“My, what a busy bee.”

“That’s pretty incredible.”

“Mr. B, you’ve knocked it all apart.”

“I heard she was this big-deal painter when she was younger.”

“Cookies and juice?”

“That is too amazing. Are you sure you’ve given her all her meds?”

Light changes quality, grows dimmer, is replaced by the unlovely glare of an overhead.

“Got to clean this up, Ms. Dennis. Time for supper.” A thick-fingered, slug-pale hand drops on Rose’s.

Color, space, and light kaleidoscope, then shatter. Rose looks around, blinking like an owl. Chuck’s lighthouse has three red stripes. A scribble of blue represents the sky.

The paper in front of Rose is covered with ink. A storm front looms up from a tangerine blaze that slashes a sea flecked with whitecaps. The lighthouse is limned by the glow from the drowning sun, the near side black in shadow. A salvation of yellow-white light cuts from the tower beacon to die in the bloated belly of the clouds.

Stunned, Rose stares at it. Since she was six, she has had what her mother called “artistic trances,” fugue-like states when she does her best work, when her mind slips free of language and opens to a clarity that is either integral to her DNA or channeled from a pure space, depending upon which teacher her mother asks.

Rose remembers that she is a big-deal painter.

Color and light and shadow are not the only things that have come together. As often happened in the past, while her conscious mind is absorbed by the composition of a painting, her subconscious mind works on other problems.

She now knows how she will escape.

CHAPTER 5

Rose opens the bedstand drawer, takes a tissue from the box, and spreads it flat on the rolling table. Six red capsules, a little over half her cache, are pinched out from their hiding place behind a box of latex gloves. Ears tuned to any sound of encroachment from the hall, she opens each capsule and pours the minuscule white spheres onto the tissue. That done, she herds the tiny balls into the crease, folds the tissue in half, then folds the edges closed on three sides. The empty capsules are flushed down the toilet. Hopefully, using the toilet all by herself is on the list of acceptable behaviors.

The tissue envelope is carefully placed in the pocket of her robe along with a pair of kindergarten scissors pilfered from the activities room. Putting on one slipper, she shuffles dead-eyed out to the common room. Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John, one shoe off and one shoe on, beats a refrain in the back of her mind. One shoe off and one shoe on; is she doing this to fool the nurse, or is this what crazy looks like?