He leaned over the bed and she steeled herself not to flinch when he kissed her forehead. His beard felt smooth, the cartoon beard of a kindly grandfather. She touched it and it grew in her hand, curls wrapping themselves round her fingers. He smelled of clean-cut grass, mixed with a pinch of the other kind of grass, more heady, not unpleasant, although the connotations were of Asian and other little boys she had encountered on the Lower East Side. Both scents were glaringly inappropriate in the hospital, the former making a mockery of all the “fresh scent” disinfectants splashed along the hallways. The latter just making a mockery.

“What are you doing here, Liev?”

He shrugged his shoulders and the curls snapped back. “I have been assigned to watch you.”

“You always were,” she thought.

“I really missed you,” he said, … no longer able to fake indifference.

She almost laughed. “I really missed you” made him sound like a school friend reconnected with after a summer camp apart. She did not know what to say. She was trying not to breathe too hard.

He lay beside her. She sobbed, as ever, but the tears did not leave the ducts and the ducts began to multiply under her skin, until they were lining every vein and string of flesh inside her. They formed, twofold, along the wall of her uterus and down along her vaginal passage. They covered the darkness that Asian had discovered, but that Sebastian had chosen to ignore, and the darkness turned, not to light, but to sweet pink, sad tears, spread out, turned juicy, happy, sensual.

She knew a doctor would be back to check on her soon. Inspired by relief, she moved his hand to her mouth, to her breast, between her legs and then she reached up under his flannel shirt and unbuckled his belt, touching him as he touched her. It was done in under a minute, but she kept his hand under her hospital gown, holding it in protective place with her own. He was gasping now, harder than she had been, and she tried to shush him. He snatched his hand away and leaped across the room.

“What have I done? What have I just done? I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Please don’t tell your father.”

“I don’t talk to my father anymore. And besides, I’m twenty years old, you understand that, no?”

“No.”

He went to the bathroom to wash his hands. There he took a few deep breaths, looking at his reflection in the mirror, where hers had been a few minutes earlier. Ruby’s face was still there, just under his own. It floated to the surface within a few seconds and, screwing up his eyes, he ducked his whole skull under the cold faucet.

“I’m going to have a bath,” said Ruby, head bowed in mock shame.

“Of course. Just leave the door open.”