I followed her gaze to the stage, where the pale, heavyset young man was singing, his hands clasped together and resting delicately on the shelf of his substantial belly. Somehow, I thought, she must have misunderstood. I tried to shift my leg so that her hand would fall in a natural-seeming way to the side, but every way my leg moved her palm went with it, as if it had been fixed there with glue.

“Excuse me,” I whispered again, tapping her on the shoulder again. “I don’t think you understand—”

The guest lecturer turned her head all the way around this time, a look of quiet ferocity in her eye that had certainly never been there in real life.

“Not now,” she hissed. “This is not the right time.”

“No—” I began, but she silenced me with one imperious glance.

“You are the one who doesn’t understand,” she said. “This is not the right sequence of events. I will get in touch with you.”

With this, she turned back to the concert with a finality that precluded all compromise. I was, needless to say, both astonished by her response and completely unable to understand it. What did she mean about getting in touch with me? About the right sequence of events? And yet, as incomprehensible as it was, my dream-self seemed to take this development with equanimity. There wasn’t much time to try to understand what she’d said, either, because no sooner had I sat back in my chair than I felt a light tap on my shoulder.

It was the dark-haired, smooth-faced young man from the reception desk at the Old Mission Hotel, the one who’d pointed out to me that my watch had stopped. The dream-me felt no surprise at seeing him there, in the hospital; I accepted it as a matter of course. He looked exactly as he had when I’d last seen him, down to the shine on his black lace-up shoes, and in manner seemed as crisp and poised as ever.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “Someone is waiting for you upstairs.”

Like the guest lecturer’s, his lips didn’t move as he spoke, and yet I heard every word clearly.

“Upstairs?” I mouthed, and looked at the glass wall of the rotunda, the fountain visible behind the singing man, white water arcing against blue sky. And as I did so, the hospital, the guest lecturer, the concert all fell away, and the dark-haired young man and I were in the elevator of the hotel, riding up to the fourth floor.

“Any idea who asked for me?” I said. I was pleased; my words had come out in a very relaxed way—it felt like a natural question to have asked.

“I’m sorry,” said the young man, and shook his head.