Nic was still unconscious on Monday morning. After three different nurses had told Lena to go home, she did, but only to pack a bag with toiletries, a week’s worth of undies and t-shirts, her phone charger and work uniform. She wanted desperately to call in sick, but she’d taken Friday off in order to fuck the worst person in the world and store policy demanded a doctor’s certificate for missing two shifts in a row. Besides, she couldn’t afford to lose another night’s pay.

In the end, it was a relief to be busy. A new promo catalogue had gone out that morning and people were stocking up on frozen pizzas and toilet paper like the zombie apocalypse was imminent. There were whole minutes throughout her shift when the porn loop forgot to play. Though it only took a customer looking at her too intently for it to start up again. Was the man buying the maximum-allowed six tins of premium baby formula attached to one of the dripping dicks she’d been sent through the uni messaging system? Was the bloke who forgot his PIN three times and had to yell out to his girlfriend to come and pay the same one who’d commented that Josh wasted the opportunity to ass-fuck the nasty bitch?

On Tuesday morning Nic was moved from ICU to a general care ward, which signified improvement. To Lena she looked the same as when they brought her in: bruised, grey-skinned, unconscious. Apparently the nature of her unconsciousness had changed, though, to one in which a standard level of observation and treatment was sufficient. As Nic’s care partner (or next of kin, as the older nurses said) Lena had been allowed to spend as much time as she wanted in the ICU, but in the general ward she had to confine herself to visiting hours. Perhaps she’d like to go home and get some rest? Pick up some of her mother’s personal items so she’d be more comfy for the rest of her stay?

She stopped correcting people about her relationship to Nic. No one cared who she was as long as her name matched that next to care partner on the paperwork. She also didn’t bother explaining that going ‘home’ to the giant complex of residential, research and educational buildings in which every single room contained a device on which someone was watching her fuck a douchebag would not be restful and that her chances of finding anything that could make anyone comfy at Nic’s was impossible. Instead she walked half an hour through dry, ashy heat to the nearest Kmart, where she spent next week’s alcohol budget on a pair of pink cotton PJs, a six pack of undies, bedsocks, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and hand cream.