A whisper was not enough to tell anything. She just wanted. She needed to go see him. He was twenty-two, the ten years she had on him felt like a generation and, given the facts of her life, were probably more. Mothering? Not quite right. Confiding? Could be. Or maybe she craved touch that wasn’t medical—night kisses.

She thought again and decided she could put her arm around the intravenous walker and still keep the crutch in hand. It was a slower-than-slow hobble, and, naturally, once she got it figured out, the whispering was gone. She also made more than a little noise herself, and when she turned the corner of her door into the hall, the arrangement didn’t quite follow. It was the crutch for the left leg, the good one. It hit the hall with a muffle, thanks to the sheepskin on its armrest.

Looking in his room, she saw the monitors blinking, the night-lights making sure of his vitals, and she saw instantly he was awake. He was looking at the window, at the closed shade, as if it were open. She paused. She probably hadn’t heard him whispering, yet here he was.

It was just like her to think she could save him. He was a pull, so gravitational she couldn’t quite turn around, so forceful she guessed there was some trouble here. Quietly she put the other crutch on the floor. She walked with pain, but not enough to matter. They’d be mad at her for this in the morning. But now she was concentrating on his line of vision, wondering why he couldn’t sense her, and then, when the IV’s wheels made their rubberized whistles, and he still didn’t turn, even though she was right up against the bed, she froze.

He had to sense her breathing. Her inhaling was like a thudding drum. Blood was a cascade in her ears. The sound of the air in the cockpit that night: she could hear it. Not the specifics, just the intestinal, cochlear register. The sensation that what she was hearing was wrong. Yet the instruments, they’d reinforced the sensation. And what else did you have but intuition or component? The alive, and hence flawed. The inert, and so impartial. “Tell me something else to believe,” she said out loud. The kid should have heard. She’d assumed only the leg got taken. He might be deaf; an explosive under a convoy did that. She was lassoed, the sweat beading in the crooks of both elbows. There was something artificial with him. She put her hand on his forearm.

It was a mistake. She saw that the minute both of his arms came up in the jujitsu she had no training to counter. All that saved her this time was her size. Small, always the smallest in any military setting, Mary hoped she registered harmless in this guy’s gut. So much time spent alone in the cockpit—she’d forgotten it was way dumb to touch a soldier. Even lying down, he picked her up off her feet like a scarecrow. His monitors started dinging right away. The nurses were there before he put her down. When she fought back to push him away, all she did was realize he was blind.