“Look here,” the doctor said, handing him something blue in a transparent wrapper. “You can cover the bandage with this when you bathe.”

He made no move to accept it, so I reached out and took it for him.

“Are you relatives?” she asked.

“No, we just live in the same hall.”

“Do you know whether he has anyone?”

I shook my head.

“Keep an eye on him, would you, please.”

Francis moved sluggishly on our way back to the hall. As we walked away from the first-aid barracks his pace slowed more and more, until finally he stopped walking altogether.

“I just have to . . .”

He didn’t say anything else but turned toward the first-aid barracks again. Then he walked quickly back and disappeared inside.

“What’s he doing?” Lou asked.

“Wait outside,” I said.

She released my hand and went to stand beside the barracks. I walked over to the door and opened it a crack.

The first thing I heard was a scratching sound. The room was empty, the nurse had left, but Francis was standing in a corner. He was busy digging through a trash bin and didn’t notice me. Then he evidently found what he was searching for: the old bandage. He quickly stuck it into his pocket with a furtive movement. I ducked away from the door and hurried back to Lou.

“What did he do?” she whispered.

But at that moment he came out. His steps were lighter.

“It feels better already,” he said. He turned toward Lou and suddenly he smiled. “That’s a good one you’ve got there,” he said to me.

I pulled Lou close to me and nodded.

“Yes, she’s a good one.”

The first night in a bed in twenty-four days. When I closed my eyes, an image of the faces of Anna and August flashed through my mind. I fell asleep before I could think anymore.

But then the dreams came. Worse than before, maybe because I slept so deeply. I was falling, no, sinking through water. Toward the bottom, and I let myself sink, I didn’t struggle against it. I would soon run out of air, my chest contracted, but nonetheless I did nothing to get back to the surface again. I couldn’t breathe. Mustn’t inhale, mustn’t fill my lungs, mustn’t drown.

The surface above me—light blue, a shimmer of bubbles where I had fallen. That is where I am headed. That is where I have to go. But all I did was sink.

I woke up with a jerk. Drew a breath. Filled my lungs. Air. Around me it was light. It was morning already.

I turned over and lay in bed watching Lou as my breathing calmed. She was sleeping on her back with her arms sticking out and her legs splayed in opposite directions, like a starfish. She was in constant movement—took up room, demanded space. When she was sleeping she forgot to make herself small.

We’d had her far too soon. I knew we shouldn’t have started having children so early. I was only nineteen, and Anna had just turned twenty. We blamed it on the water crisis, on the shortages that came along with it. Because everything was in short supply, condoms as well. I was happy about that, that Anna blamed the crisis and not me, given that I had actually promised to pull out in time.