He tucked his disheveled cravat into his shirt rather than fiddling with the knot and took the stairs to the third floor two at a time, turning down the hall to the long-stay ward. Striding down the rows of beds in Anna’s block, he gathered the old woman up with all her moaning noises and rocked her, crooning the sacred songs she loved until the panic was replaced with a frenzied submission, eyes darting. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. He reached for her music box balanced on the water pipe by her bed and wound it. That saved a wretch like me.

Then the box took over. Its familiar notes plunked into the whimpers and babbling, drawing a blanket of calm over the room. Anna grappled to climb close to him, as if clinging to a life raft, and hummed along with the box in that low, gravelly voice until her trembling slowed. She buried the top of her moist head into his shoulder, and he did his best to balance against the force of it. He continued singing the old hymn to the music box’s tune. I once was lost, but now I’m found. Her body relaxed, muscle by muscle. Then came the sobbing.

He spoke quietly to her, routine assurances, and eventually helped her collapse back on the mattress, limp as wet hay. With a sigh of relief, he covered her. At least he hadn’t had to drag out the corset—she’d settled quickly this time. She peeked out, two wide eyes with double bags beneath them, but said nothing. She rarely did.

A voice came from the next bed, muffled by blankets. “You were asleep, weren’t you, Doc? I can tell by your hair.”

“It is nighttime.” He ruffled the offending mass, turning toward the bony woman in the next bed—Alice. “But I wasn’t asleep, actually. Not yet.”

“Your Dahlia’s been asking after you, Doctor.”

Pain sliced clean through his midsection, unbalancing him. He grabbed the metal bedpost.

Dolly.

“Mayhap she’s afraid of the storm too and she thinks you’ve forgotten her. Have you forgotten her?”

Not likely.

He forced in a breath. “I haven’t. Thank you, though.” He rose and stretched the kink in his back, but it only intensified the low ache in his gut. A foolish thing it had been to tell this woman stories about his wife, thinking it would be cathartic to him and meaningless to her, with her mind that leaked like a colander. What harm could come from telling her?

A lot, as it turned out.

Funny thing about Alice—she had a few stray pieces of flypaper somewhere in that leaking mind of hers, but only certain facts stuck. The lovely parts of all the Dahlia stories were captured in her head and often repeated, but other parts had fallen through the cracks. Like the part about Dahlia’s death. She never remembered that.