Her hand went to her face. “Fuck. Fuck.” Her voice shook, the pitch higher than he remembered. Trevor wondered what they’d told her in the health center. Some of the swelling seemed to have gone down but her eyeball was swimming with cherry-Slurpee-red blood. The skin around it looked painted purple.

“Here,” said Trevor, lifting his sunglasses from where they hung at the neck of his T-shirt.

She put them on. “Thank you.”

They walked in silence toward the dorm. Would she tell him if she wanted to be alone? When they were back in the lobby, the guard stopped Claudia.

“Somebody found a phone in the stairwell,” he said. “What kind of cover does yours have?”

“Silver.”

The guard reached beneath the desk and brought out the latest iPhone model. “Is this it?”

“Yes,” said Claudia. “Thanks.”

“It just rang,” said the guard. “You’ve got a lot of missed calls.”

Claudia unlocked the phone and scrolled. Trevor couldn’t see the reaction in her eyes, but her mouth dropped open and she drew in air.

“My sister had her baby,” she said. “My sister had her baby and I wasn’t there.”

“Shit,” said the guard. “That sucks.”

“Shut up, man,” said Trevor. He put a hand on her shoulder and she let him lead her to the elevator.

“What am I going to tell her?” Claudia asked as the doors closed.

“Just explain what happened.”

“I don’t know what happened. Not really. The nurse asked and I had to make something up.”

They got off the elevator and he followed her to her room.

“You said you fell,” said Trevor.

“I fell, yeah. But that’s not what happened.”

“You lost your phone. She’ll understand. I mean, once she sees you. She’s your sister.”

Even as he said it, he realized he was overstepping. What did he know about her family? Trevor trusted his brother, Mike, even if most people didn’t. If Trevor had gotten into something that ended in his face looking like Claudia’s, he’d have gone to Mike. But not everybody had that with family.

Claudia unlocked the door to her suite and walked straight to the sink. She filled a glass of water then sat on the sofa and laid several sets of pills in front of her on the coffee table. She pushed the pills out of the packets, put them all in her mouth, and swallowed.

“I’m gonna lie down,” she said.

“I’ll be around. Let me know if you need anything.”