A nurse brought me a thermos of tea and I drank it while she set up a cot against the opposite wall. She had blonde hair and a round sort of body a bit like a wheelbarrow, sort of blunt and tottering but perfect anyway for getting from place to place. I felt myself moved onto the cot. Perhaps she just scooped me up. Maybe she said something to me just then, maybe she told me I was a good mother. Maybe she told me I could rest now, that the machines would keep a better watch over B, over E anyway, that I could sleep and sleep and sleep and only wake up when I chose to. Maybe she was just asking for my insurance card.

In the morning we woke up and were cared for, a thermos of fennel tea for me, apricot juice for E, thick and as orange as a duck’s foot. A nurse came in to wash B, plunking him in and out of a small portable tub filled with soapy water while I watched and held his hand. I showered and washed myself as best I could with the tiny hospital soap. Afterwards I was exhausted and slept again. E played all the time with her giraffe.

Mostly we waited for the hours to pass, but in an easy way. I nursed B off and on almost all day, at the encouragement of many friendly nurses. We were doing everything right, they might have been saying. We would all love each other for ever and could stay as long as we liked. E and I ate steak for dinner and for me a nurse brought a tiny glass of wine. At night we slept. For days we lived like babies, the three of us, eating, sleeping, being taken care of by inexplicable giants, until M came and found us.

There you are, he said when he walked into the room, smelling like ocean water, like he had just stepped off a plane from a sunny place and maybe he had.

He picked up E and hugged her and she let him hug her giraffe too. He picked up B then and hugged him and then he came and put his arms around me even though he still had E and B and her giraffe in his arms. Jesus, he said into my shoulder, you sure know how to scare a guy.

He let us go and wiped his eyes.

I got here as soon as I could, he said. I came as soon as I heard. You should see it, he said, the apartment building. The whole thing’s gutted, completely burned.

How did it happen? I asked without knowing really what I was asking.

Police think it started in our corner of the building, M said. They say it might have been some woman, M said. They found her by the bins acting strangely I guess. They’re still investigating.

An old woman? I asked.