“Your friend is really fucked up,” the cashier said, and laughed. “God, I miss college.”

Ayanna ignored him and helped Lisa outside. They walked slowly to the closest bench, then when it became clear it was a bad idea to try to get Lisa to drink anything, Ayanna called 911.

At the hospital, while Lisa spoke to a nurse, Ayanna sat in the waiting room. She thought again about all the pills in her backpack, how despite everything, here she was again thinking about ending it all, but mostly she thought about Lisa. How much she wanted her to be okay. The TV showed the latest late-night TV talk show, where a handsome man was interviewing another handsome man about what it was like to be handsome. Everything was bright and washed-out. The nurse at the desk was wearing bright turquoise scrubs and a Halloween hat meant to look like a pumpkin top. People around Ayanna were bleeding or holding their stomachs or were in some way in distress. A woman she had to avoid looking at because her wrist was so clearly broken. Most of them were alone. She half watched the interview but spent most of her time wondering if Lisa was okay, and how she had ended up alone on the street like that, and she let out a breath she had been holding. A few spirits wisped above seats. Had they died waiting for care?

Hours of waiting. The television moved to reruns of a sketch show, all the Halloween episodes. Each one seemed to have a joke about wearing a sexy costume to a completely inappropriate situation. Yet some of the people around Ayanna kept laughing at it. She stood up a few times to stretch; the chairs were hard and unyielding. A moment or two where Ayanna dozed off, only to jolt herself awake. SVU reruns and those seemed wildly wrong to be shown in the ER waiting room, but people were watching them with the glaze of relaxation spread across their faces. When Lisa came out, she didn’t say anything, just waited for Ayanna to gather her things. She was pale and some of her thick black hair was stuck to her chin.

“Are you okay?” Ayanna asked.

“No,” Lisa said. “Yes.”

They walked back to the dorm together in silence. The birds that remained in town were starting to wake up and sing. Soon, they would all head south, except for the crows that appeared in great flocks in November and December. Why did they like to be here, even when everything was miserable? Ayanna’s thoughts swam with lack of sleep. She tried to calculate what she had to snack on in her dorm room and thought maybe there was half a granola bar in her top desk drawer.

“Are you hungry?” Ayanna asked.

“I never want to eat again,” Lisa said. Her shadow was so large. “I smell so bad.”