Than Rose was. She doesn’t know how old she is now.

Smiling at the two of them, the nurse says, “Chuck has been missing you. Haven’t you, Chuck?” Chuck does not respond. The nurse turns her happy face to Rose. “Since you’ve been sick, he’s moped and asked, ‘Where’s the rose?’ half a million times.”

Uncertain what to do, Rose does nothing. The nurse doesn’t seem to notice. She pats Chuck’s upper arms as if fluffing up a pillow. “You two get reacquainted. Dinner in a minute. Good to be home?”

The question is aimed at Rose. She feels it hit, but doesn’t know what to do with it.

The nurse walks away.

Side by side, Rose and Chuck sit staring at the pens in the coffee mug. Rose doesn’t know Chuck; still, she feels a knowingness, an ease, familiar, pleasant. Concentrating hard, she digs words out of her brain and offers them one at a time. “How long have you been here?” Her voice is barely above a whisper. The phrase feels out of place, but it is all she has.

Chuck moves his gaze from the mug to her face, mild concern livening his features. “Where is this?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Rose admits.

Chuck reaches over and takes her hand from where it lies on her knee. Rose doesn’t snatch it back. The gesture feels as if it has happened before, and no harm has come of it. He folds her hand in his and sets them both on his own knee. His grasp is gentle, his skin warm and dry.

Rose is comforted. Tears fill her eyes. She cries because she hadn’t known how desperately she needed comforting, and because there are so many people in the world with no warm hand to hold.

“You are Chuck,” she says, trying the words out for hidden memories. There are none.

He nods. Again he asks, “Where is this?”

Again, Rose has no answer. “I am … I am the rose?” she asks.

“You grow here,” he says.

Rose hears that. Tears tumble from her bottom eyelids. “I guess.”

“My good wife loved roses,” Chuck says, giving her hand a squeeze.

After that, they don’t speak. Chuck holds her hand, and though parts of her mind skitter along the misty track that led to this room, more parts stay in Chuck’s hand, averse to disturbing him, the way she is averse to disturbing a sleeping cat on her lap.

Pushed by an orderly in a white shirt and trousers, a cart rattles into the activities room. Tweedle, Rose thinks, and remembers being dragged along the sidewalk. Moving her feet in her slippers, she can feel the irritation where the tops scraped along the ground.

The sedatives are wearing off. The “meds” have been purged from her system.