I was wary of her. I didn’t want another Ray or Krystal situation. But as the days elapsed I sensed no agenda from her. She was right, where the bullet grazed me was only a flesh wound, and she had taken it upon herself to stitch the wound shut, just to be on the safe side. I’d woken up one morning with half a tube of Neosporin slathered over my forehead. Her stitches were perfect, small and tight, a miniature train track of black thread. I started looking forward to her company there in that impersonal room, though I missed my roommates. After a few days I could at least sit upright without any major episodes, and I would stare out the front windows toward my real home. I worried about all the broken windows I remembered seeing, the puddles of water. Had they receded without me? What decay was taking hold while I was stuck here, a prisoner once again of my own body?

One afternoon, while giving myself a hand bath at the bathroom sink, a violent spinning hit me and I fell to the floor. I thought Rita had been outside somewhere, working, but somehow she heard me, came running. The panic of vertigo erased any shame I had in my nakedness, but she threw a thick towel over me anyway, and gathered me in her arms, carrying me to the bedroom and gently setting me back down in my bed. She sat beside me, making sure my pillow was straight.

By this time the spell was easing somewhat, and I was able to speak. I thanked her. She rose to go, to leave me to it, but I stopped her. Without looking at her I reached out and grabbed her wrist, which was nearest to me. “Stay,” I said, surprising both of us. “I want some company.”

The canary, afraid to be left alone.

The side of the bed sagged as she sat down again. “Okay, sure. You all right? Do you need anything?”

I wanted to shake my head but I couldn’t. My eyes kept pulling to the right. If I moved my eyes too much, outright vertigo threatened. “I just thought . . . we could talk.” Realizing how pathetic that sounded, I amended, “It might help distract me.”

“Okay. What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know,” I said to her. We both went quiet. “Why were you hunting rabbits?”

I heard her snort. “Oh. Well. I like rabbit.”

“You eat rabbits?”

“I eat pheasant, squirrel, whatever I can find. I’d eat the Easter Bunny if I caught him.”

My eyes were still dancing. I stared at a fixed point to steady them. Her voice was playful, yearning, as if she could have eaten a rabbit right then.

“Not much to a rabbit, though, is there?”

“You’d be surprised.” She sounded amused. “Do you eat a lot of rabbit?”

“No,” I said. “Not anymore.” The dizziness was slowly abating. “My dad used to hunt.”