K. squatted and ran his thumb over her eyelids and gently stroked her cheek. He lifted her hand and let it go—it fell helplessly to the floor.

“Eva, don’t drop off.”

She looked at him again, struggling to keep her eyes open, and said hoarsely: “Do you have anything to eat?”

“Lie still.” K. took some rations out of his backpack. He cleared a place on the floor by the window, lit a hexamine tablet, and heated up a mixture of tinned meat stew and barley.

He went out to the hallway and rooted around for a while, before returning with a coat rack, which he wiped down and placed at the head of the mattress. He went out again. This time the noise came from another room as he rooted through drawers. He returned with a pair of tights, which he had ripped with his teeth. Eva watched all this in helpless silence.

K. unfurled a first-aid kit, took out a glass bottle containing a solution, a catheter, a tourniquet, alcohol, and cotton wool. He wrapped the tourniquet above the elbow of her listless arm, dabbed disinfectant and inserted the catheter. He stuck the bottle into the tights, which he suspended from the coat rack, passed a tube through a hole and connected the tube to the catheter. Drops of glucose trickled down.

The stew bubbled away over the dying hexamine tablet. K. carefully propped Eva up on a pillow, took hold of the tin of food and spoon-fed her. Colour gradually returned to her face.

He squeezed juice into her mouth through a straw, and followed it up with chicken spread on bread, and then a small piece of biscuit.

As the glucose dripped into her, Eva scratched herself, feeling at her dusty face and smoothing her hair. She was silent. Finally, she spoke slowly, in syllables, as if checking to see how it would sound: “Dad is dead.”

K. handed her the rest of the biscuit. She took it and stuffed it all into her mouth.

She coughed violently. It was a bad cough. K. would need to check on that, but he had no stethoscope with him. Looking at the IV sticking out of her arm, she repeated: “Dad is dead.”

K. took her hand in his.

“My condolences. But sit still, please. We need to restore fluid to your body.”

He left the flat and returned ten minutes later with an armful of planks, opened up a second package of rations and brought out another hexamine tablet. There was an explosion outside, but K. didn’t flinch. He stacked some more hexamine tablets, pieces of wood—they were large sections of chests of drawers, doors, and furniture—and encircled this arrangement with bricks. He struck a match. The damp wood burned slowly and clouded the room with smoke. Eva coughed and wrapped herself tighter in the blanket.

K. jimmied off a plank covering the window, allowing the smoke to slowly drift out of the window. It finally started getting warmer.