Joe shrugged. “I thought she had. She called me early this morning.”

I let him off lightly. I could have managed to harrow him, even in my peculiar jubilant state. Of course, it was myself I was sparing by not accusing him, not weeping in his presence.

“Your mother seemed to think that it must be my fault somehow,” he said. His brows creased the skin of his forehead again.

“Ridiculous,” I said, and let my face fall on the pillow. “I’m sleepy now. Thank you for coming.”

I let my eyes close and waited, listening through the thin remote buzz that was all that remained of my deafness. His chair creaked, was still for a moment, and then creaked again as he rose from it. I worked to contain my self-congratulatory smile until he was outside the door. I felt clever for using my condition to relieve me of such dangerous company. I hadn’t cried. I hadn’t grabbed his hand and smeared it with snotty kisses. I had not begged him to lie to me or wail about my love—a triumph. I grinned.

I opened my eyes. Simultaneously, there was an unpremeditated movement in my legs; my thigh muscles were nearly audible, like the tearing of dry cardboard. I lifted my knees a fraction, however reluctantly. So the crass doctor was right: paralysis, too, was only fear.

The buzz was faint and reassuring in my head, but some niggling interfered with my complete satisfaction. My hair had not been brushed in days and felt reptilian, but that did not account for the vague unease in my gut. I replayed the story Joe had told me. It was too bad about that wonderful mattress. I certainly knew that death, hanging in fact, caused the involuntary release of the anal sphincter. I could have given myself an enema, but I hadn’t thought of it. But then I didn’t die, did I? Was nowhere near it, the doctor said, was never anywhere near it. The chuckle started again in my chest.