“I told you I promised to make his life count for something, that I built my entire career on that. I had to fight for every inch. I was a woman, I didn’t have money, I had to work twice as hard—”

“You’re not answering.”

She seemed startled, severed from some daydream. “I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

The doctor stood.

“You can’t, can you,” I said. “You don’t have an answer.”

Some interplay of rage and fear almost choked her off. “It doesn’t matter if you understand anymore.”

The door opened and Rainer entered. He glanced at the bags still full on the bench. “There isn’t much time, Eva. I have to strip him. If you don’t want to be here for this, you’d better hurry up.”

Dr. Kriss wheeled an IV stand to my chair.

“What are you doing?” I said.

She prepared the needle and swabbed my forearm with alcohol. I began struggling against the nylon. The bag of solution flopped to the floor.

I cried out.

“Rainer, come hold her.”

He crouched behind the chair and hugged me from behind. I couldn’t move my arms.

“Don’t.”

Dr. Kriss applied the tourniquet. I watched the needle break my skin.

“Please don’t.”

She picked up the bag. I would be the last subject, her final attempt to discover if it worked, if it was real.

“Eva, please.”

“Relax,” she told me, and hung a bag. The liquid was perfectly clear. It dripped into the tubing.

I think it was morphine. At first I felt nauseous, as if I might puke down the front of my shirt, but then I experienced an overwhelming inner contentment, a godly flow.

I could hear Rainer saying something in a low voice.

“That’s out of the question,” replied Dr. Kriss. “They’d come for her.”

“Who?”

“She has a name, Rainer. She’s not a nobody.”

“But the story.”

Dr. Kriss was petting my forehead. The pain was gone, the very concept of pain was gone.

“She won’t tell anyone,” she said. “She’s mute.”

—

When Dr. Kriss left, Rainer tied an apron behind his back, wheeled a stretcher to the hole, and unearthed the last subject. Black dirt crumbled off his back as Rainer hauled him up. The blindfolded face slumped in my direction, the smile hideous as Rainer pushed him to the wooden table behind the screen. For a few minutes there was silence. It must’ve been the silence of Rainer putting him down, a fatal dose in the drip.