“Five. I’m trying to limit myself to eight a day. They help me stay alert on the night shift,” Karen replies.

“I read—” Shanika begins.

“Don’t bother. I’ve heard it all. Diet anything causes cancer, heart failure, car crashes, and female erectile dysfunction,” Karen says.

“See you later,” Shanika says, letting herself out. Karen waves.

Rose looks at the television. Cartoon characters infect the screen. Grotesques, they would once have been called. Since the Muppets, children’s fiction has gotten surreal. Why cartoons? Why not the news? Dementia as a second childhood?

A woman on the couch slips a few more degrees right of center. The man in the third lounge chair snores. Chuck struggles up out of his chair.

“Where are you off to, Chuck?” Karen, the big nurse, asks pleasantly.

“Home,” Chuck says.

Karen gets out of her chair and tugs the top of her scrubs straight. “I’m headed that way. Can I walk with you?” She takes Chuck’s arm. Rose watches from the corners of her eyes as Karen, chatting companionably, walks Chuck into the activities room, around the table, and back to the abdicated easy chair. “What a long walk! You must be as tired as I am, Chuck. Oh, look, what luck, your favorite chair is right here waiting for you.” Without taxing her strength, she helps Chuck to sit. He lies back, eyes closed. He looks like a corpse.

Rose watches a sponge in boxer shorts cavort on the television screen.

At seven thirty, Karen emerges from behind the desk to place her keycard onto the black plastic. The glass security door opens. A young woman carrying a tray of snacks, boxes of juice, and a Diet Pepsi comes in.

“You do love me!” Karen says as she takes the soda and puts it on her desk.

The young woman is really a girl, no more than fourteen. She wears a pink-striped dress. Candy striper. A snippet of memory, a snapshot out of the dark, coming from nothing and leading to nothing, flickers in Rose’s mind.

The girl gives each resident a box of juice, helps them to skewer a foil hole with a tiny straw, then unwraps their snack-packs of crackers and cheese.

Rose sips and munches along with the others, eyes fixed on the television. Mentally, she notes the comings and the goings, trying them against her nascent plan.

Shanika returns. Residents are being carted away, down a short hall with six doors opening off of it. Shanika comes to Rose’s chair. “Are we ready for a shower?” she asks cheerfully.