Edison lurched for her, taking the nurse by the shoulders and wrestling her away, down to the ground. She was tall and strong, but he fought her back, pinning her to the floor. The bizarre, muted cries from her chest became louder. His head ached, hard, almost blinding, and he cried out, then fell to the side, feeling her knee slam into his crotch.

The nurse jumped swiftly to her feet, scrambling toward the machine.

“It’s not your mother! It’s Angela. It’s not your mother!”

Edison froze, trying to stand, and hearing, at last, the strangled words caught in the nurse’s chest. She was close to the machine now. She was going to unplug his mother. Kill her. But if she was awake and well, why would it matter? Why did she need the machine?

“Don’t let her touch me! I don’t want to die, baby, I don’t want to die. You wouldn’t kill your mother . . .”

Diana’s face, wet with tears, shimmered under the oxygen mask. He could remember when that face was full and healthy, when her shoulders were more than desiccated knobs. This was a memory, but it was all wrong. All wrong. He knew how it went. He remembered the way his hands shook and then became strong as he reached for the machine himself. His mother wasn’t there anymore. She had died a long time ago.

“Stop!” he shouted at the nurse, grabbing her by the waist and pushing her to the side. “I have to do it. Me.”

“No, I’ll help you. We can do this together, all right? Together. It’s a mercy, we can’t leave Angela like this, we can’t let her hurt anyone else. That’s not who she was, she was a good friend, a good person, and she wouldn’t want to stay like this.” The nurse looked different then, familiar. Beautiful. He trusted her big hazel eyes, and he nodded, knowing her again. The knowledge made him feel strong. Rosalyn.

“Help me,” Edison whispered. Rosalyn stood out from the rest of the room, richer in color, realer and more vivid than the faded memory around him.

Diana thrashed on the bed, rising up, clawing at him, no longer a frail woman but a skeletal creature of talons and flashing teeth. Blue. She was explosively blue, and her sharp hands lashed out toward him. Rosalyn shifted to block her, trying to hold her hands still while Edison struggled to reach her life support.