She frowns. “Your name means Wolf.” She blinks, confused. “I—don’t know how I know that.”

Santi feels the world shift under his feet. “What are you doing here?” he says softly.

“I’m a trainee social worker. I’m new here, I just started this morning—”

“No.” He cuts her off. “What are you doing here?”

“I . . .” She’s familiar, everything about her is familiar: the washed-out blue of her eyes, the frankness of her gaze. She’s about his age, although he knows he looks older. Life has been kinder to her, this time.

“You,” he says with sudden understanding. “You’re part of it.”

Her expression shifts to wariness. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do.” The conviction burns him: she is the revelation, and she knows it. He slams his hands down on the counter. “Tell me,” he shouts. “Tell me what’s happening to me.”

“Take it easy.” She reaches under the desk for the panic button.

He has seconds to get through to her. He leans across the counter, stares into her eyes. The words come to him as if he has said them before. “Don’t leave me alone in this.”

He sees something change in her face as the resident assistants pull him away.

Back in his room, they sit him down for a talk. They tell him he can’t threaten the staff, or he won’t be allowed to stay here anymore. They explain to him that one of the features of his illness is a tendency to see meaning everywhere, that his delusion about recognizing Thora is just another in a long list of symptoms.

He lets them think he understands. After they leave, he takes the knife from his jacket and slides it under the pillow: an old habit he can’t sleep without. He lies on his side on the narrow bed and stares at the wall, searching for patterns in the cracks until he falls asleep.

In his dream, he’s running through the hospital, endless branching corridors all leading to darkness. It’s a normal dream, routine even, until he sees her, pink-haired, standing in an impossible shaft of sunlight. Even in the dream, he knows it’s not right. The woman he met was blond. This is a different Thora: older, gentler, scarred by sorrow.

She looks as surprised as he is to find herself in his dream. “Mr. López,” she says. Then, hesitantly, “Santi?”

The ground shakes. Santi falls. A tearing like the universe breaking in two. A rip opens up in the floor. Thora is on the other side. He reaches out, almost meeting her grasping fingers. Gravity takes them, and they fall apart, two planets pulled by the force of separate suns.