“I wanted to ask how Maddie is.” It happens just as I pronounce her name: a completely unfamiliar heat shoots into my cheeks. “And to apologize for eavesdropping recently. I’m sorry about that.”

The heat is now spreading in all directions—into my cheeks, across my scalp, down my neck, and I think I can even feel it on the soles of my feet. What is it Scott calls puberty? “Probably the most embarrassing time of a man’s life. And it lasts until you’re about seventy.”

Nurse Marion takes her time. She leans back in the blue office chair on wheels, crosses her arms, studies me, and at the end of this long lead-in, asks, “And why do you want to know how Maddie is?”

Why? Why have I thought for two days solid about my father and Madelyn, even dreaming about them, I’m sure? I have pictured her name in my mind and breathed it.

“Because I can’t help it,” I finally say.

Nurse Marion looks at me strangely again, and in her eyes I see two women—a young one and an aging version—and it almost sounds as if it’s the elder questioning the younger when she says with a smile, “Life’s an uphill struggle, eh?”

I don’t really know so I keep quiet. Quite abruptly the nurse pushes herself out of her chair and says, “Come on, let’s go and see if Maddie would like to tell us how she’s feeling today.”

The nurse is barely taller than I am, and her ginger locks bounce back and forth before me as she strides along the corridor toward the last room. “By the way, I’m the ward sister here. If I’m not here, I’m either on night duty or checking on patients down in the intensive care unit.”

There’s no time to get anxious: Nurse Marion is already knocking on the last door. She pushes it open and announces softly, “Hi, Maddie, we’ve got a visitor. The young man who dropped by two days ago is here again. His name’s Samuel. May we come in?”

Maddie answers, “Of course, we’re just warming up.”

It isn’t Maddie who says this, obviously, but a woman in a pair of white trousers and a blue blouse with her name embroidered on it—“Liz.” She’s in the process of doing something very strange with Madelyn, while the latter lies on her side on a quilted mat on the floor, gazing up at me. The woman has taken one of the girl’s feet in her hands and is massaging it gently, twisting it this way and that. Classical music is playing in the background.

“More Tchaikovsky today, Maddie?” Nurse Marion asks.