Yet there is something different about the door to my left. All of these other doors are a light, pleasant oak, friendly and neutral, but this one is darker, heavier. The wood is battered and ancient, grained and scuffed. I know this door.

Somehow it has followed me to the hospital. Whether it is just the door or the contents behind it too, I cannot possibly know. Yet how can a locked room suddenly appear in a different place entirely? Do you think I am going crazy? I stop before it, gazing on its impossible provenance, place my palms flat upon the rough surface. It feels the same. Thinking I might hear something, some clue, I lean my ear against it, but there is only silence. My hand finds the dull brass doorknob, but it doesn’t turn. Below it, there is an old-fashioned sort of keyhole; if I only press my eye against it—

“Excuse me, dear. Are you lost?”

I turn to find a middle-aged nurse clutching a clipboard, staring at me beneath raised eyebrows and thick red hair, the dye fading at grayish roots. There is a speck of blood on her blue scrubs, and I find myself fixating upon it, wondering where it came from, wondering if she realizes it is there.

I look back at the door, but now it just looks like any other door here. Did I imagine it?

“No,” I tell her, and continue down the hallway until it opens up into the lobby.

The hospital feels unnaturally now, all white under surreal light, metal fixtures, murmuring televisions hanging from ceilings, torturous-looking wheelchairs, two satisfied women with pregnant bellies reading magazines as they wait their turn.

I have been back home only a year and already the real world feels less real to me, strange and foreign and locked in time. It feels false, shallow. All that matters here is what is happening right now. The births and deaths of the past are irrelevant, as someday the births and deaths of the present will become irrelevant, each receding into the great chasm that lies at the bottom of time. I wonder if they realize this. If then doesn’t matter, then now can’t either, because soon it will become then and all will be the same.

I sit down across from the pregnant women hiding behind their magazines, feeling self-conscious and wishing Elizabeth would hurry up so we can leave this awful place. I don’t know what to do with my hands. There is no magazine rack, so the women must have brought their own, and the television sleeps on, black screened, in the corner. I cross and then uncross my legs. Oh, hurry up, Elizabeth.

Since I do not know the names of the women, I will refer to them by their most defining characteristics: one is blonde and the other is wearing red lipstick. The blonde leans over and whispers to her companion while the other titters, and then they both smile private little smiles, stealing glances at me from the white corners of their eyes. They lean back, rustling the pages of their reading.