“I ish . . . I ish . . . don’t . . . I ish . . . ” Words were hard, even with the nanos rushing to plug the holes in Karen’s mind, to fill in with mechanical bits all the organic parts that had died.

“Whu. Whu. Whu!”

Karen’s right hand, the only one she could vaguely control, pawed and flailed at Harmony’s face.

“Stop it, Mum,” she whispered, so tired.

“Whu! Whu!”

“Stop it! Mum, stop it!” So tired, in a world that will never let her be free. Just coping – just coping. That’s all she will ever be.

A grunt of frustration and pain, Karen reached out harder, lost control of her arm. Something harsh and hard scraped across Harmony’s chin; she recoiled with a cry and the touch of damp blood beneath her fingers. “Fuck’s sake, Mum!”

Knocked the chair back too hard, it rocked and tumbled over as she pushed away, grabbed and fumbled at it to right it as strangers on the ward stared. Scampered for the bathroom, slammed the door behind her. There were four different seats at four different heights you could lower over the toilet for those who couldn’t walk, stoop, sit or stand. Alarm chords tangled with light switch, the water ran too hot, then too cold as she turned her face to examine the scratch across it, another disfigurement on her stupid, bulging, useless flesh.

A clean line of thin blood, little more than a paper cut. She daubed at it with tissue paper and it was gone so fast she could barely see it.

She stood a while and watched the redness fade, then returned to Karen’s bed.

Karen lay, staring at nothing much, the right side of her face churning over unfamiliar words, silent now, pushing at sounds she couldn’t make, right arm drooped over her lap, left hanging loose. She still wore her wedding ring. Even in this place, beneath the fluorescent light, it shimmered.

Harmony went and bought herself another cup of coffee.

Walked round the car park, past the ambulances with back doors open and old men shuffling the locked-knee two-step to their ends. Drifted through the hospital, past the wards where the old ladies lay awake, awake, awake, the nanos keeping them alive, alive, alive, thought she heard the sound of pianos playing and knew she imagined it. Closed her eyes to remember an endless blackness into which she fell, the day her nanos failed. Pulled gently at the flab around her belly button, shoved and squirmed against her breasts, bursting out of their too-small, awkward underwired bra.

Went back to her mother’s bed.

Karen lay sleeping.

A diamond ring on her finger.

Nurses passed in the corridor, and her mother slept.

A bottle full of piss lay on the floor, and in Karen’s blood a million machines danced and spun, trying to plug the place where a woman had been with algorithms and carbon.

Harmony took her mother’s hand in her own.