Seeing all of this mentally, she shook her head. The pills, she supposed; they were making her crazy. For a minute she strained at her bonds, just when the magic horse flew off the gas station sign—but by the time the whole thing was over, she just sank back, struck by desolation. Dimly her predicament came through to her. Not only was she tied up, legally shut up so that there was no justice to resort to, but the world itself was all changing. Nothing was permanent anymore; either it was the result of the goddamned drugs they gave her, or they knew this happened and they didn’t want the old people to tell the young ones. The secret was that the world really changed all the while, and that when you dropped out of it, you saw the truth.

“Oh, Lydia, that’s it but not it at the same time,” Seven exclaimed. “You don’t have to re-experience the nursing home.” But Lydia didn’t hear him, because when she was alive she didn’t believe she had a soul, and so Seven just waited for an opportunity to free her whatever way he could.

Maybe when you died, things cleared up again, she thought, but she doubted it. Her ideas rolled down the hill of her mind so quickly that she could only catch a few of them. The rest disappeared. Where did they go? “Dinnie-din time,” said Mrs. Only, coming close with a dinner tray.

Lydia tried to rearrange herself more comfortably.

“Be careful. Don’t dump all the hot food now,” Mrs. Only said in a terrible voice.

Lydia looked down to see the plate on her lap, the heat of the food rearousing her thighs. Mrs. Only unstrapped her for eating but Lydia didn’t want any of their goddamned food. It took all of her will power—she collected herself, for parts of her seemed off in their own unknown places—but she focused precisely and brilliantly, gripped the insides of her own muscles, directed them as deliberately as she ever had, and sent the tray—plate, silverware, cream pitcher, and all—flying.

Then, satisfied, she sat back and tried to say, crisply, “That’s what I think of your damned drugged food,” but her lips and mouth seemed to turn into cotton, making soft white fluffy sounds that said nothing. “Dear God,” cried Lydia inside her mind.

Mrs. Only was picking up the food when Lydia noticed something else, a change in her fellow patients. They’d been beside her all the while in their chairs, but she ignored them. They always ignored each other when the nurses were around, pretending to be dumber than they were. So she’d also ignored their background whining. But now their voices no longer whispered, but suddenly turned full and real and vital. And damn near thunderous; damn near louder than any thunder she’d ever heard.