“See, she can’t articulate,” Mrs. Only said. “The blood thinners should help bring more blood to the brain, but her condition is really irreversible.”

Lydia threw them a fantastic scowl this time. How could she get them to understand that she knew what was going on quite well? And who wouldn’t try to get out of this stupid place?

“Mama, what is it?” Anna asked. She took off her hat and gloves, laid them carefully on an empty chair, and came closer.

In her mind, quite sanely, Lydia formed the mental words: “Get me out of this hellhole. And stop calling me Mama, as if you were ten.” But all that came out was a mess of gibberish, with a few recognizable words mixed in. Worse, something else happened. Before her startled eyes, Lydia saw Anna quickly change from a stout woman in her early fifties to a woman in her … thirties … to—Lydia gasped, no longer able to keep track of the rapid transformation. In the next moment she saw Anna, aged approximately seven, standing there in a starched yellow dress. Lydia trembled in recognition and shock. The dress—she’d just ironed it for Anna’s birthday.

“Mama, tie my sash,” Anna said.

“Say please,” Lydia said automatically.

“I said please, didn’t I?” Anna asked.

“No, you didn’t,” Lydia said. “But come here and stand still.”

“She said quite clearly, ‘Come here and stand still,’” the grown-up Anna said to Mrs. Only and Roger.

“Well, do it and see what happens,” Roger said.

The grown-up Anna came close to Lydia’s wheelchair, and stood there with a silly I-don’t-know-what-to-do look of embarrassment. For Lydia, the two figures merged one into the other. “Not you,” she said irritably. It was terribly difficult to separate Anna Young from Anna Older, and Anna Older didn’t need her at all. Why didn’t she get out of the way?

“Come here, honey,” Lydia said, coaxing, to Anna Young.

“Okay.”

Lydia smiled. By working … something just right, she could block out Anna Older entirely and tend to the child.

“You look lovely, honeypot. Happy birthday,” she said, glad now that she’d ironed the yellow dress after all. “You smell all nice and clean and starchy.”

“Mama, it’s me,” Anna Older said, near tears. “It’s not my birthday. Is that what you said? Who are you talking to?”

“She’s living in the past. She probably thinks you’re a child or something,” Mrs. Only said. “They go on this way. She might come out of it in a minute.”

Roger didn’t know where to look. He shook his graying head, adjusted his glasses, blew his nose, and tried not to look around at the other old patients. He had the oddest feeling that they were all staring. But when he took a quick look out of the corner of his eye, he saw that no one was paying the slightest attention.