Through the window I can see tall buildings, gleaming in the sun. I feel how far I am from the forest. I ask to have the window open, but the nurse says no, that the heatwave is over. This part of the world is returning to its cool, deep-green self. I feel like I’m coming home after a war.

The nurses are nice to me, amused. I’m just some clumsy guy who slipped and fell on his hunting knife, early one morning in the woods.

The orange-haired man is still here when I wake again. It should be weird, having a stranger in the room. But it isn’t. He is a peaceful person.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

“Better,” I say. And it’s true.

“I have to ask,” he says. “Did you really slip on that knife, or not? There was something in your eyes while I was trying to stop the bleeding. It looked like maybe you weren’t sorry to be—you know. Dying.”

“It’s complicated,” I say.

“I’m no stranger to complicated.” He takes off his cap and rubs his head so his hair stands up in red spikes. He looks exhausted. “You know what they say. If you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for them.”

If I tell him the truth, I guess I won’t see him again. But I am so tired of hiding what I am. My brain and my heart and my bones are exhausted by it. Mommy’s rules haven’t done me any good. What do I have to lose?

Lauren stirs, watchful.

I ask her, “Do you want to start?”

LAUREN

This is how it went, the thing with the mouse—how Ted found the inside place.

Night-times were the most special times for Little Teddy. He loved sleeping by his mother’s warm, white-clad form. But before that, she would tend to his injuries. It used to be once a month, maybe, but lately Teddy hurt himself so badly and so often that Mommy had to spend all night sewing up his cuts. They did not look bad to Ted, some were barely scratches. And some of the cuts were the invisible kind, he couldn’t see or feel them at all. Mommy told him that these were the most dangerous kinds of wounds. She opened these cuts again, cleaned them and sewed them back up.

Teddy knew that Mommy had to do it, that it was his fault for being so clumsy. But he dreaded the moment when she turned on the bedside lamp and angled it just so. Then she set out the tray. The things gleamed there, the scissors and the scalpel. Balls of cotton, the bottle that smelled like Daddy’s drink. Mommy put on white gloves like skin, and she then went to work.