“Can I get you anything? Did you want me to call somebody?”

“I’m not myself.”

“It’s okay. You don’t feel well.” Her voice alarmed me. It was so hoarse, almost rusty. I thought they must have given her something.

“I’m being such a baby.”

“No.”

“You’re supposed to be brave and then you end up a bad joke.”

“Says who? You don’t have to be anything.” She really wasn’t herself. She never spoke this way, fretful and aggrieved, as if at some injustice.

“Then you think about everything you’ve left behind.”

“But you aren’t going anywhere, okay?” I tried to sound hearty and reassuring. “Think about feeling better and getting back home.”

“Time to walk the plank.”

“Now that’s silly.” Here I was scolding her, another new thing.

“Sooner or later.”

I wished one of the others would come back. Or some annoying volunteer with a cart full of magazines. I didn’t know how to soothe her. Everybody died, and it sucked. “Later,” I said. “Not now.”

“I was so foolish.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. “It’s all right,” I said. She wouldn’t be saying any of this if she felt better. I was embarrassed for her, and now I was glad the others weren’t here.

“And weak willed.”

“I think you just need to rest more.”

“It was such a boy’s club. All of them sitting in the sandbox, hitting each other in the head with toys.”

“Yes well that sounds—”

“There was really no place for me, except as somebody’s fuckee.”

I’d never heard her swear before, let alone say something that extraordinary. I waited to see if she’d go on, but she was quiet. I thought that when you got older, everything in your life must echo back at you. The old arguments waged all over again. It made me uneasy to watch it. But I didn’t look away.

Her eyes had been half closed but now she opened them, wet and wide and blue. “You’re a smart, lovely girl.”

“Thank you.”

“Make sure you are taken seriously.”

I nodded, as if I knew what she meant.

“You need to keep reading. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Even the pretentious, ridiculous writers, because if you don’t at least get some exposure to them, you’ll be either overimpressed or confused by them.”

“All right,” I said. “Them, too.” I thought she was sounding better, stronger, now that she was talking about poetry. A nurse came into the room then, or at least, a woman wearing scrubs. You never knew who anyone was in a hospital anymore.

“How are we doing?” the nurse-type person asked, not really expecting an answer. “How about we check that old blood pressure?”