankie down instead of screaming at her … I could see the bottle hitting her head over and over again every time I closed my eyes.

The resident had said they would discharge me tomorrow if I continued to hold my own. In the meantime, they were removing my IVs. I could switch to oral antibiotics and actual food.

“You know you’ve created a kind of media circus at the hospital?” The resident was a young man, and a media circus was clearly a welcome change of pace for him.

Apparently, the hospital security staff had found one reporter trying to get into my room while I was asleep that morning. They had gotten the city to arrest another man they’d discovered at one of the nursing-station computers calling up Sister Frankie’s and my charts.

“We put a block on incoming calls to your room. The switchboard says they’ve clocked a hundred seventeen calls.”

I hadn’t thought there could be a plus to a hospital stay, but missing a hundred seventeen media calls proved me wrong.