Matthew lay strapped down. There was a cagelike thing around his bald head. It was bolted in with screws; they’d drilled into his skull. He looked thin and scrawny and old, like a plucked bird. For the first time she saw his face, crisscrossed by red zipper scars. A pucker of folded skin pulled one corner of his eye downward. His nose was flattened.

He lay motionless, his eyes open, his mouth slack. A line of drool beaded down from his full lower lip.

Leni went to the bed, stood beside Mr. Walker.

“I thought he was better.”

“He is better. Sometimes I swear he looks right at me.”

Leni leaned down. “H-hey, Matthew.”

Matthew moaned, bellowed. Words that weren’t words, just apelike sounds and grunts. Leni drew back. He sounded angry.

Mr. Walker placed his hand on Matthew’s. “It’s Leni, Matthew. You know Leni.”

Matthew screamed. It was a heartrending sound that reminded her of an animal caught in a trap. His right eye rolled around in the socket. “Waaaaath.”

Leni gaped down at him. This wasn’t better. This wasn’t Matthew, not this screaming, moaning husk of a person.

“Blaaaa…” Matthew moaned, his body buckling. A terrible smell followed.

Mr. Walker took Leni by the arm, led her out of the room.

“Susannah,” Tom said to the nurse. “He needs a diaper change.”

Leni would have collapsed if not for Mr. Walker, who held her up. He led her over to a waiting area with vending machines and eased her into a chair.

He sat in the chair beside her. “Don’t worry about the screaming. He does it all the time. The doctors say it’s purely physical, but I think it’s frustration. He’s in there … somewhere. And he is in pain. It’s killing me to see him like this and not to be able to help.”

“I could marry him, take care of him,” Leni said. In her dreams she’d imagined it, being married, her caring for him, her love bringing him back.

“That’s a really nice thing, Leni, and it tells me Matthew loves the right girl, but he may never get out of that bed or be able to say ‘I do.’”

“But people get married, people who are injured and can’t talk and are dying. Don’t they?”

“Not to eighteen-year-old girls with their whole lives in front of them. How’s your mom? I hear she took your dad back.”

“She always takes him back. They’re like magnets.”

“We’re all worried about you two.”

“Yeah.” Leni sighed. What good had worry ever done? Only Mama could change their situation, and she refused to do it.