She sat down on the bucket. Her bottom was so tiny that she almost fell inside. She defecated some more. When she finally finished there were red marks on the backs of her thighs from the bucket.

I dried her without a second thought, even though I had stopped doing so two years ago. She had liked learning to do it herself. But now she was shaking terribly.

The roll of toilet paper was almost finished—I had to find more. But the last time I went to the bathroom, I couldn’t find any.

I pulled on her underpants—they hung loosely around her hips. I lifted her up. Her body almost disappeared in my arms.

I laid her down in the bed, pulled the sheet over her. She occupied only a small part of the bed.

The bucket was left on the floor, stinking.

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“What if there’s more?”

“I’m going to empty the bucket now.”

“But what if I don’t make it. If it gets on the bed?”

“It will be fine.”

“But what if?”

I pulled out the only sweater I had and tied it around her waist and beneath her crotch, like a diaper.

At one point in the middle of the night I took the chance of going to the first-aid barracks. I knew they were open around the clock.

But it was locked and the windows were dark. Two bags of trash lay outside, one of them open and turned upside down. Hypodermic needles and soiled bandages lay in the grass.

Lou wailed. She retched again and again. Only yellow strings of slime came out of her mouth.

“Drink,” I said and held the cup out for her.

But she couldn’t even keep water down.

“I don’t want to,” she said, sobbing between heaves.

“It’s better,” I said. “It’s better to throw up water than not to throw up anything.”

What didn’t come out at one end, came out the other. The odors mingled. Soon I no longer noticed them.

She slept, woke up, fell asleep again.

Every time she fell asleep, I thought that now finally it had passed.

But then it returned. As if somebody had grabbed hold of her stomach, pulled at it, twisted it—an instrument of torture being screwed deeper and deeper inside her.

She’d had tummy bugs before, but never anything like this.

I tried to remember what Anna used to do. Things she’d had in the first-aid cupboard—charcoal tablets, loperamide. Now I had nothing. And Lou refused to drink fluids.

I had nothing. She only had me.

Anna. Where are you? How the hell can you leave me all alone?

The hours passed. I was so tired. So groggy. So afraid. So awake. I lost all track of time. I didn’t notice how much time had passed until I realized it was dawn.