Sitting on the couch beside the woman whose internal plumb bob is on the fritz, Rose stares alternately at the television and nothing. When thoughts arise, pleasant or unpleasant, she breathes them out, staying alert and in the moment. The plan depends on timing. At seven thirty the door opens. The diet-cola-loving night nurse comes in, takes her place behind the desk, and pulls the tab on her drink can. The day nurse goes home. The girl in pink stripes enters with snacks.

Eight P.M.

Karen leaves her cola to help the candy striper put the residents to bed. When both health workers are occupied in the rooms off the short hallway, Rose stands. Moving as quickly as she can, she rounds the desk to where the nurses sit. Gingerly she removes the tissue envelope from her pocket, unfolds one end, and pours almost a full day’s dose of her drugs into the soda. Taken all at once, she hopes, they will make the night nurse drowsy enough, or inattentive enough, that Rose can get away. A few granules scatter over the top of the can. She blows them off, then scurries back to the couch.

The act has been witnessed by two people who neither notice nor will remember. Rose is short of breath and trembling, horrified by what she has done, what she risks, who she might be beneath the fog and the pretending. Is her mind really clearing, or is it merely that she thinks it is? Would a clear-minded individual poison a nurse? What if six capsules are enough to kill the woman? Tears well up and run down her face. She thinks about overturning the poisoned Pepsi.

She stays on the couch. If she is crazy, she consoles herself, it is appropriate to do a crazy thing. If she is not, they deserve what they get.

The idea of failing isn’t as awful as it was when this escape plan first came to her. Now, both succeeding and failing are equally terrifying. In a day, or a week, will the thought of leaving become more frightening than staying, going madder and madder? More frightening than the thought—or the paranoid delusion—of being drugged, then killed by voices in the night?

The candy striper comes for the leaning woman. Like the Grim Reaper in scrubs, Karen resurrects one of the reclining-lounger corpses and escorts it away. Growing old is like an Agatha Christie play: And then there were five. And then there were four.

The girl in the striped dress stands in front of Rose. “Ready for bed?” she asks too loudly, smile too wide. Rose doesn’t want Pink Stripes. The girl will go off duty when the last of the elders are tucked in bed. The candy striper is useless to Rose.