He hugged back, no doubt not understanding at all what was happening, but willing to accept whatever part in it she might choose for him. Her own disdain for him, her angry rejection of the way the various parts of him used one another with ugly facility, now seemed extremely ungenerous. The man was trying to love. He wasn’t good at it, never would be. He was not free enough for it; the goodness of his heart was corrupted by his overweaning ambition. So be it. He was no girlish dream, though, he was real. If you kicked him he hurt. If you felt sorry for him he was diminished. If you loved him something might—or might not—come of it.

“Ten-thirty and I’m tired,” she said at last. She wanted to close the curtain, go on to another act. The situation obliged her: a chime rang in the patients’ lounge. Time for the sleepless to seek their rest. People began filing past the open door of control room three. The other staff members followed them, intent on their charges. “I’d better go tape her up,” Sarah said. “I’ll be right back.” She glanced away from him as she left, unwilling to meet the eyes that sought hers.

Miriam Blaylock lay in her cubicle in a magnificent and wildly inappropriate silk dressing gown. It was pink and white, embroidered with the flowers of some past and distant place. In this austere little room it looked like a museum piece. So did Miriam Blaylock, for that matter. Her face had the closed, secret look you see in old photographs. It was a face from another time, when people hid out of social necessity all that was in their hearts.

“Do I get undressed for you again?” There was just the edge of a smirk in her tone.

“That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Blaylock.”

She sat up in the bed, her eyes wide. Incongruously, Sarah recalled the black Statue of Isis in the Egyptian Section of the Met. “You needn’t sound like ice,” Mrs. Blaylock said. Sarah felt herself flush. The professional distance of her tone had been used by Miriam to do exactly what Sarah didn’t want, to create intimacy. She was suddenly aware of the smell in the room, heavy and sharp but with an underlying vulgar sweetness.

“I’m going to apply a group of connectors to your forehead, the sides of your face and around your heart. They don’t hurt and they won’t give you an electric shock.” She used the litany remembered from her clinical days, even took a certain pleasure in it. To begin she applied conductive gel for the facial group and then taped down the electrodes one by one. “I’ll have to ask you to open your clothes.” Miriam removed her robe.

“The nightgown goes over my head.”

“Raise it, please.”