Tears dripped to my protuberant lower lip and slid off my jaw, making minuscule plips in the bloody sink. I put my forehead down on the edge of the sink to cool it and sat down on the lip of the bathtub. Another knock.

“Busy!” I yelled, tears gushing hot in frustration. Outside the door came the sound of horrendous retching, splattering. A thin, pink line of vomit crept under the door and pooled on the bald linoleum.

“I couldn’t help it,” came a small voice beyond the door.

Carush would be leaning over Emma still, his thickening penis filling the top of his left trouser leg. She had told me several times how revolting she found him.

The water was cooling around my hands, the pump of blood had slowed distinctly. I lifted a hand to turn on the hot water tap. The edges of the cuts were white and puffy, pink slits. The Romans, I began to suspect, may have opened the veins inside their elbows rather than at their wrists. I frowned, racking my brain to remember Tacitus. They certainly sat submerged in deep tubs of hot water continually renewed by weeping and solicitous slaves. The edge of the tub was pressing into the backs of my thighs, numbing both legs. I pulled the plug in the sink and let the red water whirl down the drain as the new heat poured in.

A loud rap at the door.

“Sally!” It was Carush. “Are you not letting anyone in?”

“I am having,” I said calmly, “massive diarrhea, and I would like to be left alone.”

“Mrs. Jorgenson has to go, Sally!” Mrs. J. was Carush’s psychotherapist. An attractive woman.

“Tell her goodbye for me,” I said.

“I mean she has to go to the toilet, Sally. Come on, for Christ’s sake.”

Mrs. J. was very pregnant.

The bleeding had definitely stopped. A few small red bubbles seeped out of the cracks in my wrists as I stared at them.

“Just a moment, please,” I said.